EFC's failure to capitalise on the success of the late 80's and start of PL

[TraffordBlue]

I've often heard the stories about how great we were in the 80's but how we were affected by the European ban in terms of developing a huge name for ourselves on that stage. But around the time of the early 90's, I believe that we were still considered one of the 'Big 5' along with Liverpool, Man United, Arsenal and Spurs. So what I don't understand is why we did not manage to stay at least around the top 6 after 1990? I'm mainly interested in the period from around 1990 to 1995 as I assume that is where the damage was truly done and we have been paralysed to an extent ever since.

Can those who are old enough to have lived through it explain what went wrong in your opinion? Were we not able to attract good enough players, and if so, why not? The Big 5 or 6 these days are able to do that. Why did crowds start to fall to the low 20,000s? We dropped to 20K crowds in 1993, was that related to the Park End rebuild or apathy?

Did we make a mistake appointing Howard Kendall for a 2nd time in 1990, and was Mike Walker expected to be a good appointment at the time? It could just have been that there weren't many decent managers out there for what we needed which seems to be similar to the position we're in at the moment.

Quite a few questions in there but would be interested in the views.

 

[Big Neville Southall]

Philip Carter, (or was it David Marsh?) was one of the lead figure in starting the PL, as a way of getting more money for the bigger clubs. Astonishing that we failed to envisage more money coming into the game and failed to capitalise on it.

 

[overkill]

I'm interesting in some opinions on this too

 

[Toffeelover]

Quite simply the folk at the top of the club failed to grasp or see the opportunities that were available and hence the start of our fall from grace. That is my view.

 

[CrustySack]

The European ban hit the club hard. It is hard to explain to the younger fans but that mid 80s side was very special. Everyone knew we were the best side in Europe and the chance to make history was ripped away. The fact that it was the shower across the park who had caused the ban made it a really tough pill to swallow.

The consequences of that ban was that we lost our greatest manager and team in a short space of time. It was a double-whammy. I remember the feeling among the fans was one of 'why should we bother, we can't have nice things'. This feeling is still present today.

 

[adi dassler]

Replaced ageing / want away stars from our best ever team with expensive sub-standard replacements. The ones remaining from the glory years did not get along with the new boys (see Sharp / Cottee and Sheedy / Keown).

Then in the early 90s we were skint. From the mersey millionaires to paupers, just as the Premier League was kicking off. The top stadium in the country 20 years earlier was showing it's age and was not invested in.

HK couldn't repeat his miracles second time around, then we appointed walker and stared into the abyss....

It's worth noting that whilst our gates in the early 90s were low (partly due to recession hit Liverpool), so were the majority of other clubs around the country. it wasn't like today with shiny new stadiums packed with new fans, the game was on its arse.

 

[davies1878]

Look at the players Liverpool bought and look at the players we bought around that time

No long term planning

 

[Black Belt Jones]

Colin Harvey was a sensible appointment at the time, but proved to be a pretty poor manager [not to speak ill of an Everton legend]. Needed someone far more dynamic who could rebuild the side. You can then times that error by ten in replacing him with HK MkII, and retaining Harvey as assistant (?! - talk about rewarding failure). This was at the dawn of the premier league and indicated that the club basically had no clue that the football landscape was changing.

Rewinding a bit HK leaving for Sociedad in the first place is a total mystery to me to this day. Huge step down and it's hard to make sense of his motivations absent any ITK insights. If he'd stayed I think he might have regenerated that side and kept us at a higher level - managing a few average clubs in the interim seemed to knock his confidence a bit.

 

[OneTrueLegend]

Replaced ageing / want away stars from our best ever team with expensive sub-standard replacements. The ones remaining from the glory years did not get along with the new boys (see Sharp / Cottee and Sheedy / Keown).

Then in the early 90s we were skint. From the mersey millionaires to paupers, just as the Premier League was kicking off. The top stadium in the country 20 years earlier was showing it's age and was not invested in.

HK couldn't repeat his miracles second time around, then we appointed walker and stared into the abyss....

It's worth noting that whilst our gates in the early 90s were low (partly due to recession hit Liverpool), so were the majority of other clubs around the country. it wasn't like today with shiny new stadiums packed with new fans, the game was on its arse.

I think you are right on this, also our youth system was terrible, we either let go or passed up the opportunity to sign players such as; Fowler, Mcmanaman, Carragher, and many more, who went on to be successful in their careers “elsewhere”.

