Looking For The Toffees

I'm not trying to use this site again to sell my wares (well, maybe half-trying), but I did want to report that I've been overwhelmed by the amount of interest in the book, and by the response to it even from non-Evertonians. It seems there's way more interest in that era, the late 1970s, than I supposed.

I should also add that Martin Dobson and Dave Thomas have both been in touch to say how much they enjoyed it ... what a pair of absolute gents they are.

Anyway, in that same spirit of only half-trying not to sell my wares, I'll be signing copies of the book at Waterstone's, Liverpool One on August 30th, the day of the Chelsea game, between 2 and 3pm. And in the meantime, here's a generous early review from James Corbett, who I haven't met but whose own book, Everton: The School of Science, is a belter ...

" It has been a long time in coming, but at last it’s here - and the wait was worth it: a revisionist view of Everton in the late-1970s.

Many conversations with players of that era have ended with them lamenting how history has cast them as failures, when their worst crime was to fall short of Liverpool (albeit perpetually). In this period Everton reached the League Cup Final, when they were unlucky to fall to Aston Villa after two replays; were robbed of an appearance in the 1977 FA Cup Final by duplicitous refereeing; finished third and fourth in the league (modern holy grails); and boasted the most prolific forward in the country in Bob Latchford. For someone who came of age during the 1990s, it seems almost like a gilded era - albeit one tarnished by the stench emanating from the other side of Stanley Park.

Of course, Brian Viner’s highly entertaining Looking For The Toffees is much more than mere revisionism. It’s about how football has changed inexorably in the past 35 years; how players - who were then essentially ‘nice lads with a bit of cash in their pocket’ - have metamorphosised into millionaire global icons.

It is a nostalgic book, without ever being sentimental. It opens with the death of Viner’s father, while he is still a teenager. Hitherto barred from attending Goodison through fears of hooliganism, he is suddenly liberated by his widowed mother and allowed to attend in the Gwladys Street and follow the Blues all over the country.

Mercifully, Viner eschews the Fever Pitch template so many writers have tried and failed to pull off. Instead he goes in search of his heroes, who are now aged in their fifties and sixties: George Wood, Martin Dobson, Latchford, Dave Jones, Mick Lyons, Mike Pejic and more.

Viner has a fine ear, and the details in conversations he brings to the page are often very funny and frequently unexpected, even from a seasoned Everton chronicler such as myself. There are several laugh out loud moments and some that left me agape, such as the story about Mike Pejic on England duty in Yugoslavia accompanied by a sheep in his hotel room and his relations from the country (the book is worth reading for this story alone).

The broader arguments about football’s detachment then from now are well made, but I felt it lacked the wider context that social histories of the era - such as those by Dominic Sandbrook and Andy Beckett - have extolled. With high inflation and interest rates, huge industrial relations problems, whispers of right wing coups, the 1970s seem a dark and strange decade, even for someone who - like me -was born at its end. Yet at the same time, Looking for the Toffees, is brought to life by men who now seem emblematic of the era, such as Gordon ’screaming skull’ Lee, and the errant QPR forward, Stan Bowles.

This is a very fine one book about Everton, so do sit back and enjoy. At last the unsung men, who merged excitement and goals with crushing disappointment in the 1970s, are given the space that they deserve. Highly recommended."

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