ABSTRACT
In a previous article a number of obvious organizational dissimilarities existing between Everton and Liverpool football clubs in the period prior to 1902 were uncovered. It was revealed that Liverpool in that early period of development was characterized by its small, exclusively selected share ownership base, its financial domination by individual shareholders who were also involved in the local drink industry, and a boardroom exhibiting clear signs of being drawn from an exclusive socio-political background. Everton, on the other hand, was characterized by its large number of shareholders; typically shareholdings were small and distributed more evenly across the class spectrum, with skilled workers especially playing a more prominent role in the club than at Liverpool. It was also revealed that the board of directors at Everton exhibited a more heterogeneous social composition than their counterparts at Liverpool. The overall conclusion reached was that Everton's move to limited company status changed little that was essential to the original objectives of the club. 1 The creation of Liverpool, on the other hand, would appear to have been a move to maximize the commercial potential of professional football. At the new club, power was concentrated into the hands of a small number of influential people. In this article, which looks at the clubs between 1902 and 1914 – a period that begins with the death of John Houlding – we witness, in many respects, a convergence between the two clubs on the above issues. In other words, the earlier distinctiveness that was the product of the factionalism within the pre-1892 Everton FC is eroded in this later period and the two clubs come to resemble each other in many important ways.
