There are a number of moments credited with being key to the remarkable turnaround in Everton’s fortunes in the 1980s.
Most commonly cited is Oxford United midfielder Kevin Brock’s back pass at the Manor Ground in January 1984 that enabled Adrian Heath to nip in for the late equaliser that earned a League Cup quarter-final replay Howard Kendall’s side would safely negotiate at Goodison before reaching the final and returning to Wembley two months later to lift the FA Cup.
Kendall’s psychological ploy of opening the dressing room windows at Stoke City before the third-round tie that began their victorious run to silverware that year - so his Blues players could hear and be inspired by the thousands of travelling Evertonians at the Victoria Ground - is often referenced, while Kevin Ratcliffe, the man who skippered the Toffees throughout what became the most successful period in the club’s history, credits the fightback the previous November in the third round of the League Cup against Coventry City as being the real turning point when, just days after an abject 3-0 reverse at Anfield had dropped Everton to 17th in the First Division table and losing again in front of barely 9,000 supporters at a disillusioned Goodison, two goals in the last ten minutes from Adrian Heath and Graeme Sharp eased some of the mounting pressure.
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By the following May, Everton’s renaissance was clear for all to see as victory over Watford ended the club’s 14-year trophy drought and put the Blues back in Europe for the first time since 1979/80. But it was another goal from Kendall’s Scottish centre-forward five months later - still in the eyes of many the greatest and most significant in the club’s history - that confirmed the Toffees were inexorably becoming the best side in the country and the balance of power on Merseyside was shifting.
Sharp had arrived at Goodison as a raw 19-year-old in a £120,000 deal from Dumbarton in April 1980 but had made only six league appearances when Kendall replaced Gordon Lee as Everton boss 13 months later. The 35-year-old former Blues midfielder, part of the hallowed ‘Holy Trinity’ trio alongside Alan Ball and Colin Harvey at the heart of the club’s 1970 championship triumph, was initially appointed as player-manager on his return although made only four more appearances and was backed heavily in the transfer market in his first summer in charge, bringing in seven new players including two strikers in Mick Ferguson and Alan Biley. Sharp saw both of them off however, comfortably finishing as top scorer with 15 goals from 29 appearances in all competitions including a stunning volley against Tottenham Hotspur, which highlighted his eye for the spectacular, as the manager’s full campaign at the helm ended in a respectable eighth-place finish.
Kendall’s men matched their points tally of 64 the following season and finished one place higher in the First Division table, also reaching the FA Cup quarter-finals after knocking out back-to-back holders Spurs and only missing out on a spot in the last four following Frank Stapleton’s last-minute goal for Manchester United at Old Trafford. But with Merseyside rivals Liverpool strolling to a sixth league title in eight years to continue their seemingly-endless dominance, the rate of progress was not quick enough for some and when 1983/84 began badly with only four league victories before mid-November, Kendall’s future at the club began to be openly questioned with leaflets demanding the removal of both him and chairman Philip Carter being circulated at matches and the manager’s garage door being graffitied.
A grim New Year’s Eve goalless draw with Coventry featured on Match of the Day saw the Toffees booed off by those among the 13,659 disgruntled Blues who had stayed until the end, with commentator Alan Parry remarking: “An angry reaction from the 13 and a half thousand faithful. How sad to see such a great club struggling. Howard Kendall is one man who will be glad to see the back of 1983.”
The manager’s frustration at his side’s inability to translate the progress he felt he was seeing on the training pitches of Bellefield into results led to him offering Carter his resignation but the Everton chairman refused to accept it and his belief and perseverance paid off handsomely. 1984 began with a 2-0 First Division win at Birmingham City and, after successfully negotiating the potential banana skins at Stoke and Oxford, Kendall’s side never looked back. Having seen off Aston Villa over two legs to reach the Milk Cup final (as it was then known), substitute Alan Harper’s late goal earned a morale-boosting draw against Liverpool three weeks ahead of the Wembley showdown against the Blues’ treble-chasing neighbours and, while Joe Fagan’s side would eventually emerge victorious after narrowly winning the Maine Road replay - Kendall’s men being aggrieved not have been awarded a penalty after an Alan Hansen handball early on in the initial goalless draw - the gulf between the sides, starkly highlighted by the previous season’s 0-5 Goodison derby defeat, was rapidly closing.
Everton would again finish seventh in the league but all minds were focused on the FA Cup where, after Adrian Heath’s header deep into extra-time in the semi-final at Highbury saw off a Southampton side who would finish First Division runners-up to Liverpool, Kendall’s team returned to Wembley with Graham Taylor’s Watford standing in the way of the club’s first major silverware since 1970. Goals either side of half-time from Sharp and Andy Gray ensured the trophy was Goodison-bound for the fourth time and at last provided tangible proof the manager was on the right track.
