Every football fan will tell you that their stadium is a special place. But in an era when the Premier League is dominated by Gulf petrostates, American billionaires and sportswashing autocracies, the 133-year-old Goodison Park stands out. Its old wooden seats and rickety stands, thronging with an aggressive Scouse crowd, distill the mood of a world-gone-by, a throwback, a museum-piece of an old game and an older culture.

The Grand Old Lady juts suddenly upwards from a sea of low-rise, red-brick Victorian terraces. The match-day turnstiles adjoin narrow residential streets, drawing fans into blue-tinged, cramped urban corridors and tunnel-like choke points around strip-lit bars where passing pedestrians jostle with smokers drinking out of plastic cups and Elton John covers belt out of the speakers. Goodison has the highest proportion of season ticket holders as match-day attendees in the league, meaning the crowds are still made up mainly of locals who go to every home game, often down several, usually patrilineal, generations.

The walk to a home game induces a feeling of old-time coziness, like entering a Lowry print — a portal to a different age which doesn’t end inside the ground. We Toffees still welcome a “Toffee Girl” in milkmaid fancy dress to throw sweets into the crowd on match-days as part of an old club tradition. Navigating most of the four stands involves narrow caverns, with fans crammed like sardines towards laughably outdated bars with only a small hope of being served a warm lager or a Bovril before the second half.

But no more. The stands will fall silent for the last time on Sunday after a final match against Southampton — at least until the promised move of Everton’s women’s team gives the ground a renewed feel, and a new, much-welcome but probably more subdued lease of life. Having spent almost a decade under the disastrous stewardship of an Iranian oil magnate, who many said to have been the pawn of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, the club will move to a brand new stadium on the Liverpool waterfront under new ownership in time for the 2025-26 season.

For a while, Everton FC has been as integrated into the globalized, contemporary cash nexus as any other top-flight club, just without being particularly good at operating this new, transnational business model to its advantage. Rather than building patiently upwards with sensible signings of unknown talent from far afield, the boardroom cowboys attempted to short-circuit the game via botched investments in overpriced and aging players, not to mention a superstar manager tasked with leapfrogging us to success. All the while, the structures of the club were corrosively undermined as the owner involved himself in transfer business over the heads of coaches and directors of football. But now, we have just been bought by a film mogul. Dan Friedkin, the new owner, was also Tom Hardy’s Dunkirk stunt pilot, and so will be familiar with our habit of spinning certain inglorious episodes as evidence of the superior spirit of plucky warriors turning things around against the odds.

Any yet, despite the club’s obvious assimilation into all the sullied, pecuniary culture of today’s footballing elite, Everton somehow manages to exude the aura of a scrappy David against cooler, modern Goliaths. We have nine historic first division titles to our name, more than “Big Six” global mega-brands Chelsea and Tottenham put together. But it’s been a while since Everton won any silverware — an FA Cup three decades ago, and no first division title since 1987.

The biggest eruption of Evertonian roars I can remember have been for last-minute winners, the occasional derby victory, or riotous scenes in the midst of ugly relegation dog-fights. Not, alas, for lifting trophies. But any lower-league supporter will be able to attest that these moments of joy are felt just as viscerally, just as intensely, as the lifting of a silver cup at the apex of the football pyramid.

When my dad watched Everton as a young man, he saw plenty of that. We were even known as the “School of Science”, for our progressive, cutting-edge style of play. It was the Guardiola-ball of its time. With honorable, short-lived exceptions, for most of my life a more recent moniker has seemed more apt: the Dogs of War. What we lack in finesse, artistry and star power has been amply compensated for in effort expended and dogged determination. Some likened the approach of our last manager to “Brexit-ball”, meaning defensive, stubborn, not pretty, with lots of long balls reminiscent of the traditional English game.

It’s no accident that two of the biggest “club legends” of recent years, the embodiments of the Everton spirit, have been Séamus Coleman — a long-serving, passionate Irishman bought from Sligo Rovers for the wild sum of £60,000; and Duncan Ferguson — the only man to have been jailed for a foul committed on a football pitch, who famously “filled in” two burglars who had broken into his house in the heyday of his playing career.

A lot of the Evertonian self-image built up over 30 years of hurt is down to the relative success of a strange group of upstarts based just a mile from Goodison, in the same postcode in fact. Readers may have heard of them — Liverpool FC (the junior team in the city by 14 years compared with us, original founders of the football league). And they have just been crowned champions. No matter: their victory will provide much-needed tourist income for a cash-strapped local economy on Merseyside. It’s a matter of real-life poetic justice that our final local derby in Goodison ended as a 2-2 draw after a 98th-minute equalizer from Everton’s big, six-foot, northern English defender who joined the club on a free transfer, prompting scenes of insane, blue bacchanalia.

But the rivalry between the two clubs almost reflects the Janus face of the city itself: Liverpool — brash, swaggering, sharp, bolshie; and Everton — the perennial underdogs, down-on-their-luck, forever gritty, embittered, aggrieved, and ready to argue, with a chip on both shoulders. If Liverpool’s Anfield draws in visitors from across the world for a glimpse of some melodic chanting and Scouse braggadocio, then Goodison is more associated with the atmosphere of a bear pit, full to the brim with naked aggression interspersed with moments of glorious, reckless, chaotic abandon.

For the three previous seasons we have flirted haphazardly with dropping to the second tier, circling the plughole, like the turd that won’t flush. No other team has spent as long in the top flight as Everton. Leaving it would destroy us, a final nail in the coffin; a last, humiliating deflation after years watching the slow, painful decline of a former giant turned garden gnome.

