The early nineties

[Nealroy]

Good point.

I wonder if there has been a significant increase in late winners/equalisers since they changed the rule.It certainly seems like there has.

I reckon that the back pass rule change actually had a far bigger effect on football than the whole sky/premier league thing. This and tweaks to offside rules have just made football loads more open and encouraged attacking football. Might even say sky got lucky to inherit a product that had suddenly got a lot better.

As for us, well from his book Sharp reckoned it was mainly down to the replacements not drinking as heavily as the old guard, so that's one theory!

 

[Black Belt Jones]

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 don't recall HK's second appointment being greeted with huge enthusiasm, tbh, although everyone could see that Harvey needed to go, so there was relief there. No doubt some were thinking Howard's back in the chair and we're on the march again, but that wasn't the prevailing opinon from what I remember. We had both clearly gone backwards - the club and Howard, so a reunion didn't really point to a significant reversal of fortunes.

 

[Badge1878]

To be fair to Everton,Gazza always had his heart set on moving to London.

And Cottee at the time was the hottest property on the market.He was only 23,English and was banging them in for West Ham.There was a lot of competition for his signature and it was a real coup to pull it off.

I remember George Graham at the time saying Arsenal couldn't compete with the amount of money Everton were offering.How times changed!

I remember reading Cottee's autobiography Claret & Blue - he openly admits the only reason he signed for Everton was that George Graham asked him to wear an Arsenal blazer - with him being an Iron and all that his principles meant he couldn't - and oh, Everton were offering £60k pa more.

He stayed in the Bold Hotel Soutport, but found our training drills behind the level he was used to at WHU. Final straw for the country's record signing was being told to report for the reserves against Roly Howard's Marine at College Road. No chance says our crafty young cockney, this fella cleans my windows for a living!!!

And we wonder why there was an imbalance between the players who had won the league a few years earlier and Colin's record splurge. Cottee himself concedes Sheedy didn't always pass to him because he didn't think he was good enough.

A damaging period in our history - other posters have their recollections - all combined it's not hard to understand why we struggled at a time others took their clubs to a different level.

 

[DerbyshireAndHarper]

I remember reading Cottee's autobiography Claret & Blue - he openly admits the only reason he signed for Everton was that George Graham asked him to wear an Arsenal blazer - with him being an Iron and all that his principles meant he couldn't - and oh, Everton were offering £60k pa more.

He stayed in the Bold Hotel Soutport, but found our training drills behind the level he was used to at WHU. Final straw for the country's record signing was being told to report for the reserves against Roly Howard's Marine at College Road. No chance says our crafty young cockney, this fella cleans my windows for a living!!!

And we wonder why there was an imbalance between the players who had won the league a few years earlier and Colin's record splurge. Cottee himself concedes Sheedy didn't always pass to him because he didn't think he was good enough.

A damaging period in our history - other posters have their recollections - all combined it's not hard to understand why we struggled at a time others took their clubs to a different level.

Totally agree with all of this, spot on. Cottee on his day was a good player and he did score 20+ goals for us in at least one season. But he was your archetypical goal hanger, he lived on tap ins from a few yards out. He very rarely created anything himself. He wasn't the type of striker who could win you a league title on his own, and the style of football he needed to score wasn't conducive to him forming a striker partnership with anyone either. Kendall dropped him frequently in the early 1990s due to his form.

Another thing you touched on that I meant to mention earlier was the cliques within the club - the players who'd won the title (the likes of Sharp, Southall, Watson, Sheedy all still there) and the new people Harvey and then Kendall brought in, the likes of Keown, Beagrie etc, who were nowhere near the class of the former group of players. There was the infamous fight between Sheedy and Keown at the Chinese restaurant in Southport, which pointed to a pisspoor team spirit, and then there was the time in the pre-season tour of Spain in 1991 when Beagrie got pissed after a match with Real Sociedad, got lost and couldn't find the team hotel, and rode someone's motorbike through a plate glass hotel entrance window (at the WRONG HOTEL I should add) and needed 50 stitches. Somewhat humorous looking back but at the same time pointed at a club in disarray behind the scenes.

 

[applecrumble]

Totally agree with all of this, spot on. Cottee on his day was a good player and he did score 20+ goals for us in at least one season. But he was your archetypical goal hanger, he lived on tap ins from a few yards out. He very rarely created anything himself. He wasn't the type of striker who could win you a league title on his own, and the style of football he needed to score wasn't conducive to him forming a striker partnership with anyone either. Kendall dropped him frequently in the early 1990s due to his form.

