This month marks the 50th anniversary of one of the seminal moments in Everton?s history ... Wednesday November 23rd 1960 ....the signing of Alex Young.
1960 had already been an epochal year for the blues with the involvement of John Moores giving Johnny Carey unprecedented funds to improve the team. Reference the transfer in February and March of Roy Vernon, the great Tommy Ring together with Jimmy Gabriel and Micky Lill. In September we bought Billy Bingham and now the press (at least the press I read, ie the ?Liverpool Echo?) was consumed with the impending arrival of 23-year-old Alex Young, already the spearhead for 2 Scottish League triumphs and 2 League Cup wins with his club Heart of Midlothian .
I was 9 years old and an avid match attending blue. To my mind this transfer seemed to go on forever. He was coming; then he wasn?t . No doubt it was complicated by the fact that included in the deal was a left back named George Thompson . ...although we?ve since learned that Alex didn?t know George was coming until he saw him on the train.
It even got me in trouble in school; Sefton Park Boys, Smithdown Road, Wavertree, the site now houses an Aldi Supermarket. My teacher, a Miss Gilbert (I remember her name because she was a bit of a looker), queried my vacant look with:
?Bobby, what?s the matter with you?
?Sorry Miss? I replied ?I?m worried about the Alex Young transfer.?
How my mates laughed as I ducked out of the way...
Yuri Gagarin would find it easier to orbit the earth the following April but eventually Alex landed in Liverpool for a reported fee of £42,000 together with his mate George for an additional 13 grand .
Of course it soon transpired that getting him transferred was the easy bit ....getting him on the pitch was another matter entirely.
He?d arrived with a leg injury acquired playing for the Army, perhaps helping to explain some of the transfer complications. He didn?t play his first game until almost a month after signing. This was to be the home game against Tottenham; Bill Nicholson?s boys ..... Blanchflower, MacKay, Bobby Smith, already had the league sewn up and it wasn?t even Christmas. They?d go on to achieve the first double of the 20th century. But Evertonians regarded this game as a crucial staging post in measuring how far we?d come as a force in English football with our bright new team and our even brighter shiny blond bombshell of a centre-forward. We lost 3-1; we were thoroughly outclassed and Alex didn?t get a kick.
And then he was out for the next 6 weeks... Problems with blistered feet!!
This was getting me down. We buy a large piece of the jigsaw to cement our strive to football hegemony and then he can?t play because he?s got blisters. Much issue had been made about his Greek God like appearance (Edinburgh = Athens of the North ) and in our History books you could see his likeness to the images of Alexander the Great (technically not Greek I know). But you couldn?t imagine the Macedonian Marauder temporarily halting his strive for Ancient World domination because he had hurty feet.
The Liverpool Echo letters page was full of homemade remedies for Alex?s problems. Soak in vinegar, brine, your own urine. I made the last one up but you get the gist.
When he returned at the beginning of February we were crap . Alex played 8 consecutive games which we won 2 and drew one. He missed a 3-0 away defeat to West Brom and then returned to the side on Good Friday in a 3-1 away victory against Blackburn scoring 2 goals, his first league goals for Everton. Vernon got the other. In the remaining 6 games we won 5 and drew one finishing the season in 5th place. Alex played in 4 out of 6 scoring a further 4 goals. With 2 games to go Harry Catterick had become the club?s manager. Maybe footballing hegemony wasn?t a pipedream,... and about a month or so later St John and Yeats rolled into Satan?s lair.
The following season?s start was fitful ( traditional ? !!) .Vernon was in and out of the team and in the first 10 games we won 4 and lost 6 . Alex was playing but nothing gelled. On the last Saturday in September Vernon returned , seemingly ready for the fray and we stuffed Arsenal 4-1 . The following week we played Forest at home . I went to this game and still have vivid images of Young being simply mesmerising. He went past players at will with an ease that defied belief and Forest were no mugs . We won 6-0 . I?m prepared to be corrected but I believe it was this match when we all realised we might have something special.
The rest of the season went well and we gained 43pts from 32 games . Ipswich won the league with 56 pts . Basically the poor start cost us the league.... but Young was beginning to fortify his reputation with Evertonians . Blues of all social persuasions would be leaving the ground using words like ,poise ,grace and elegance. It was surreal . Alex didn?t run he skimmed . He would put opposition players on their arse simply by moving his hips .He wasn?t blessed with great pace but he was quick enough to go away from defenders once he?d bamboozled them. He had a powerful shot in both feet ,had an awareness of other players around him that was uncanny and his ability to hang in the air and bury a header , outjumping blokes up to 6 inches taller than him was phenomenal (in modern terms ,aerial-wise , Tim Cahill is a good comparison) .
