Singing the Rooney Blues: why it has been a terrible summer to be an Everton fan...

Toffees supporters are stuck with a terminal malaise. The new season finds <i>Brian Viner</i>without any hope

With the Premiership season just three weeks away, it is time for us Evertonians to get things in perspective. There have been worse things to be this summer than an Everton fan. There was that Australian surfer who was eaten by a shark; there are all those prisoners in Guantanamo Bay; there are supporters of Leeds United.

With the Premiership season just three weeks away, it is time for us Evertonians to get things in perspective. There have been worse things to be this summer than an Everton fan. There was that Australian surfer who was eaten by a shark; there are all those prisoners in Guantanamo Bay; there are supporters of Leeds United.

On the other hand, it might be argued that Leeds supporters are better off.

At least they have the satisfaction of knowing where they stand, albeit deep in the mire. And at least they have the memories of some glorious nights in the Champions' League. To express it in terms of criminality, the Leeds fan is the one with the conviction, behind bars for the forseeable future but lifted, in moments of gloom, by thoughts of his madcap, hilarious spending spree and brief but unforgettable taste of the high life. Whereas the Everton fan is the guy on remand, scarcely able to remember the high life, not at all sure which way sentencing will go, but miserably certain that, to pay his legal fees, he is going to be forced to sell the one precious asset he has left.

I have been an Everton fan since I turned nine, in the 1970-71 season. That was the season after Harry Catterick's team had won the championship, and it looked as though, with Ball-Kendall-Harvey as fine a midfield axis as any English football had ever seen, the 1970s was going to be a great decade to be blue on Merseyside.

But in December 1971, Catterick abruptly sold Alan Ball to Arsenal, for a British record fee of £220,000. The fans were livid, while Catterick explained that "no manager parts with a top-class player without criticism but only myself and the Everton directors can be aware of all the facts. We believed it was in the best interests of the club and the player that we should part." As for Ball, he said: "I don't think I would ever have asked to leave Everton, but when you are faced with a situation like this you have no alternative." Plus ça change, as Wayne Rooney might say.

By the end of the 1970s, with Liverpool dominant over the city and indeed over English football, to be an Evertonian schoolboy on Merseyside was to endure a weekly ritual of taunting. It must be worse now. Even while in the doldrums a generation ago, Everton were still big-hitters in the transfer market, and little though we knew it, the foundations were in place for three years of unprecedented glory in the mid-1980s, fittingly masterminded by another of the great midfield trio, Howard Kendall.

Those foundations have crumbled. Following years of mismanagement at boardroom level, Everton are no longer even among the medium-sized hitters.

Yet in the approach to every new season, there has always been, through the murk, a glimmer of hope. Not this time. I can't remember a close season as dispiriting, not only because the club has missed so many transfer targets - when not landing Robbie Savage counts as a major disappointment, you know you have problems - but also because a pretty tarnished crown is losing some of its few remaining jewels, notably Tomasz Radzinski, who seems on the verge of being sold to Fulham.

And yet that crown still contains English football's most glittering jewel.

Other football fans must grow tired of hearing Evertonians whingeing, when we have an asset, whether he is kept or sold, like young Rooney. But those of us indoctrinated with the Everton motto, Nothing But The Best Will Do, know that the lad personifies a great club's decline. We already have the best, but not, seemingly, the stature to keep him.

Happily, in looking around for someone to blame, Evertonians have not yet alighted on the chairman, Bill Kenwright. They know he has his beloved club's best interests at heart, an organ which must be aching along with his head as he prepares for further talks this weekend with Rooney's agent, Paul Stretford.

No, the targets of the fans' ire are Stretford, and Kenwright's rival on the board, Paul Gregg. It is probably safe to say that no male babies being born into true blue families on Merseyside this summer will be called Paul.

Still, in fairness to Stretford, he holds no brief for Everton, nor claims to. Gregg, on the other hand, talks about his visions for the club's long-term future having shown scant interest in its immediate past; it is said that he did not attend a single game at Goodison Park last season.

The future will at least include Marcus Bent and Tim Cahill, Everton's only two signings this summer and decent players both. Not to mention the manager, David Moyes, another of the jewels in the crown. Yet it is also said that Rooney would be more inclined to stay at Goodison if Moyes were not in charge. Meanwhile, the first match of the Premiership season is against the champions, Arsenal. Who'd swap places with an Everton fan? A Leeds fan, possibly. But possibly not.