With the club’s youngsters also winning the FA Youth Cup that May, a bright future lay ahead at Goodison with Kendall during the summer adding highly-rated £425,000 Sunderland midfielder Paul Bracewell to the talented squad he had been carefully constructing, which included young talent like Neville Southall, Gary Stevens, Ratcliffe, Trevor Steven, Kevin Sheedy and Heath alongside older campaigners such as Peter Reid and Andy Gray. Hopes the Toffees would be able to mount a credible title challenge to Fagan’s Liverpool, who had just won their third successive championship as part of a league, League Cup and European Cup treble, were underlined when Bruce Grobbelaar’s own goal decided the Charity Shield at Wembley in the Blues’ favour, but a week later Goodison was left stunned when Tottenham recovered from an early Heath penalty to win 4-1 on the opening day of the league season, Kendall’s men also going down to defeat in their second game at West Bromwich Albion.
Kevin Richardson’s goal in a live Friday night televised fixture at Chelsea saw a first league win on the board at the third attempt but early season form was patchy. Sharp got his 30-goal season underway with the opener in a 2-1 home win over Coventry but Ipswich Town and Southampton both left Goodison with a share of the spoils while the Blues had to dig deep to record 3-2 and 5-4 away victories at Newcastle United and Watford respectively, and only scraping past Irish minnows University College Dublin by a single Sharp effort in the opening round of their European Cup Winners; Cup campaign. There was a third league defeat at Arsenal at the start of October but goals from Sharp - his sixth in seven games - and Heath beat Aston Villa at Goodison the weekend before the trip across Stanley Park for the first league derby of the season to move Kendall’s men up to sixth, five points behind the pace-setting Gunners.
Reigning domestic and European champions Liverpool, meanwhile, were enduring the worst start to a season in years having seen skipper Graeme Souness leave for Sampdoria in Italy during the summer. Although two wins and two draws from their first four games had put them second, Fagan’s side had not managed three points in the league since, with defeat at Tottenham - in a match which saw Kenny Dalglish dropped for the first time in his Anfield career - the weekend before Everton’s visit leaving them only four points better off than bottom-club Stoke and without even a goal in their last three matches. They were boosted ahead of the derby with the return from injury of star striker Ian Rush, who had scored 47 goals in all competitions the previous season but had not played since August’s Charity Shield defeat to the Toffees after requiring a cartilage operation, Dalglish also returning to the side with Steve Nicol and Paul Walsh - newly-arrived during the summer from Luton Town but now himself requiring cartilage surgery after the defeat at Spurs - absent.
Everton were unchanged from the side which beat Aston Villa, new signing Pat van den Hauwe who had joined for £100,000 the previous month continuing at left-back with Steven in front of him on the left flank due to Sheedy’s absence due to an ankle problem and former Anfield reserve Harper filling in on the right side of midfield. Sharp and Heath - with 14 goals between them already - kept their places up front with Gray named as substitute as Kendall’s men went in search of a first victory at Anfield since Joe Royle and Alan Whittle had given Harry Catterick’s side a 2-0 victory on enemy turf during the run-in to the 1970 league championship triumph.
The Blues had in fact only won four derbies anywhere in the fourteen-and-a-half years since then - the single goal Goodison victories in 1971 and 1978 courtesy of David Johnson and Andy King, along with the 1981 ‘Imre Varadi meat-and-potato pie’ FA Cup tie and August’s triumph at Wembley in the traditional season curtain-raiser, Kendall’s first win as Everton manager over Liverpool at the tenth attempt. The Toffees’ superiority that day coupled with both sides’ contrasting starts to the campaign had bolstered belief a power shift was underway but Kendall’s men knew victory at Anfield could underline it.
“We were just on a roll at that time,” captain Ratcliffe recalled. “It didn’t matter who we were playing, we just backed ourselves. Of course we were well aware of our record at Anfield before that game. The media would constantly bring it up whenever a derby came around. You try not to worry, and tell yourself that it’s just another game, but in the back of your mind it does have an effect. Howard had tried a few things when we played Liverpool. He’d played five in midfield and one up front, things like that, and it hadn’t worked. It was always a difficult game, but he always told us that we were getting closer, and that we’d beat them before too long. And at that time I felt we were a match for them, individually and collectively. There was nothing between us.”
"Liverpool had had a bad start to the season," Southall explained in his book, 'The Binman Chronicles'. "But even though we - as a team - knew we were as good as them, for the fans there was still a hoodoo. They were our nemesis."