I think we have also struggled with ownership, if we had the backing of a person with real money at any point over the last 25 years we could be in a very different place. We would already be in a new stadium, have signed better players and would have kept up the the teams at the top end of the table. Just look at Manchester City, if manchester has not had the commonwealth games, which lead to them getting a new stadium, which lead to the Chinese investment, which lead to the Arab Investment, they could be in the Championship now. So far we have not had anything like that level of investment.

 

[efcforever]

The earliset season I have any memory of is 1990/91. Feel like I just missed out on a very special time.

I vividly remember Kendal coming back. The Headmaster at our Primary school was a big Evertonian and he gave an entire assembly on Kendal and how good his side were. I remember being sat in the assembly hall feeling like the good times were just around the corner.

 

[dholliday]

Rewinding a bit HK leaving for Sociedad in the first place is a total mystery to me to this day. Huge step down and it's hard to make sense of his motivations absent any ITK insights. If he'd stayed I think he might have regenerated that side and kept us at a higher level - managing a few average clubs in the interim seemed to knock his confidence a bit.

This I've never really heard the full story on either. I'm blue since '89 so Harvey was first boss for me, missed the first Kendall era.

 

[nsno-chris]

Colin Harvey was a sensible appointment at the time, but proved to be a pretty poor manager [not to speak ill of an Everton legend]. Needed someone far more dynamic who could rebuild the side. You can then times that error by ten in replacing him with HK MkII, and retaining Harvey as assistant (?! - talk about rewarding failure). This was at the dawn of the premier league and indicated that the club basically had no clue that the football landscape was changing.

Rewinding a bit HK leaving for Sociedad in the first place is a total mystery to me to this day. Huge step down and it's hard to make sense of his motivations absent any ITK insights. If he'd stayed I think he might have regenerated that side and kept us at a higher level - managing a few average clubs in the interim seemed to knock his confidence a bit.

Bilbao

 

[COYBL25]

Replaced ageing / want away stars from our best ever team with expensive sub-standard replacements. The ones remaining from the glory years did not get along with the new boys (see Sharp / Cottee and Sheedy / Keown).

Then in the early 90s we were skint. From the mersey millionaires to paupers, just as the Premier League was kicking off. The top stadium in the country 20 years earlier was showing it's age and was not invested in.

HK couldn't repeat his miracles second time around, then we appointed walker and stared into the abyss....

It's worth noting that whilst our gates in the early 90s were low (partly due to recession hit Liverpool), so were the majority of other clubs around the country. it wasn't like today with shiny new stadiums packed with new fans, the game was on its arse.

This in a nutshell.

With the European ban, all our best players got poached by other clubs with cash, ( inc Rangers ) who were all playing in Europe and weren't adequately replaced.

It all went downhill after that and a slow decline, turned into a headlong one.

 

[peteblue]

Didn’t we do this to death in another thread, or maybe it’s just a recurring bad dream of mine........

 

[Saint Domingo]

Let’s be honest the club even before the premier league has not been set up for success for a long time. We’ve always relied too much on this mythical position of the manager. Let’s be honest even the success of the 80s was down to the genius of Kendall not the club creating the conditions for success. It’s noy as though the Mersey millionaires were reborn and Kendall cherry picked the best players, he scraped together an all conquering team on scraps that was preceded by mediocrity and followed by it. Meanwhile Liverpool and United changed managers but stayed successful largely. Had Kendall not worked wonders we would be looking back to the holy trinity team as the last time the club was actually at the forefront of the English game.

Kenwright has done exactly the same as his predecessors. He made a good choice in Moyes who gave him an opportunity to build for success but instead of laying the groundwork for continued ‘success’ like Spurs have done (recruitment, stadium, commercial deals) he did nothing and then just spun the dice again on another manager ‘maybe Roberto can bring success back to Goodison’. If he had done it would have been as fleeting as Kendall’s but Martinez wasn’t a miracle worker.

We are now seeing the futility of this approach to running a club. Walker, Smith, Martinez and Koeman have shown that when Everton don’t have an excellent manager at the helm we are in relegation scraps. When other clubs have poor managers they finish 8th or 9th. Successive Everton boards have sat on their hands waiting for another Kendall figure to pull a miracle out. Moyes gave them a decade of survival in the richest league in the world and they managed to mortgage everything and have no long term plan.

Say what you want about Moshiri but he is the first person at Everton for a long time to finally look to modernise us. Whether Walsh is a clown or not he recognises that top quality recruitment is vital and there needs to be another figure other than the manager for continuity in this. He’s made strides with the stadium and we’ve improved commercial deals. It all feels too much too late but it’s better than operating like a club in the 70s hoping that the next man in the hot seat will do a Kendall on a negative net spend and we’ll suddenly rule Europe.