It’s been a harrowing, sorry saga that has removed cumulative millennia off the life expectancy of tens of thousands of Evertonians through nervous exhaustion. Now, as we await a new stadium, many hope we are turning a corner. But our move begs the question: who are we without Goodison Park? Goodison is Everton. Everton is Goodison. How will we adapt to life apart when so much of our own collective Everton ego is wrapped up in the walls of a big blue behemoth among some of the most deprived streets in northern England?

If Goodison Park represents a time capsule, a monument to the old version of the working-man’s game and proletarian nostalgia, the new stadia have adopted built environments that reflect the spirit of the modern sport: more open, more anonymous, more accessible, inclusive, infinitely better but infinitely worse, an almost computer-generated aesthetic with a big gift-shop ready; day-trippers first, “legacy fans” second. What does it profit a fan if he gains a trophy, but sells his soul? Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find out.

But make no mistake, for all the incongruity of a place like Goodison in the modern age, something priceless, something important, something rooted in the relationship between people, history and place, is now lost forever.

West Lancashire’s largest town, meanwhile, has a population of just under 40,000. Skelmersdale — or “Skem”  — was one of the very first New Towns, built in the Sixties to accommodate families from some of Liverpool’s worst slum housing. They were plonked down in the middle of a rural, mostly Tory-voting wilderness; the railway line to the city had closed to passengers in 1956, so these new arrivals were completely cut off from relatives and friends. This isolation was probably the main reason why “Skem” never flourished. But it nevertheless changed the fate of the surrounding area.

In West Lancashire the Tory tradition remained strong. But Skem’s growing size meant that the district council of West Lancashire had a strong Labour representation. Meanwhile local Toryism, once a powerful force, has fragmented. When the constituency of West Lancashire was formed in 1983, it elected a Conservative MP, Ken Hind, but it has had a Labour MP since 1992, as the “red” political influence of Liverpool spread well beyond Skelmersdale. Middle-class Liverpudlians have steadily relocated to the old market towns of Ormskirk and Burscough while continuing to commute into the city. Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, has boosted the economy of the area, as well as making the population more cosmopolitan, with a more Liverpool-centred attitude.

All of this begs what we might call the West Lancashire Question. While Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question related to dilemmas facing Scotland as part of a devolved UK, the West Lancashire Question might consider the fate of English regions in an increasingly muddled local government jigsaw. The constituency may be about to decide who it wants to send to Westminster, but how does it want to rule itself?

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Today’s local government structures completely fail to represent the reality of the area and its hinterland. At the moment, the local authority is West Lancashire Borough Council, which operates as part of Lancashire County Council. And yet the politics and economics of the area are shaped by Liverpool: surely, then, it should be part of the Liverpool City Region?

LCR represents around 1.5 million people, comprising the councils of Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley, St Helens, Halton and Wirral. It has its own elected mayor, Steve Rotheram, and, with a remit that covers transport, housing and economic development, it has more power than not only West Lancashire Borough but the entirety of Lancashire County Council can dream of.

Although West Lancashire increasingly looks, feels and even sounds like the Liverpool City Region — listen to the accents in Ormskirk pubs and cafes — it is stuck within Tory-led Lancashire County Council, which has very limited resources. The county council does collaborate with Labour in Liverpool City Region and West Lancashire Borough: close work between them yielded what seemed an attractive bid to bring trains back to Skelmersdale with a direct link to Liverpool. But this was turned down by central Government, suggesting that cheaper options should be explored. The bid was backed by Rosie Cooper, who described the decision as a “betrayal”.

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If, however, this project had been proposed across the water in Wales, which has devolved powers over transport, the decision would have been different. As it was, Whitehall scuppered a project which would have brought major benefits to a town strongly in need of “levelling-up”. And the Westminster representative could do nothing about it. The region needs its own powers.

There is no simple solution, though the most obvious would be to make the constituency part of Merseyside. But some in West Lancashire, particularly those living to the north of the constituency, would argue that the link to Preston is just as important as the link to Liverpool. The irony of the current “combined authority” arrangements is that they are too restrictive: the old “historic” Lancashire included all of Liverpool, Manchester, Preston and beyond. It was a mighty region, dismantled by Government edict in 1974. The effect has been to weaken and divide what was a powerful province through its own democratic structures.

Part of the problem is one of democratic accountability. For all its faults and limitations, Lancashire County Council is a democratically elected body with county councillors representing local wards. The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, apart from the mayor, is indirectly-elected. It doesn’t make for good governance and makes the combined authorities difficult to influence. The London model, where the Greater London Authority provides oversight for the mayor, would be an improvement: like the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is elected through a proportional system.

It’s too late to restore pre-1974 Lancashire. Rather, we should imagine a much-enlarged Lancashire, which can include the combined authorities of Liverpool and Greater Manchester. Perhaps we could even start to seriously consider John Prescott’s idea of a “North-West” regional government with the resources and powers to create the sort of vibrant regional economies that the German Länder have supported. Most other European countries have strong regional governments, which are able to raise their own taxes and make decisions independently of the state. Here in England, even relatively small projects have to get approval from Westminster; all too often, they get rejected. Why not give Lancashire — which has almost as many residents as Northern Ireland — the same democratic government, and powers, that Scotland and Wales have?

Labour should be hammering away on this. Not many miles away, in Oldham, the highly-respected Coliseum Theatre is closing because every penny of its funding from Arts Council England has been cut. Keir Starmer has been silent on this and other local disappointments. Is it because he doesn’t want to be seen to be too “Northern”?

Labour is likely to win this by-election. But it is not doing enough for West Lancashire. If it had any idea what was good for the region, the party would empower it, by supporting the creation of a Greater Lancashire authority. And not make it go to Whitehall with a begging bowl which is all too often thrown back in their face.