Young scored 14 goals in 40 games and Vernon 26. The team had the best defensive record in the league. Catterick had tinkered with the line ?up during the season sometimes playing Frank Wignall at centre-forward with Young at Inside-right but most blues supporters wanted the Young/Vernon combo and in the last 6 games with these two in tandem we amassed 10 pts in the last 6 games scoring 19 goals . Catterick had off-loaded the 30 year old Bobby Collins to Leeds in March and replaced him with a grafting Dennis Stevens from Bolton ...not the most popular decision and we?d acquired a 6ft plus goalie in Gordon West , thus ending our love of midget keepers.
But there were problems ; we?d only won 3 away games all season and Alex himself was prone to inconsistency but the way we finished the season meant that overall Nirvana beckoned .
We started 62/63 like a train and basically never looked back . A couple of hiccups at Fulham and Johnny Carey?s Leyton Orient (we?d beaten them 3-0 at Goodison the week before so presumably complacency crept in) and a dropped point against Liverpool at home but otherwise we swept all before us. We were solid with Labone a kingpin and West a giant with a nancy haircut, epitomised by a hard fought 0-0 draw in December at Tottenham on a partially frozen pitch . Up front the interplay of Young and Vernon was a joy to behold . It was like watching an Everley Brothers harmony on a football pitch . Look at the ?History video ? from circa 1988 and the goal scored by Young from Vernon?s pass against Wolves at Molineux on the first Saturday in October .This is normally shown on match day on the big screen.
We were due to play Arsenal at Goodison on Boxing Day .I was all set to go to the match only to wake up to 6 inches of snow . The big freeze !. Jesus it was cold . This was the time when Phillip Larkin reckoned sex was invented .The Beatles released ?Please Please Me?. By now I was in my final year of primary school at Kingsthorne Road, Hunts Cross (we?d moved to Halewood). As we were the big lads in the school it was our job every morning (or so it seemed) to help the caretaker clear the snow and ice from the pathways and a portion of the playground so all the kids could stand outside during the various breaks and freeze to death without falling over. The only thing that kept us warm was footy debates especially the merits or otherwise of Alex Young and Ian St John . ?Alex is a Greek God and St John is a little fat twat with a tit name .? .Such banter!
.During the enforced break we bought Tony Kay and Alex Scott to replace Brian Harris and Billy Bingham . The latter two hadn?t done much wrong but Kay and Scott would turn out to be an improvement .
We played our first league game on February 12th at Leicester and promptly lost 3-1. It was still perishing and the odd game was postponed but after the initial stutter we picked up and by the time we got through the Easter programme it was pretty much between us and Tottenham . On April 20th we played Spurs at home . I couldn?t get a ticket so didn?t see us win 1-0 with a towering Alex Young header . To this day I?m sure I saw the goal on television after the news that Saturday night but I?ve never seen it since . Footage would have demonstrated for posterity the prodigious leaping and heading ability of Alex Young .
With 3 games to go we beat Bolton at home on a filthy day when Everton were as bad as the weather but we won it with a late Vernon goal which pretty much came from nowhere . This goal is on the ?History video?. We then beat West Brom away convincingly thus setting up the May 11th final home fixture against Fulham as the Championship decider . Tottenham had all sorts of games ?in hand? but win this and we were home and hosed!.
I was 11years 7 months old and I can say without fear of contradiction that at that moment this was the ?Greatest Day of My Life?...and given that we?d won bugger all since Hitler took a shine to Poland there where quite a few others in the ground who felt the same. And again no footage . There are bits of the crowd running onto the pitch and shots of the players in the directors box but nothing else . I?ve never been able to reprise Vernon?s hat trick and Young?s contribution to it and quite frankly I was so excited a rational appraisal with only the match experience to go on was a tad difficult .
Roy?s hat trick meant he leapfrogged Alex in the scoring stakes finishing on 24 to Alex?s 22. I suspect as a centre forward he was probably a bit miffed; I would have been, . We eventually won the league by 5 pts ; played 42 ,pts 61 ,goals for 84, against 42 . Two more points and we?d have had perfect symmetry . Alex Young ,who when he arrived 2 and a half years earlier had trouble putting his boots on , had played in every game . By my tally ,at that point in his Everton career, he?d scored 42 league goals from 95 games and when you consider he didn?t score in his first 9 games when he was plagued by injury this was a pretty good return for a deep-lying centre-forward who?s primary role was orchestrating the play.
Alex Young was at the peak of his power. In my life time all the best players from Puskas to Messi have a bent carriage, low centres of gravity ,solid backsides and bandy legs, (even the tall ones such as Cruyff and Zidane) . Alex seemed to defy the carriage norm as he had a straight backed cadence that lent itself to elegance but he had the upper body strength to keep possession of the ball. . Alex was now 26 years old ... but from here on in there was a slight and perceptible decline.
