• Excellent ambassador for the Club
• General good eye for new signings
• Fortitude in the face of adversity

• Bizarre team selections
• Bizarre defensive tactics
• Reluctance to blood promising youngsters

Firstly, let's look at the positive things Walter Smith brought to Everton: 

• He represented the club in a reasonable manner – albeit in a dour manner
• He never conducted himself in an embarrassing, excuse-making, referee-slagging manner (like Ferguson, O'Neill etc)  
• He had a dry, sharp sense of humour. 
• He was also a very well respected name in football.  
• He won a lot in Scotland, no matter how easy it is to do so, or how much help he was given. 
• He bought a fair number of players that had good reputations.  

But, by the end of his third season, 3 years into the Goodison hot-seat (aka: the poisoned chalice!), Walter Smith was under unprecedented pressure:

• Everton were playing utterly awful football with little spirit or creativity.
• Despite injuries, the available players appeared to be poorly prepared for each match.
• The 4-5-1 experiment had mostly been a complete disaster.
• Smith had a bizarre aversion to playing wingers, despite having Tal and Alexandersson.
• The policy of buying aging injured players had backfired badly.

So where did that leave Walter Smith?  Well, Bill Kenwright made it very clear that Walter Smith was going nowhere... and Kenwright's determination to stand behind the manager deserved some grudging respect.  Kenwright appeared prepared to give Smith plenty of time to turn things around, and a good start to the 2001-02 season almost had everyone believing.  But of course it didn't happen....  

When he was appointed, Rangers fans were invited to comment on their knowledge of him:

• Good motivator
• Gets team playing together
• Determined and competitive
• Unlikely to publicly criticise players – but murders them in private, if necessary
• Carries a grudge to the grave
• Will NEVER change his mind or admit he's wrong 
• Usually good at basic organisation and team structure 
• Tactically clueless 
• Needs a strong control over his spending
• Buys players on reports and videos without seeing them himself
• Very poor relationship with young players
• Attempts to establish a steady regular team selection

The similarities between Rangers-Smith and Everton-Smith were frightening... but they should come as no surprise: people do not change; the old dog was not receptive to learning any new tricks.  In his third season at Goodison, his inadequacies only become even more glaring:

• He could not decide on a formation and basic system of playing. 
• He failed to play most of the players in their best position. 
• He could not ensure that each player understood the team plan and his particular role within it. 
• He was blatantly incapable of getting the players fit.  

Smith's third and fourth terms were hammered by injuries — this is beyond debate.  But his supporters still claimed that the true mettle of the man could only be judged when he had a full squad at his disposal. However, this is football: there are ALWAYS some injured players unavailable for selection.  A manager must accept that and get on with the job, rather than continually recycling this excuse for consistently poor performances – performances that fall a long way short of the standards expected at Everton FC.

In the 1999-2000 season, with most of the Everton squad fit, Smith took them to the giddy heights of 6th in the Premiership before injuries to Jeffers and Campbell began to bite deep.  Smith then made a dreadful mistake in buying that once-great player, Mark Hughes.  The success until those injuries does indicate that, with the right circumstances, Walter could perhaps do something useful at Everton.... up to a point!

With the right circumstances, Walter Smith seemed capable of taking Everton to the middle section of the Premiership but not much further.  It was as if he needed the services of a head coach of real subtlety and skill.  This all assumed that the rumours about poor morale, lack of communications, dreadful fitness, diet and conditioning regimes at Everton could all be dismissed...  That brought in to question the effectiveness of the coaching staff – including our playing legend and hero, Dave Watson, before he moved across the Mersey to manage Tranmere.  But, based on consistently poor Everton performances, no defence was possible; there were no excuses – Everton under Walter Smith were simply dreadful!

A manager should have at least three years to really establish himself and impose his style on the team, to get his players on board and have them playing together.  That formula means Smith should really have been shown the door at the end of the 2000-01 season.  Arguably, the volatile situation of Club ownership and parlous Club finances robbed Smith of his first two years, but the fact that this impediment had no effect on the next two identically bad years proves the lie in that weak excuse.  

