DID you know that Everton have only ever been involved in seven abandoned games?

That Mickey Walsh followed his disappointing spell at Goodison by going on to play in a European final for Porto?

That five serving Everton players have won a medal at the Olympics?

That Coyne the mystery man with no first name scored on his Everton debut then vanished from the records just one game later?

That Dixie Dean’s predecessor, the wonderfully-monickered Jack Cock, once played himself in a film in the 1920s?

That Goodison has had 16 crowds of more than 70,000?

That the club was shamed in its early years by ‘The Great Everton Turnstile Fraud’?

Or that Claus Thomsen was too badly co-ordinated to cut it at the top level of the English game?

Actually, everybody knew that last one.

But the previous facts are just a sample of the hundreds of tasty morsels to be unearthed in the magnificent new publication ‘The Everton Encyclopedia’.

Compiled lovingly by Evertonian, sports journalist and author James Corbett – also responsible for working on Neville Southall’s brilliant The Binman Chronicles – this is a weighty tome whose sheer breadth and depth have rarely if ever been matched on its subject matter.

With in-depth and frankly opinionated profiles on all major – and, as in the case of Thomsen, not so major – contributors to Goodison history, turn to any of the 648 pages and there will be something new to glean.

One factoid too recent to make the cut emerged earlier this week with the revelation Everton have become the first club in any of Europe’s major leagues to register 200 shots this season, narrowly beating Juventus and Manchester City to the landmark.

It is a further example of the more expansive game David Moyes has been striving to introduce this season, although those Evertonians who made the trip to Craven Cottage would be forgiven for thinking most of those efforts came on Saturday.

Such statistics are doing much to shake off the perceived wisdom that Moyes by his nature is a conservative manager.

Perhaps the Scot should have been more progressive earlier in this Goodison career, although he could rightly contend he has never previously had quite the same level of flair on tap as he does in his current squad.

Certainly, it is helping change perceptions both of Everton and Moyes himself, the manager having – not without some self-publicity, it must be said – seen his already established profile grow considerably during the calendar year.

And with the Everton manager seemingly as yet in no rush to extend a contract that expires at the end of the season, the more Moyes wins over any lingering doubters, the stronger his hand will be come negotiation time with Bill Kenwright.