Another thing you touched on that I meant to mention earlier was the cliques within the club - the players who'd won the title (the likes of Sharp, Southall, Watson, Sheedy all still there) and the new people Harvey and then Kendall brought in, the likes of Keown, Beagrie etc, who were nowhere near the class of the former group of players. There was the infamous fight between Sheedy and Keown at the Chinese restaurant in Southport, which pointed to a pisspoor team spirit, and then there was the time in the pre-season tour of Spain in 1991 when Beagrie got pissed after a match with Real Sociedad, got lost and couldn't find the team hotel, and rode someone's motorbike through a plate glass hotel entrance window (at the WRONG HOTEL I should add) and needed 50 stitches. Somewhat humorous looking back but at the same time pointed at a club in disarray behind the scenes.

If Cottee played today, he and Lukaku would have been an epic front two.

 

[catcherintherye]

It's a really interesting debate. If you look at Everton's history it could be summed up as failing to capitalise on promising positions. We have the worst title defence in 1971, 2 World Wars and being 10 minutes from relegation 7 years after winning the league!

As people have commented there are a number of issues. It goes without saying Heysel didn't help, yet other teams grew in such a period. My own view is it wasn't a central cause but it exacerbated other problems.

The first is letting Kendall go. I appreciate he wanted to work abroad, but you're job if you are a chairman is sometimes convincing and persuading people that your vision is worth sticking with. Kendall was binned off a little over 10 years later in his mid 50's. It's criminal he was allowed to move on. He was still a young manager and could have built a dynasty. Replacing him with Harvey was a reasonable decision, but top man though Harvey was wasn't cut out to be a number 1.

I think the club lacked ambition. There wasn't a clear "vision" to sell to Kendall and others. Rush becomes available at around this time and we don't sign him back, rather spending huge money on Cottee. It saddens me to say it, as both clubs drove each other on, but Liverpool were prepared to go further than Everton and the acquisition of Beardsley, Houghton, Barnes and Aldridge led them to have one of their greatest ever teams. We lacked the same ambition.

Perhaps the biggest point though was rather than see the early 90's as a dip to ask the question of whether the mid 80's success was the blip? We were a club in a bad way from the late 70's through to the mid 90's. We stabilised subsequently but as has been suggested I would say it is only now we have proper leadership at the top, for the first time in 40 years.

The success in the 60's was to a certain degree inevitable. Some may say Catterick under achieved given the resources he had. We had great young players, massive crowds and huge sums to attract top end players. Kendall achieved what he did improbably. He gambled on younger players, some out of favour older players (Like Grey & Reid who remained fit) and managed to find the best goalkeeper in the world playing in the lower leagues. It's a try remarkable achievement, but it does have to be asked, could such an approach have led to continual long term success as witnessed at other teams?

It's interesting as Kendall tries a similar strategy when he joins on both other occasions. He buys younger players from unknown teams, promotes internally, gets a target man in (or fails too with Dion Dublin) and gets players in from the reserves of better teams. It worked in the early 80's, yet failed twice afterwards. The question does have to be asked as to which was the true blip? How many Kevin Sheedy's play for Liverpool reserves? Or Southalls play for Port Vale? We moved from them to John Oster and John O'Kane.

I don't think the club really knew how to stop the decline. The success was really down to the brilliance of Kendall and in his absence as the players who he'd gambled on slowly aged we could see we couldn't replace them. There will be arguments that we replaced the old guard too early, or showed too much loyalty. I have heard both accounts. The dressing room was very split between those who had played under Kendall and those signed by Harvey. I do wonder if they only touch on the wider problem though, which was without the brilliance of Kendall and the fortune we had on players coming good how do we match what we did in the mid 80's? That hung over us and made things more difficult.

By the late 90's, though results on the pitch had declined further you could begin to see some improvement. Off the field our academy was much stronger which was grounds for optimism. In Kenwright at boardroom level, while we had no money to compete we did at least have a safe pair of hands and not the intro and indecision that had been previously.

Anyway, funny times and a good debate.