“We used to go over to Liverpool and think that no matter how we played, we weren’t getting anything — there was that inferiority complex”, Sharp admitted to the Athletic. “When I went over there previously, it was sometimes a case of damage limitation. If you want to go and win at Anfield, you have to all be pulling in the same direction. We had that belief. We were a young team who had all grown up together at Everton but we needed seasoned pros to guide us on and off the pitch. Peter Reid and Andy Gray were massive influences in the dressing room. We were all forceful and there were 11 captains and winners on the field and a desire to be successful.”
Everton kicked off attacking the Kop in front of a capacity all-ticket crowd on a blustery autumnal day with bright sunshine emerging as the game began and showed their intent from the off, with Sharp almost getting in during the opening seconds after chasing down a loose pass from Phil Neal before Mark Lawrenson diverted the ball back to goalkeeper Grobbelaar. The opening exchanges were typically fast and frenetic with Ratcliffe showing his pace and defensive assuredness in dealing with an early break from Michael Robinson and referee Neil Midgley from Salford stepping in dowse a brief flare-up between Heath and Ronnie Whelan.
With Reid and Bracewell quickly gaining a firm grip in the middle of the park and Sharp and Heath’s movement and understanding not allowing the hosts to settle, Grobbelaar added to the tension within the home ranks by three times almost giving the Toffees a sight of goal through loose handling before salvaging himself, although Rush showed his threat still remained despite his injury lay-off by pulling deep to the far post and latching on to Robinson’s cross but his first touch betrayed him and allowed Harper to get a foot in and clear.
Kendall’s men began to turn the screw and went close to an opener shortly before the half-hour mark, Reid, Sharp and Bracewell combining to send Heath down the right and when his cross was only half-cleared, Harper's header kept the attack alive and only a last ditch Lawrenson block denied Sharp. With Liverpool unable to clear effectively, Dalglish fouled Van den Hauwe and from the free-kick 25 yards out Stevens unleashed a full blooded drive which Grobbelaar turned behind at full stretch, the Zimbabwean continuing his Jekyll and Hyde performance by flapping Harper’s ensuing near post corner to Van den Hauwe who couldn’t find the target.
The hosts hit back with their best chance soon afterwards as Rush and Dalglish combined to put the Welshmen in behind the square Everton defence but, one-on-one, Southall stood firm and got down well to his right to save well from his international team-mate. Stevens rifled another free kick wide as the interval approached with Jan Molby firing over the top as the struggling home side ended the half holding their own.
The goal which would not just decide the game but have seismic implications across Merseyside arrived three minutes after the break and was in no small part to Kendall’s planning and attention to detail. The match balls used at the time were at the discretion of the home club and Liverpool were one of a small number of clubs in the First Division who used an Adidas Tango, a different brand to that preferred by the Blues.
“Howard in his wisdom decided to bring in all these new balls that Liverpool and only a few other teams used,” Sharp recalled. “I loved them. They were a lot lighter and moved a lot more in the air, so we got used to them. All the training the week before was about hitting the ball on the volley so it would dip.”
So when Stevens and Reid exchanged passes just inside the Everton half and the defender’s lofted pass forward found Sharp 25 yards out, once his cushioned first touch took him inside Lawrenson the Scottish forward’s mind was made up for him - “We knew if you caught those balls right they’d fly. It sat up nicely and I thought ‘why not?’” - and he unleashed a sublime yet vicious right-footed volley which flew in a perfect arc beyond Grobbelaar’s despairing dive and into the back of the net to an explosion of joy from the thousands of Blues at the end and all around the ground.
“And the Evertonians have gone berserk!”, John Motson on commentary for BBC’s Match of the Day programme that evening exulted. “I haven’t seen a goal quite like that in a Merseyside derby for years. Absolutely marvellous to see him get behind the defender and take it first time on the volley giving Grobbelaar no chance. One of the goals of the season from the Everton number nine.”
Sharp was mobbed by his team-mates and scores of ecstatic Blues who couldn’t help but spill on to the pitch from both the Anfield Road end and the Kemlyn Road stand in celebration of a moment of monumental significance they knew they had just witnessed, with one - later identified as Frank Willmitt - becoming immortalised in Everton folklore as ‘Windmill Man’.
"Everyone remembers the boy with the red hair and glasses who lost it completely and ran onto the pitch waving his arms aimlessly in the air,” Sharp said.
“It was probably my most memorable goal because of the significance of the result and what it meant to the fans. The number of times I get stopped now by Evertonians to talk about that goal at Anfield is quite something. It’s great they remember it because they were barren years before the win. It was great to score against them when it meant that much.”
