Olsen attack could deter players from joining Everton

With the news that Everton goalkeeper Robin Olsen has suffered a horrific home invasion, what more can be done to protect footballers and could such incidents deter new players from joining the club in the future?

First of all, as all Everton fans do, I want to extend my best wishes to Olsen and his family as they get over this awful event. I sincerely hope there won’t be any lasting pyschological effects on him or his family and that they can move on from this.

The club are now apparently considering offering to provide security guards for all their players in the wake of this incident and the burgalry of Carlo Ancelotti’s house last month.

However, while that seems a sound and necessary move now, it is a sad reality that Everton have to do this. And it’s possible this sort of incident could, quite understandably, weigh heavily on the minds of players considering making the move to Merseyside in the future. After all, like anyone, a player’s first prioirity is going to be the safety of his family.

Obviously footballers being targeted by criminals is not a new thing. Toffees fans will remember the infamous time when Duncan Ferguson’s home was broken into and the big man alledgedly dealt with the thugs in no uncertain terrms. In another well-known case a few years ago Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard’s house was also burgled too.

There are though two things which I think might make criminal behaviour in relation to footballers a more heightened and prevelant problem today.

The first is social media. The explosion of social media in the last fifteen years or so has transformed the way we communicate and interact with each other.

While much of this is positive, it has also has provided a new platform for people to be abusive and threatening with a degree of impunity and distance. It’s a lot easier to abuse someone from the comfort of your home and in relative anonymity than it would be face-to-face.

Just this season we’ve seen examples of this with the reaction to Jordan Pickford’s tackle on Virgil Van Djik in the derby back in October.

The Everton keeper was subjected to abuse online including alledgedly death threats both to him and his wife. In truth it’s highly unlikely the sort of people who make these kinds of threats will carry them out, but it’s a new nasty element to life these days.

There’s obviously not much a football club can do about this sort of stuff, although the Police can try and trace people who make violent threats online.

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One other element that might make incident’s like what happended to Olsen more of problem in the coming years is the fact the Blues are now becoming a much higher profile club and are beginning to attract better, genuinly star talent to Goodison Park.

As the Toffees continue to attract more of the most high-profile talent like James Rodriguez, this problem of players being targetted by criminals could well increase.

Talking of more positive things, Everton are doing their best to contribute something to the local economy going forward with the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock.

Assuming that it gets the final go-ahead from the Government this month, the Blues can start building their new home in earnest in the next few weeks.

This project will create something like 15,000 new jobs, maybe more and will help inject much-needed work and money into the Liverpool economy.

Let’s hope that Everton get that green light and can make this vision of the new ground a reality. And let’s also hope that the sort of criminal incidents we’ve seen recently are isolated and not a more common pattern, otherwise it might make it that much harder for the Toffees to attract top talent to the club.