 

[Badge1878]

Totally agree with all of this, spot on. Cottee on his day was a good player and he did score 20+ goals for us in at least one season. But he was your archetypical goal hanger, he lived on tap ins from a few yards out. He very rarely created anything himself. He wasn't the type of striker who could win you a league title on his own, and the style of football he needed to score wasn't conducive to him forming a striker partnership with anyone either. Kendall dropped him frequently in the early 1990s due to his form.

Another thing you touched on that I meant to mention earlier was the cliques within the club - the players who'd won the title (the likes of Sharp, Southall, Watson, Sheedy all still there) and the new people Harvey and then Kendall brought in, the likes of Keown, Beagrie etc, who were nowhere near the class of the former group of players. There was the infamous fight between Sheedy and Keown at the Chinese restaurant in Southport, which pointed to a pisspoor team spirit, and then there was the time in the pre-season tour of Spain in 1991 when Beagrie got pissed after a match with Real Sociedad, got lost and couldn't find the team hotel, and rode someone's motorbike through a plate glass hotel entrance window (at the WRONG HOTEL I should add) and needed 50 stitches. Somewhat humorous looking back but at the same time pointed at a club in disarray behind the scenes.

I'd forgotten about the Chinese! Howard had done this on so many occasions and brought the team together, 'having a social' was the colloquial term I recall! But the Sheedy/Keown bust up, in hindsight showed the divisions in the squad...for some, frustrated in not playing in Europe, for others gutted to miss out in not joining Walter and David's Murray's bandwagon up North (that worked out well eh) and for the new players....what on earth have we joined?

Probably didn't get much press at the time over here - thankfully. You may remember as soon as HK left, English Champions - we took on Real Madrid in a friendly For those who are bothered the trophy for the game is still in the trophy cabinet - alongside their 10 Champions League's - but the 6 -1 drubbing on the day showed we weren't the all conquering side of 85.

unfortunately the writing was on the wall for several seasons before our escape in 94 - I admit I never saw them at the time.

 

[Badge1878]

The writings that is, not the team! I was gutted how things turned out post HK mark 1. Aren't we all.

 

[DerbyshireAndHarper]

I'd forgotten about the Chinese! Howard had done this on so many occasions and brought the team together, 'having a social' was the colloquial term I recall! But the Sheedy/Keown bust up, in hindsight showed the divisions in the squad...for some, frustrated in not playing in Europe, for others gutted to miss out in not joining Walter and David's Murray's bandwagon up North (that worked out well eh) and for the new players....what on earth have we joined?

Probably didn't get much press at the time over here - thankfully. You may remember as soon as HK left, English Champions - we took on Real Madrid in a friendly For those who are bothered the trophy for the game is still in the trophy cabinet - alongside their 10 Champions League's - but the 6 -1 drubbing on the day showed we weren't the all conquering side of 85.

unfortunately the writing was on the wall for several seasons before our escape in 94 - I admit I never saw them at the time.

I think the Kendall 'having a social' thing was another major problem, and part of Kendall living in the past and football moving on. Kendall's solution to most 'team troubles' was to go out for a meal, which inevitably led to a few/a lot of drinks. Kendall was a great guy but what worked in the early/mid 1980s was no longer going to fly in the 1990s, when players were smarter about what they ate and drank. Of course there were still some players who'd go along with his methods, but there were others (Gary Speed springs to mind) who took major umbrage and saw his methods as very unprofessional.

 

[Black Belt Jones]

Moving the old guard on was needed, but it would have taken leadership and the resource to replace them with real players. As the others have said, we didn't have much of either around that time.
A particular nadir in this respect was Big Joe having to deal with the twilight years of Big Nev - Nev is 16 stone, out of condition, and undermining Joe to his mates at the Echo on a weekly basis. And he's still the best keeper at the club by miles! So Joe's got to grit his teeth and play him becuse the club is too incompetent to sign a new keeper of any quality.

 

[DerbyshireAndHarper]

Moving the old guard on was needed, but it would have taken leadership and the resource to replace them with real players. As the others have said, we didn't have much of either around that time.
A particular nadir in this respect was Big Joe having to deal with the twilight years of Big Nev - Nev is 16 stone, out of condition, and undermining Joe to his mates at the Echo on a weekly basis. And he's still the best keeper at the club by miles! So Joe's got to grit his teeth and play him becuse the club is too incompetent to sign a new keeper of any quality.

Not signing Nigel Martyn in 1996 was a disaster (Finch & Johnson giving him directions to Leeds rather than signing him when they met him). Look how Leeds fared with him in the late 1990s, he was a key component of their glory days. Meanwhile we had Gerrard/Simonsen/Myhre/Baardsen/Wright...

