GIANT LEAP INTO FUTURE

The day that many feared would never come has finally arrived. And while Everton will quite rightly always celebrate their club's glorious past, they can now start looking forwards.

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After spending the last 133 years at Goodison Park, the first purpose-built football ground in England, the Blues are playing their inaugural first-team game in front of fans at Hill Dickinson Stadium as they host Italian side Roma, who themselves are also owned by The Friedkin Group.

Regardless of what happens over those 90 minutes this afternoon - manager David Moyes has been reiterating that he would have expected to have signed more players by now but at least got Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall through the door this week - this should be a bright new dawn for the club and their loyal but long suffering supporters.

Many Evertonians, who have been forced to become increasingly hardened to repeated setbacks, had understandable concerns that the dream of playing on the banks of the 'Royal Blue' Mersey would ever come to fruition.

However, while such doubts are only natural, this magnificent project, which will be of significant benefit both financially and culturally to the Liverpool City Region, has also been completed in the face of what has often been an unhealthy obsession from a minority of rival fans who were nowhere to be seen during the public consultation processes but have somehow felt emboldened by framing themselves as keyboard warriors and haters with a petty litany of trolling.