Brian Viner: History is bunk so Everton must put hoodoo to bed

Stoked up by the media, football fans have always enjoyed the idea that certain fixtures are subject to well-established jinxes, that it is 30 years since team X won in London or 20 seasons since team Y prevailed in Manchester, or that for team Z a particular stadium is a "bogey" ground, and that the weight of history is consequently tilted against them.

The very notion is nonsense. Supporters might engage with the past in that way but footballers know better. Besides, how can this weekend's match between Bolton Wanderers and Arsenal, for example, relate in any way to encounters between the sides 10 or even five years ago, when the playing personnel were completely different?

All that said, Evertonians descending on Anfield tomorrow will do so with trepidation, knowing that since the mid-1970s practically every really meaningful Merseyside derby has been won by Liverpool, including two FA Cup finals, a League Cup final, an FA Cup semi-final and an overwhelming majority of the league matches when the pair have been jostling for the title or, twice in recent seasons, qualification for the Champions League.

Even in 2004-05, when Everton pipped Liverpool to fourth place, the Merseyside derby on 20 March, billed as potentially decisive in the tussle for fourth, was won 2-1 by Rafa Benitez's side. Heck, even in the 1986-87 season, when Everton won the championship, a 0-0 draw at Goodison in November was followed by a 3-1 drubbing at Anfield in April. And when Liverpool went to Goodison for a fifth-round League Cup tie on 21 January 1987, they won that too. I might not believe in history as a determining factor in football, but I can't help wishing it favoured Everton more.

Still, it's no wonder that I am almost innately pessimistic before tomorrow's big match, having cut my teeth as an Evertonian in the uniquely barren period, derby-wise, between 1971 and 1978. I became a dyed-in-the-wool Blue, no less than the scarf I got for my eighth birthday, in the title-winning season of 1969-70. That year, with the Kendall-Ball-Harvey axis as good as any midfield English football had ever known, with Brian Labone marshalling a marvellous defence and Joe Royle spearheading a potent attack, it seemed reasonable to assume that Everton were about to embark on a period of comfortable dominance over Liverpool. In fact, the opposite happened. Between a 1-0 win at Goodison in November 1971 and another home win by the same narrow margin in October 1978 I did not once enjoy bragging rights in the school playground. Indeed, in 13 games, Everton conceded 13 goals and scored only one.

To reiterate, I don't believe in history as an influence in football, yet it seemed on the verge of repeating itself on 19 April 2003, when my son Joe, on his eighth birthday, walked out holding David Weir's hand as one of the mascots in the Everton v Liverpool derby. Before that match it again seemed as if recent tides might be turning. Everton hadn't won the derby since 1999 but young Wayne Rooney, making his first start in the fixture, was the talk of English football.

All too predictably, Everton lost 2-1, finishing the match with only nine men. Joe's big pal, Weir, was sent off, as was Gary Naysmith. Twice more since then, on 28 December 2005 and 20 October 2007, Everton have had two men sent off in the course of losing the derby (Mikel Arteta and Phil Neville two seasons ago; Tony Hibbert and Neville again this season). History, which I have no time for, shows that for Everton, derby day all too often goes horribly pear-shaped.

But that's enough of the past; what of the immediate future? Those trepid Evertonians walking along Anfield Road tomorrow can of course take great pride in knowing that a rare away win across Stanley Park will propel their team back into fourth place, a point ahead of Liverpool. Even if it's a draw or, heaven forbid, a defeat, to reach the end of March anything close to points parity with a club that has spent almost laughably more in the transfer market these past few years can itself be regarded as a triumph. In less than four years Benitez has shelled out £146m, almost exactly double what his Everton counterpart David Moyes has spent in more than six years.

Yet there comes a point at which Evertonians no longer want to be regarded as plucky over-achievers, standing on tiptoes to knock at the door of the so-called "Big Four". It is time to reclaim the club's birthright as one of English football's powerhouses, and where better to assert that birthright than Everton's home from 1884 to 1892, when the Anfield tenancy was taken by a new team, a bunch of upstarts called Liverpool FC? It is time to answer the clarion call of history. Not that I believe in such things.

b.viner@independent.co.uk