If we'd been able to replace Southall with a then-30 year old, in-his-prime Nigel Martyn in 1996, we'd have got 10 years out of him and we would probably have never been in any relegation battles in the late 1990s.

 

[catcherintherye]

Not signing Nigel Martyn in 1996 was a disaster (Finch & Johnson giving him directions to Leeds rather than signing him when they met him). Look how Leeds fared with him in the late 1990s, he was a key component of their glory days. Meanwhile we had Gerrard/Simonsen/Myhre/Baardsen/Wright...

If we'd been able to replace Southall with a then-30 year old, in-his-prime Nigel Martyn in 1996, we'd have got 10 years out of him and we would probably have never been in any relegation battles in the late 1990s.

The Gut wrenching thing with that was that we had a double swoop lined up with Schwartzer. Imagine having them 2 in as our goalkeepers, we'd have been sorted for the next 15 years!

 

[Badge1878]

I think the Kendall 'having a social' thing was another major problem, and part of Kendall living in the past and football moving on. Kendall's solution to most 'team troubles' was to go out for a meal, which inevitably led to a few/a lot of drinks. Kendall was a great guy but what worked in the early/mid 1980s was no longer going to fly in the 1990s, when players were smarter about what they ate and drank. Of course there were still some players who'd go along with his methods, but there were others (Gary Speed springs to mind) who took major umbrage and saw his methods as very unprofessional.

I think we are both agreed and aggrieved by what happened at the time. It's only this thread that's allowed me to put together a collective semblance of events to gain an understanding. When you are there at the time it was just bad news after bad news and you don't stop to think. Hopefully we can learn from our past - proposed stadium moves, new investment blighted our progress in the 90s, its eerily similar that the same topics dominate today- but this time? I hope so....there is a young (& old) generation of Blues waiting to see and who believe.

 

[catcherintherye]

I think the Kendall 'having a social' thing was another major problem, and part of Kendall living in the past and football moving on. Kendall's solution to most 'team troubles' was to go out for a meal, which inevitably led to a few/a lot of drinks. Kendall was a great guy but what worked in the early/mid 1980s was no longer going to fly in the 1990s, when players were smarter about what they ate and drank. Of course there were still some players who'd go along with his methods, but there were others (Gary Speed springs to mind) who took major umbrage and saw his methods as very unprofessional.

I think you are absolutely right. The difficult Everton faced was what was centrally important to the success of the 80's was also what would hold us back going forward, notably the unorthodoxy of Kendalls approach. Nottingham Forest found something similar with Clough. He had unusual methods that were rooted in an era of football that was fast ebbing away, and without this looked benign of any further ideas.

I don't wish to sound like I am doing down Kendall's achievements in the mid 80's, as there was far more to it, but he gambled and hit the jackpot. Maybe he knew Southall would become the best in the world, Sheedy would be the best left winger in the league, Reid would be injury free and Gray would prove the doubters wrong and manage to stay fit however I personally think he showed a remarkable eye for transfers but everything went well for him.

There was a great charm to Kendall and he could make people feel enormous and better in an era that was dominated by managers who were little more than thugs or bullies, yet the modern game started to phase this approach out as well. This alongside many of the rituals involving drink left much of what he did redundant and ultimately he failed to re-invent himself.

It's interesting as Fergusan said to Roy Keane when Keane scathingly said he'd changed, that of course he had as he had to. He couldn't be the same manager at the end of his United career as he was at the start as football changed. Kendalls approach was that he didn't change and beyond unearthing the best goalkeeper in the world in the 3rd division repeating his success on a continual basis proved too difficult.

 

[adi dassler]

[QUOTE="catcherintherye, post: 5274523, member:

Perhaps the biggest point though was rather than see the early 90's as a dip to ask the question of whether the mid 80's success was the blip? We were a club in a bad way from the late 70's through to the mid 90's. We stabilised subsequently but as has been suggested I would say it is only now we have proper leadership at the top, for the first time in 40 years.



Spot on this. You would have to say that the mid 80s success was the blip, not the subsequent downturn in fortunes. From the end of the 60s onward the club was run with absolutely no vision or foresight. You only have to look at the lack of investment in Goodison as proof of this. The main stand and park end both done on the cheap and everything else neglected. We're still feeling the effects of this now.