The People’s Club? Everton need to forget that and become the Nasty Club... starting by showing the door to anyone who isn’t the best in their position STAN COLLYMORE

NIL satis nisi optimum. Nothing but the best is good enough.

That’s what it says on Everton’s crest but for far too long now the club hasn’t even followed its own motto.

Instead, the Blues have become a club happy to be the fourth-best in the North West.

And as they go into today’s 240th edition of the Merseyside derby, look where that has got them.

I have to go back to the late

Seventies, when Mick Lyons and Imre Varadi were at Everton, and Liverpool had Kenny Dalglish, to recall a bigger gap between the two teams and the two clubs.

So whatever happens at the end of this season, whether Frank Lampard’s men stay up or go down, they must use it as a line in the sand and say: ‘This is when we start behaving like one of the top four or five clubs in England again’.

To do that, Everton need to forget being the People’s Club and become the Nasty Club. And I really do believe they can do that by showing the door to anyone within the organisation who does not believe they are the best in their position across football.

Compete

They must look at Liverpool and Manchester City, who have both realised that you have to get your organisation right to have success in the Premier League.

That it isn’t just about big clubs spending big money and getting the benefit of the best players who can go out on the pitch and give everyone a good licking. There’s a lot more to it than that.

Clubs have to behave like Amazon, Disney, Netflix, big corporations, to compete in the most competitive environment.

They have to have the best people behind the scenes, which is what Liverpool and City have, and look at the rewards they are reaping.

The money City have at their disposal makes a difference, of course, but there’s no surprise with the people

They must

look at City and Liverpool, who

have both realised you have to get your organisation right to have

success

they have that eight or nine out of 10 decisions are correct.

It’s not like Everton haven’t got – or at least haven’t had – the dough to back up their ambitions with Farhad Moshiri (right) and, until recently, Alisher Usmanov behind the scenes at Goodison.

And there should be no excuses given the money being pumped into their training base at Finch Farm and with Bramley Dock, where they will play their home games, coming along.

In fact, everything at Everton should have enabled them to go into today’s crucial game at Anfield, the home of their great rivals, as a Premier League powerhouse, not on the brink of humiliating relegation.

What must happen now is for every stakeholder at Everton to go through every position in the club with a finetooth comb – from the CEO to the secretary to the head of recruitment to the head of scouting, head of the Under-23s, head of the youth set-up – and bring in people who want to go toe-to-toe with with their counterparts at City and

Liverpool.

Arrogance

If you are the sporting director at Everton your aim should be to be better than Txiki Begiristain at City and Michael Edwards at Liverpool.

You should have a mix of arrogance and humility that says: ‘Not on our watch are we going to be the poor relations of North-west football’. I sent an email to Danny Stanway, the club secretary at Liverpool, last week about arranging a pre-season game against Southend and he got back to me within five minutes.

That’s how big clubs operate, that is what you call an organisation that is properly run.

I just don’t see it at Everton. If they stay up, then manager Lampard, appointed after the Blues sacked their former Liverpool coach Rafa Benitez, deserves the chance to be part of the rebuild.

And, if they can put the right people in place to support him and the squad by copying Liverpool and City, then they will get back to being one of the country’s major clubs.

But, if they don’t, they are going to drift and be left even further behind.