Deep into summer, still without the striker Moshiri told us we would be signing in January, and the only imminent capture seemingly on the cards a 38-year-old full-back whose agent approached the club cap in hand?
Really, I should be writing an article titled ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ or maybe ‘Kevin Thelwell but Everton Landed Like a Sack of Shit’.
Instead, I’m going to ask ‘What has been the most disappointing transfer window in your lifetime?’…..and then bang on about a summer of inactivity that left me baffled even in childhood and was (in my opinion) among the first contributory factors to the inexorable slide downward the club has endured for nearly four decades now.
I’m talking about the summer of 1987. A very confusing time for an 8-year-old.
Growing up surrounded by graffiti declaring ‘Maggie Thatcher’ was ‘a job snatcher’, it made no sense whatsoever to my young mind when I then had to listen to my arl fella fume relentlessly about how the ‘evil old crone’ had somehow just been re-elected via a landslide general election victory.
Throw in the fact I’d heard on the news that Barbie – bloody Barbie – had been sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, then it’s no wonder my head was completely frazzled (of course it was actually Gestapo boss, Klaus Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon’….but not to an 8-year-old it wasn’t. It was Barbie). I half expected He-Man to be hauled in for mopery at any minute.
Still, one thing was right with the world. Everton had just reclaimed the Football League title and were the Champions of England for the second time in three seasons. Now, that made perfect sense to me.
It didn’t take long for confusion to kick back in, however. Howard Kendall, the most successful manager in Everton’s history, soon departed for sunnier climes and a shitter club and what happened next has bothered me ever since.
When it came to a succession plan, Everton seemed to take inspiration from the inner workings of their arch-rivals and plumped for a laissez-faire passing of the torch from one ex-playing legend to another.
The model was the mythological Anfield bootroom. Basically, a load of old blokes huddled together in a hovel smelling of Brut, Brylcreem and HobNob biscuits, hissing, spitting and scrawling hushed secrets in a notebook with one of those crap, nubby, no-bigger-than-Ronnie Corbett’s-cock, cheap plastic pens people could never resist pocketing on their way out of the bookies. A horrible, living, breathing Hydra, smugly spouting two new shit-spewing heads whenever one happened to be lopped off.
However disdainfully Evertonians may have spoken of this squalid den of deleterious Shankly devotees, there was simply no disputing the honours they had racked up over the course of a decade and a half. Longevity of achievement, on both the domestic and European front, suggested Liverpool had hit upon an enduring magic formula, ripe for emulating.
Promoting from within was thus seen by the Everton board as the safest means of ensuring a smooth transition and the maintenance of a backroom methodology that had brought the Blues the biggest trophy haul in their history.
Colin Harvey was the sous chef who had already helped hone the recipe for the perfect dish. All he had to do now was step up to the plate, perhaps put a perfunctory spin on the side garnish so he could genuinely call it his own, and continue gleefully serving up the same main course to the salivating masses whose palettes had swiftly become accustomed to the sweet, sweet taste of success.
Consequently, lack of actual managerial experience was not seen as a hindrance to the hopes of a novice being handed the reigns of the current League Champions.
Colin Harvey’s first and only signing in his inaugural summer as Everton Svengali was Alec Chamberlain. A competent enough keeper, who could do a job if called upon, but one who never had even a cat-in-hell’s chance of being anything other than cover. In fact, he never made a single appearance for the first-team.
The opportunity to strengthen from an actual, tangible, position of strength, with arse perched triumphantly on top of the pile – an opportunity Everton have never again had within their grasp in the generations since, as they have endured watching once historic peers power past and eventually pull further and further away from them – along with the chance for Harvey to make a bold statement that this was now indubitably his team, rather than simply the one a departed Kendall left behind, being looked after by a loyal disciple, was if not criminally wasted, then casually waived.
Following what had become, by then, a routine day out at Wembley to raise the Charity Shield for the fourth time in four years, the reigning Champions got off to a stuttering start to the league campaign, winning only two of their opening seven matches. Harvey then made the decision to enter the transfer market for a second time, but the player he selected to add a little sizzle to an Everton side struggling to come to the boil, proved as uninspiring a capture as his first. Ian Wilson was a tidy enough player, but about as likely to perform, or ‘turn up the heat’, as Harry Seacombe spending a day on a porn set, serenading stunt dicks with ‘The Song Of The Dong’.
While neighbours Liverpool had reinvigorated their first team, adding a genuine new dimension with exciting, fresh, talent in the form of Barnes, Beardsley, Aldridge and Houghton, Everton opted to stand still, to settle for eking a little more out of the men who had served the club so well in recent seasons, with the only reinforcements for the forthcoming ‘just try and take our title’ ruck being a token reserve keeper, along with another bloke who need only comb the back of his head and looked more like a nerdy confused music teacher from the mid-’70s than a tricky, mercurial, modern-day wide midfielder.
Still, there’s always a positive if you look hard enough.
While the flair-free link-up play of the Ned Flanders/Montgomery Burns made flesh – the wide pair of Power and Wilson may not have had Evertonians salivating in anticipation, some small measure of comfort must surely have been derived from the knowledge they were now in possession of the most ‘Songs Of Praise’ looking left-flank in the entire fucking league.