tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
Apologies if this has already been posted, but in case it hasnt:
[video=youtube;uUw44ZJaizE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUw44ZJaizE#t=2m40s[/video]
6) Peter Reid, Everton 4-1 Sunderland, Division One, 1985
The School of Science has been the home of some educated feet down the years, especially on the wings. Dave Thomas deserved a significant cut of the £10,000 that Bob Latchford received from the Daily Express for scoring 30 league goals in 1977-78, while Andy Hinchcliffe's crossing could drive grown men to strip in public. But neither of them produced anything quite as memorable as this, the defining moment of Everton's greatest side.
It's occasionally forgotten just how good that Everton team was. After losing their first two league games, they went on a run of 27 wins in 36 games – a murderous, almost unprecedented run of form in the days when the top flight was a competition in nature as well as name. The title was all but sealed in the first week of April. After a Neville Southall-inspired 2-1 win away to their closest rivals Spurs on the Wednesday, they slaughtered Sunderland 4-1 three days later. The phrase "power team" is often seen as faint praise yet it is anything but. It is the most appropriate description for West Germany in 1990, the greatest World Cup winners of the last 40 years, and for an Everton side who were surely the best in Europe in 1985.
After Sunderland made the innocent mistake of scoring a goal, Everton savaged them like rabid dogs. Soon they were level with a goal that was decisive and devastating. Peter Reid, the PFA Player of the Year that season, slipped his man and sidefooted a fierce cross to the near post, where Andy Gray – a man who never used his feet when the noggin was an option – applied a majestic diving Glasgow kiss. The goal, and the performance, became even more memorable because the game was shown on Match of the Day, a rare and powerful thing in those days. "Reid's cross – GRAY!" became a staple of the playground commentator.
It's a type of goal we hardly see at the top level any more: primal, caked in mud and reeking of testosterone. Just as Tony Soprano lamented the death of the Gary Cooper type, so the Joy of Six regularly asks its therapist: whatever happened to Mick Harford? Wingers are inverted (this isn't new – the visionary Sepp Piontek did it with Denmark in the 1980s, and Bobby Robson did it in the Italia 90 semi-final – just more common), nines are false (this isn't new either – the visionary Alex Ferguson did it in the late 1970s at Morton – just more common), boots are unchalked, strikers' noses unbroken, and kids no longer want to be Brian Talbot. The hipsters don't like crossing; nor, increasingly, do the managers. Whether it is dying or out of fashion, we don't really know. If it's the former, it will be missed. Can we not knock it in the mixer?
[video=youtube;uUw44ZJaizE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUw44ZJaizE#t=2m40s[/video]