There comes a time when patience has run its course and a change must be made, irrespective of the possible benefits that stability in management may bring.  Looking back over Walter Smith's tenure, there have been many, many puzzling incidents and trends that have taxed the patience of the Everton faithful to breaking point.  Some forgettable low-lights from Walter's first season:

• The failure to negotiate a deal with Hutchison, who was sorely missed.
• The failure to hold on to John Collins, thought to be one of his most trusted players.
• The persistence with playing strange formations (4-5-1; 5-3-2) that simply don't work for Everton.
• Notts Forest (h): he played an ultra-defensive line up against the poorest team in the league.
• The Dunne and Ball fiasco – disciplined for laughing at a joke on the coach home.

The list for Season 1999-2000 was just as long and puzzling:

• The Slaven Bilic situation, where he was allowed to go home to Croatia when injured – Smith deciding the World Cup semi-finalist wasn't good enough for Everton
• Relying on the efforts of 38-year-old Richard Gough in defence, which crumbles when he gets injured
• Michael Branch introduced from nowhere in the Anfield derby – to disastrous effect.
• David Unsworth played in midfield!!!
• Defenders playing deep to protect a slow defence, creating virtually nothing as a result.
• Everton taking the field with 5 centre-halfs, or 7 defenders!!!
• Considered Mark Hughes as a reasonable signing. 
• Narrowing the pitch!!!
• Displaying no tactical awareness whatsoever.
• Reputed dire words to the young players for their every mistake. 

The loss of Olivier Dacourt and Marco Materazzi in the summer of 1999 – after just one season – proved to set a pattern for Smith's management, where the revolving door of transfers in and out succeeded in creating instability that was bizarrely used as a reason for Smith's lack of success!  Materazzi was superb in the second half of the season, except for some problems against Sheffield Wednesday.  Dacourt looked class but pulled the ultimate mercenary stunt in the end.  And perhaps Walter Smith himself (and his obvious limitations as an effective manager) was part of the reason why player turnover was so ridiculously high.  

The more concerning trend – revealed only in numerous rumours – is the number of players who have fallen out with Smith, or chosen to leave because of clashes with Smith's management style.  Don Hutchison, Nick Barmby, John Collins, Francis Jeffers, Stephen Hughes, Phil Jevons...  

May 99: Later, in a Sky Sports interview with Jimmy Hill, Walter Smith admitted that he thought about quitting the club many times when Duncan Ferguson was sold without his knowledge.  He claimed that it was only the change in the management structure above himself and his assistant Archie Knox that persuaded him to carry on.

He said: "I didn't know what was happening at all with the Duncan Ferguson thing, it was ridiculous.  I didn't have a clue that so many things were being discussed and acted upon without my knowledge.

"I thought long and hard about leaving many times.  The sort of situation that arose at Goodison would never have happened at Tannadice or Ibrox.  I was taken aback by such a deliberate breakdown in communications, and day after day I reviewed my position and asked myself if there was any future for me.

"However, there was a change in the structure of the board, Peter Johnson left and Phillip Carter came in, and I'm getting on with him fine.  We understand each other and I didn't want to leave.  I'd brought in a few players and I came to the conclusion that to leave them would have been to leave the job unfinished, so I stayed," he added.

Walter Smith really should have gone at the end of 2000-01 season — if not before.  The season under Smith became just one long catalogue of shame and humiliation, from the Worthington Cup defeat against Bristol Rovers to the FA Cup embarrassment against Tranmere Rovers; the farce of signing Alex Nyarko with his season-long tantrums and whining self-pity; the endless catalog of injuries; the Gazza saga; the mistaken signings of Alexandersson, Ferguson, Pistone: the humiliation against Man City... the list goes on and on.

Walter had clearly lost all his enthusiasm by the end of that season.  If he'd gone after ensuring our survival, he could have kept some dignity.  By the end, nearly all the fans were fed up of him, while the know-nothing pundits and journalists were defending him almost to a man.

Perhaps Walter Smith's lasting legacy was this: offered the choice of David Ginola or Jay-Jay Okcha, which did he choose?  And why?  Of course, it was Ginola, and the reason was that his salary would be heavily sponsored by Aston Villa — just to get him off their books — while Okacha went on to have a great twilight career with Bolton Wanderers.