Everton

Everton is another club that has had to operate in the shadow of a more successful city 
neighbour but at least on Merseyside there are two points of view. Liverpool’s last 
championship was in 1990 so comparisons grew less severe. Conversely Everton’s failure to 
close the gap on their neighbours was more critical when seen as less of a gap than in 
pre-Premiership days.

For a club of Everton’s stature to record just two top 10 finishes in their 100 percent 
membership of the Premier League is gross underachievement and even then 6th and 7th 
was merely satisfactory. But when placed alongside 15th, three times, 14th, twice 13th, 
twice and three campaigns fighting relegation to finish 17th a picture emerges of the 
frustration their fans have endured since 1993.

Everton’s first brush with relegation came in the second Premiership campaign when the 
team managed one of the ‘all-time’ great escapes. In the final game they were at home to 
Wimbledon and, with 20 minutes left, trailed 2–0. Amazingly Everton recovered to win 3–2 
and with other results going their way the club avoided relegation by two points. It was a 
season of contradiction which had started so well and after the first three games, all 
victories, Everton were actually top of the table. But three successive defeats undid the 
previous good work and by the end of the year the team was 16th, after five defeats in a 
row.

By Easter five defeats in six games, then one point from a possible nine, and a defeat by 
Leeds, plunged Everton into the relegation zone until they secured safety with that dramatic 
last-day win over Wimbledon that aroused suspicion over the performance of Don’s ’keeper 
Hans Segers.

Mike Walker was replaced by Joe Royle but even Goodison’s prodigal son couldn’t improve 
matters too much and 15th place was a marginal improvement in the campaign after the 
fright before.

Royle then engineered Everton’s best-ever Premiership season, 1995–96, boosted by the 
FA Cup win in 1995. After spending the first half of the League campaign in the lower half of 
the table Everton’s Russian rocket, Andrei Kanchelskis hit the after-burners scoring 11 of his 
season’s tally in just 15 games, helped though not aided by Duncan Ferguson and Daniel 
Amokachi, and the team jostled between seventh and sixth for the remainder of the 
campaign. They lost just once in the final 11 games to clinch a best-ever Premiership finish 
of seventh.

But Everton’s fortunes nose-dived to finish 15th a year later before the following campaign 
saw another struggle culminating in salvation by goal difference, which prevented a sampling 
of First Division football. By November 1997 Everton were bottom with only three wins and 
only victory over Bolton lifted them to 18th by January. Two more wins followed and, as it 
turned out, probably rescued the club because there were only two more victories in the 
final 15 games. Only a draw against Coventry, on the final day, and Bolton losing at Chelsea, 
sent Wanderers down and kept Everton up by virtue of goal difference of minus 15 to 
Bolton’s minus 20.

Four mediocre seasons followed with boardroom wranglings and underachieving players until, 
over the horizon, galloped two heroes as different as chalk and cheese. 2002 saw the 
emergence of ‘Der Wunkerkid’, Wayne Rooney and manager David Moyes. Unfortunately, in 
stark contrast to the astonishing start each had to his Goodison career neither built on that 
start and Everton’s future still looked decidedly unclear.

Rooney was the youngest Premier League player at 16 when he made his debut before 
eclipsing Tommy Lawton’s record as Everton’s youngest-ever scorer, netting twice in a 
Worthington Cup defeat of Wrexham. But that was low-key when he chose the England 
’keeper to beat with his sensational first Premier League goal, thus becoming the 
youngest-ever Premiership scorer at 16 years 360 days.

By then David Moyes had been manager for just seven months but he transformed the side 
and by November 2002 Everton sat third in the table after a record run of six consecutive 
victories. But only one win in eight followed and Everton slipped to sixth until veteran Dave 
Watson and American loan-signing Brian McBride ensured two wins and, followed by victory 
over Leeds, the team climbed to fifth. Unfortunately five defeats from the last eight games 
meant finishing seventh but there was Goodison glee at the emergence of a superstar striker 
and a good manager.

But it turned out to be another false dawn as Moyes had to come to terms with Everton’s 
financial plight that meant he could not compete in the transfer market to build on the 
previous season. And Rooney, raw talent though he was, failed to replicate his England form 
in the bread and butter of the Premier League.

Moyes, Rooney and Everton had an indifferent 2003–04 campaign that ended one place 
above relegation with the lowest points total for more than a century. The best sequence, 
five games unbeaten, was in the spring before the last win was recorded on 9 April. The 
team lost four of the last seven, in a row, before the season was summed-up by the 
thrashing at fellow strugglers Manchester City on the last day.

With Manchester United and Chelsea lurking with fat cheques trying to prise Rooney away, 
in the summer of 2004, Everton were in a classic ‘no-win’ situation. If they cashed in on the 
teenage sensation they would be unable to attract more quality players to Goodison. If 
Rooney stayed the wage ceiling at the club would prevent more quality players joining him.

Managers

Howard Kendall       1990–1993

Mike Walker           1994

Joe Royle              1994–1997

Howard Kendall       1997–1998

Walter Smith          1998–2002

David Moyes           March 2002–