This Week: 35 Years Ago

We had a similar Mexican dance-off with Middlesbrough in a different season but around the same period and I seem to remember Trevor Steven saving the day to force a replay.

It was the same season 1987-88 that we played Boro in those games. We played a dozen cup-ties at the beginning of 1988 prior to the end of February, including the games against Arsenal and Manchester City in the League Cup and the Simod Cup matches.

Only a few league games took place, four, I think, between 1 January and the end of February 1988.

We were excellent in the first half of that game, the 2nd half being notable only for the re-appearance after half-time of the great Paul Bracewell following his long injury.

1987-88 was a painful season (not compared to today!); it was the realisation that we were an ordinary team compared to previous standards. I also think in that 1-0 defeat Kevin Ratcliffe suffered an injury which effectively took away his pace.

All-in-all, 1987-88 was like Superman discovering kryptonite, we became an ordinary team.

I have painful memories of 1987-88 too as it appeared we had fallen off a cliff. The two defeats directly after Christmas to Man Utd and Sheffield Wednesday were particularly hard to take as Liverpool blitzed everyone over Christmas and it was suddenly all over.

However, a dig back through the results makes me wonder whether the fall off the cliff was really that steep for Everton that season. The fact is that, after 28 games of 1987-88, we were only 2 points behind the 1986-87 season. And the goal difference was only 6 worse too. The one big difference was that Liverpool had found 20 extra points by that stage and seemed to be playing football from another planet.

Yes, from the end of February onwards, Everton did fade away badly but surely the fact they had already played a ridiculous 18 matches in the calendar year by that point (and Liverpool being 20 points ahead) could justify that falloff?

I recently watched a replay of Liverpool 2-0 Everton from 1987-88, the game Beardsley scored that brilliant volley. Painful to watch at the time, but I was incredulous to find now that Everton were the better team that day, and should really have won.

There were only two inspired Barnes & Beardsley moments between the sides. Peter Reid was outrageously good that day, best player on the park. And of course, Everton did win at Anfield a few days previously, and then again at Goodison in March.

All of which is to say, were Everton really that terrible in 1987-88? Was our opinion of their performance clouded by Liverpool's stratospheric rise, and did we really need to disrupt the team and buy four new players in the summer of 1988 when perhaps we could have just put all the money on two world class players to replace Peter Reid and Gary Stevens?

I'd love to hear more from those who were at all the games in 87-88 to see if the quality really did drop off so badly, as I was only a kid back then so couldn't appreciate the finer points of matches.

Memory can play tricks but, as I recall, the new rs forward line scored a lot of goals. We were left with a declining squad, Howard Kendall having performed one of the greatest managerial feats ever to win us the league in 86/87 with a mixture of stars and “2nd division at bests” (I’m not sure there is any such thing). Also, I think Kevin Sheedy was absent a lot.

I suspect you are correct, signing 2 top class players in the summer of 1988 would have been better, Colin Harvey would always have wanted to coach the best footballers. But by that time, the best players were looking to play European football, in Italy or, believe it or not now, Scotland, because English teams couldn’t provide that. For reasons we all know.