Funny how the old memory cheats you but I was comparing this season with Mike Walker’s short spell as Everton manager back in 1994, thinking we’d started that with more consecutive losses. But no – we started with a draw then drew with mighty Arsenal then Norwich before Walker was sacked. He famously claimed he’d have been “bomb proof” if he’d been on the derby but was he hard done by?
Now at the time, Mark Ward was my favourite player so, when he blamed his quite amusing gag of parking in the MW space as the reason for his exit, I sided with him against Walker. Likewise, when Neville Southall complained about childish training drills, I thought “Nev knows best!”
However, at the time, I had the misfortune of having a part time job in a bar in Harlow, Essex. Most of the West Ham supporting colleagues and customers had done time quite recently in fact but I had one coworker I got on well with. Her brother was at the time a well known Norwich player.
She said he was upset Walker had left Norwich City and assured me he’d do well at Everton. Now she could’ve said “he’s no Ken Bruce” or “Dave Stringer is better” but no, she based it on her brother’ experience as a first team Premier League regular, who thought the man who’d taken a relegation threatened team to Top 3 and Europe was a good coach.
Years later, I question Ward’s judgement given his drug-trafficking post-Everton career. And even Big Nev, whilst a great goalie around that time, desserted his wife and ran off with a teen. He then, despite being outspoken, failed miserably as Wales manager and more recently has become best known as a Twitter malcontent. So is his judgement the best?
Now don’t shoot me I’m not saying I wished Walker had stayed as his demise saw Joe Royle come in and we won the FA Cup. But – by the standards (ha!) of today and the fortunes paid to “top managers” to come here and fail miserably (Koeman, Rafa and Co) – was Walker hard done by?