The next 3 seasons saw a gradual downturn in Everton?s fortunes brought about through the ageing process and some sheer bad luck, then culminating in a glorious swansong in May 66 .
First off we got Inter-Milan in the Ist round of the European Cup , the eventual winners of the competition 2 years on the bounce (the following season Liverpool would draw Reykjavik , enough said). Was Vernon?s goal offside ?? . Shades of Ferguson /Collina. Young lost form and Jimmy Gabriel was tried up front thus emphasising Catterick?s penchant for a big Centre Forward . In March 64 Fred Pickering was bought for 90 grand... .a welly boot to Vernon?s stiletto . Pickering had a good scoring record for Everton but he was never to my taste and I suspect the same could be said for Alex Young . We made a decent fist of defending our title in ?64? but with Young out of the side and Pickering /Vernon up front we faded at the end and finished 3rd.
In the close season Tony Kay got a lifetime ban ..perhaps the club?s first major recognisable blameless post ?war ?kick in the bollocks.? Ray Wilson joined ,although he ?d only play half a season . .. he?s still the best left ?back I?ve ever seen including Facchetti. Again we competed near the top but we were just not good enough . In 64/65 Alex only played half the season pretty much sharing games with Vernon playing alongside Pickering . His displays were marked by inconsistency with sparks of virtuosity counterbalanced by drudgery . Vernon was sold to Stoke in March 65 . Although we finished a creditable 4th we were clearly not the side of 63.
65/66 was even worse for the blues. By the turn of the year we were sitting in mid ?table and Catterick was looking to make some radical changes. On January 15th 1966 for the fixture at Blackpool , Alex Young was dropped for the 16 year old Joe Royle ,causing much consternation amongst the supporters and culminating in Catterick stumbling when getting onto the bus to go home and numerous exclamatory newspaper headlines the following day.
A week later Young was restored for the 3rd round home cup ?tie against Sunderland ,we won 3-0 , and marched to Wembley . Two easy ties and 3 games to beat the eventual Div 2 champions Manchester City put us in the semi. Throughout the cup run the team was much the same but on March 19th in the derby match Pickering went down like a sack of spuds with no-one near him and that was his season over ,at least according to Harry Catterick. Alex was restored to centre-forward, Mike Trebilcock came in for Fred ,we turned over Man Utd in the semi with a Harvey dribbly daisy cutter and then we won the FA Cup. In the final Young could have had a hat trick . Dodgy offside goal, fouled by Ron Springett when through on goal ( 8 years later the same ref would award 2 penalties in the World Cup final but he bottled it in our game)and a sitter near the end . A hat-trick in the Cup Final would have placed him on an Evertonian plane beyond worship so perhaps it?s as well he ended up scoreless. But what a day!!!. Another ?greatest day of my life? and given it was 33 years since the Dixie team won it, once again, on the train home ,there were plenty who felt the same as me .
Then enter Alan Ball . I had a season ticket for 66/67 and it was worth every penny . Alex was lifted by the little man?s presence (as was everyone else) and a resurgence in form followed. With Colin Harvey beginning to blossom the ball was played on the deck to feet and with Alex restored to a pivotal role at centre-forward after Pickering?s transfer it was quite like old times . Young played in 45 games and got 10 goals (Bally got 18) . We eventually finished 6th and got knocked out of the Cup by Forest in the quarters so finally it was all a bit of a let down but we played some good stuff and with Howard Kendall joining in March once again we were on the up .
But not so for Alex Young . 67/68 would be his last . As the season wore on he became a peripheral figure often stuck on the right wing and his appearances became infrequent as Joe Royle and Jimmy Husband became regulars . But still there was the odd highlight not least on the opening day at home against Man Utd . Chests the ball down , shimmies past two defenders and buries the ball just inside the keeper?s top left hand post . It?s on the video/DVD . Classic .
He played his final game against West Ham at Upton Park on May 11th ...5 years to the day of his greatest triumph ...and then just quietly left.
We now know that the blister problem was never solved but simply managed so that regardless of any other injuries he may have had he was in some discomfort every time he played. I thought he was a marvellous player ,up there with the best I?ve seen and he played with an attitude and approach that defined dignity . In the Ken Loach ?Golden Vision ? television play Young is interviewed and discusses his playing ability . After admitting his inconsistencies and his loss to explain them he concludes without a trace of arrogance that ?when I?m good ,when I?m playing well, I?m as good as anyone?. Spot on Alex. Never a truer word!
Alex Young. 50 years a blue . Thanks .
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* Everton deducted 8 pts; †Forest deducted 4 pts for PSR breachView full table
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