Liverpool tried to hit back with Dalglish forcing a corner which Southall claimed easily to produce another visceral roar from the Evertonians all around the ground still celebrating the goal and hailing their team’s ever-more evident supremacy as they began to taunt their hosts with chants of ‘going down, going down’. The Toffees were now filled with ever more belief and confidence and were inches away from doubling the lead when Heath’s trickery won a corner taken by Steven which Neal almost headed into his own net until Whelan’s desperate goal line clearance with Derek Mountfield waiting to pounce. Van den Hauwe went close to connecting with Stevens' cross shortly after the left-back was involved in brief altercations with John Wark and Rush as the home side’s frustrations began to boil over and Reid missed a glorious chance to kill the game just after the hour mark having been presented with the ball in front of goal after a kamikaze Neal error but could only screw his shot wide.
Dalglish forced Southall to claw out a free kick but that was as close as the increasingly desperate champions came to a leveller with the authority and command Everton had shown throughout only increasing as the game went on, Heath twice going close in the final minutes to putting the more realistic gloss on the scoreline the Blues’ dominance deserved. Referee Midgeley’s final whistle was met with a roar of resounding triumph from the thousands of jubilant Toffees inside an emptying Anfield as Motson reported: “And there it is, a moment of supreme celebration for Evertonians! Graeme Sharp’s goal for them, not just the goal of the season, they would call it the goal of the decade. The balance of power may be shifting on Merseyside but Everton needed this result to prove it. The FA Cup holders will not let Liverpool supporters forget this for many a long day but when all the excitement settles down the goal that settled the match was one for all us all to remember and it came during one of the biggest occasions in club football. Liverpool 0 Everton 1 and how the Evertonians will celebrate this weekend.”
The result dropped Liverpool to an unheard-of 17th in the First Division - their lowest position since 1970- and they would fall into the relegation placings before their next match but, despite the deepening Anfield crisis, Fagan graciously hailed the majesty of Sharp’s winning goal, describing it as “a bloody good goal worthy of winning any game. It would almost have been a shame if we’d scored after that. Well, not really.. we’d have been glad of one off someone’s backside actually.”
For his Everton counterpart Kendall, however, it was supreme vindication of his methods and approach after a tortuous period the previous winter and the biggest statement yet that his side were headed for further glory.
“Of all the things you plan for and think about with a Merseyside derby, a goal like that is probably not one of them,” the Blues boss later reflected. “Sharpie’s goal is one that everyone remembers. Those who were lucky enough to be there or to have watched it live on television will never forget it. We were confident before we went to Anfield, because we knew we were a good side. But after we had gone there and won, and won well, our belief just rocketed. When I took over in 1981 I was asked what my aims were and I said Liverpool were the team we had to catch, and then surpass. I think that day, we showed that we had done that. I had many great days during that time and saw many great performances. But there is something extra special about a derby win, especially at Anfield. I’ll never forget that day.”
It was a hugely gratifying afternoon as well for the match-winner Sharp who only a month earlier had put in a transfer request after being dropped having scored the winner against Coventry. Despite his crucial Wembley opener against Watford the previous May, the Scot had been left out of the semi-final victory over Southampton and would later reveal in his autobiography he was never fully convinced Kendall rated him as a player. But he went from strength to strength after thundering home a winner of such quality and importance, his 30th goal of the season against Queens Park Rangers the following May being the one which clinched the league championship with five games to spare.
"There was such a bond with that team, a sense that we were brought together at the right time, in the right place,” Sharp - whose stunning winner was as Motson predicted later voted goal of the season - said. “It just gelled, a real camaraderie on and off the pitch. We were already a confident bunch of footballers and we knew we were contenders, but beating Liverpool that day at Anfield gave us so much self-belief and stamped it on us. We hadn’t won there in 14 years, and it gave us the belief we could challenge them. The Mersey balance of power had just swung our way and the rest of the country now knew it. We were a serious team, played real football, kicked when we had to kick, professional. But honestly, it was like playing with your mates on the pitch every Saturday. When Howard and Colin brought that team together, we could feel how it all fitted together.”
Kendall’s men further highlighted their championship credentials the following Saturday by hammering Manchester United 5-0 at Goodison and went top of the league for the first time that season the following weekend with victory over Leicester City. Although defeats to Norwich City and Chelsea shortly before Christmas briefly toppled them from the summit, the Blues then went on a 28-match unbeaten run which saw the title sown up in early May with a record 90 point tally, also lifting the club’s first ever European trophy by securing the Cup Winners Cup and only missing out on a unique treble when Norman Whiteside’s extra-winner for Manchester United loosened their grip on the FA Cup only three days after the glory of Rotterdam.
Everton would later win FIFA’s Team of the Year award for 1985, the contributions of Reid and Southall being recognised in them lifting the PFA and Football Writers’ Player of the Year awards respectively and the Huyton-born midfielder was in no doubt how important that autumn day at Anfield proved to be.
"That was the moment,” he wrote in his book ‘Cheer Up Peter Reid’. "That was the goal that shook the football world, the result that tipped Merseyside on its axis and underlined Everton's status as the coming force.”
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