I started going the game regularly in the early nineties, idolising the likes of Big Nev and Beardsley, but being 6, 7 or 8 didn't really appreciate that we were rubbish apart from this (Waggy excepted). Being so young I had no idea of where we went so wrong and reading HK's and Harvey's autobiographies I don't feel they really shine a light on it.
Surely with Kendall being reappointed everyone must have thought we'd be challenging again? Be interested to know why older blues think it went so wrong in Kendall's second reign.
I started going the match in the early 1980s, so as we entered 1990 onwards, I was pretty aware of everything at that point. There were multiple problems. Everyone has their own take on it, this is mine.
When Kendall left in 1987, although we'd just won the league, the squad desperately needed strengthening. Colin Harvey is a legend and a lovely man, far too nice for the position he was put in. He foolishly (sadly) stayed too loyal to the more senior players who'd managed to eek out the title. The likes of Peter Reid stayed 18 months longer than they should have. It took far too long to bring in a replacement for the injured Paul Bracewell, and even then it was not adequate (Mike Milligan, Stefan Rehn). The summer of 1987 was when the rot started, when Everton barely did any business, apart from bringing in Ian Wilson, who was nowhere near the calibre of player we should've been signing. Meanwhile LFC signed Beardsley, Barnes and Aldridge that summer - at least 2 of that 3, and maybe all 3, wouldve been perfect for us. But hey, hindsight is everything. So we finished 4th in 87/88.
So then Harvey splashes the cash in the summer of 1988 and we bring in Cottee, Nevin, McDonald and McCall. Cottee and Nevin were decent, good players on their day, but not really title-winning calibre players. McCall was average and McDonald was a Wilson-type signing, just not good enough. At the same time, we then started suffering again from the European ban with Steven and Stevens wanting out to play European football. So great players were leaving and being replaced by 'good' (at best) players.
So then we bring back Kendall in November 1990. Unfortunately, football had started changing. The European ban had been partially lifted in the summer of 1990, with Man Utd and Aston Villa in the ECWC and UEFA Cups respectively. LFC had to serve an additional one year ban until 1991. So the likes of Utd and Villa were getting extra European revenue and exposure (a big deal in those days before massive tv money became the be all and end all), just as football was becoming fashionable off the back of Italia 90. EFC had less money than before. At the same time, Sir John Moores' - still the owner of Everton - health had declined, he had dementia and the direction of the club was in limbo. Major funds weren't being released for transfers because Moores couldn't give the say so and the rest of the Moores family were either not interested in football or Kopites. Philip Carter, who worked under Moores and was chairman in the glory years with Kendall, stepped down from his EFC role, busy in his other role of Football League Chairman and was playing a major part in the formation of the Premier League. So Kendall was not getting much support from the Board. The money that Kendall did spend was wasted on some bad buys. Sure, he brought in Beardsley, and 3 players who would form part of Royle's cup winning team in Jackson, Horne and Rideout, but he also brought in players he knew who he'd worked with previously at Man City but who weren't the title-challenging players we needed - Mark Ward, a past-his-prime Alan Harper, and the likes of Mo Johnson, Paul Holmes and yes, Brett Angell.
To show you the way things were, he also had to sell Beardsley in August 1993 to Newcastle, purely for financial reasons, to finance a deal to buy Graham Stuart. Financially, the club was on its arse, and actually never really recovered until very recently with Moshiri's investment.
So ultimately, the reason why things were going downhill when you started going was basically a combination of poor finances and financial restrictions, the game moving on and Kendall's ideas not moving on with it, and Everton peaking just before the financial boom of the Premier League and UEFA Champions League era hit football. If Everton's major successes had been in the mid-1990s and not the mid-1980s, the club now would've been massively different. We'd have lived off those glory years financially for years afterwards. We'd have been like Arsenal, probably in the CL virtually every year (or at least thereabouts), I'm fully convinced of that. Once you're on the current gravy train of money, it's hard to be knocked off it. The major difficulty is getting on it in the first place.
