I always found it odd that he praised Limpar after the Kanchelskis derby and then never (or barely) played him again until binning him off to Birmingham for buttons at the end of the season. Love to know what happened there.
Aye, i remember an interview where Joe was asked if Andre was the most skilful player he'd seen at Everton and he replied "No, in terms of absolute pure skill, I've never seen anybody like Anders Limpar". I think Joe probably got too nervous about playing some good football (in 95/96) and felt it better to play his favoured 'hit the big man, get the flick on" style he preferred (or "volleyball" and Kanchelskis complained). Anders was, for me, probably the main reason we won the cup that day in 95. Obviously , there was the goalscorer (Rideout), keeper (Nev) and Captain and MOTM (Dave) who all did their bit, but it was only when Limpar came to life for about 25 mins and we had that good spell, scored the goal, nearly scored another, that got us the win. He could be inconsistent, like many of his ilk, but to totally freeze him out in 96/97 was poor by Joe- especially seeing how bad (and incredibly boring) we often played.
I remember Alex Ferguson calling us "Wimbledon with one or two good players" and how insulted many of the staff/players were about that comment...then Wimbledon beat us 4-0 a couple of weeks later and it seemed more like Fergie meant it as a compliment.