After a traumatic and tumultuous campaign in which Everton faced the greatest threat to their Premier League status this century, a summer of squad rebuilding awaits at Goodison Park but Frank Lampard would do well to channel the spirit of the Blues from 2004 as he looks to piece together a new-look side for next season. Just as they did they did this year, Everton finished 2003/04 on just 39 points following a 5-1 defeat on the final day.
Paired together, 2003/04 and 2021/22 are an anything but handsome couple for the Blues given that they now share the dubious honour of being the lowest equivalent points totals in the club’s 134-year Football League/Premier League history - but at least unlike 1929/30 and 1950/51, the two occasions that Everton were relegated, they did avoid the dreaded drop. The difference being in what was long-serving manager David Moyes’ second full season, despite their paltry final points tally, the Blues weren’t actually ever in any genuine danger.
A 3-1 home win over Tottenham Hotspur on Good Friday moved Everton up to 12 th position in the table and secured their place in the top flight for another year but they then failed to win any of their last six fixtures – losing all of the final four – and plummeted to finish 17 th .
READ MORE: Everton's summer timeline in full including pre-season and fixture dates
READ MORE: Everton transfer state of play as what to expect from amid summer rebuild
Although the current crop ended up one position higher in 16 th , recent months have been far more perilous and despite Lampard having picked up the pieces from the mess that Rafael Benitez (who won just one of his last 13 Premier League matches) left behind, the club were still staring towards the precipice of life in the Championship when they trailed 2-0 at home to Crystal Palace in their penultimate fixture before a sensational comeback to triumph 3-2.
It’s often said that the darkest hour is the one just before dawn and just as that proved to be the case in 2004, the Blues will hope that history repeats itself in that manner in the coming months. Back then, Moyes – who would ultimately remain in charge for another nine years before Sir Alex Ferguson handpicked him as his successor at Manchester United – was facing suggestions that he had lost the dressing room but while such damning claims are intangible, the parlous state of the club’s finances at the time left Goodison Park chief’s powerless to prevent the seizing of their most-valuable asset when it came to that summer’s big move down the East Lancs Road.
Ferguson would later claim that Everton supremo Bill Kenwright put him on the phone to his venerable now late mother Hope during the negotiations of Wayne Rooney’s transfer, with the Scot saying she barracked him with the words: “Don’t you dare steal my boy!” Ferguson wondered whether his verbal volley from a Scouse nan was some kind of negotiating tactic but a £27million deal would make the lad from Croxteth the most expensive teenager in world football at the time.
The Blues had lost the home-grown hero – along with fellow striker Tomasz Radzinski, who moved to Fulham for £1.75million, three years after he cost £4.5million – but they seemed to relish in the face of adversity when it came to restoring their fortunes against the odds. While the outlay on replacements proved minimal, Moyes targeted hungry players who had a point to prove.
Everton were just one of 14 different clubs that Marcus Bent turned out for over his career but for a time they got some of the best value out of the journeyman striker who had cost Ipswich Town £3million less than three years earlier but was picked up for just £450,000.
Australian midfielder Tim Cahill, eager to prove himself in the Premier League after being part of Millwall’s run to the FA Cup final, proved to be a bargain buy of even greater proportions and would be a passionate presence in the Blues side for the next eight seasons, scoring 68 times in 278 matches and having that happy knack of finding the net at vital times.
Everton are sometimes at their best when their backs against the wall as shown by Joe Royle’s ‘Dogs of War’ while Neville Southall called upon the current side to adopt a siege mentality and “shove it back in their faces” when it seemed many within the game were relishing the prospect of them going down. That proved the case in 2004/05 when the Blues shocked the football world with their highest-ever Premier League finish of fourth a mere 12 months after their 39-point haul.
Nobody is suggesting a turnaround of such dramatic proportions for 2022/23 but with question marks over the futures of some of Everton’s biggest names such as Richarlison and Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Financial Fair Play regulations to adhere to, the parallels seem obvious.
Moyes used to grumble that trying to compete with the riches of petrodollar-fuelled Manchester City was akin to “taking a knife to a gunfight” yet the Blues have largely squandered the transfer funds provided to them by Farhad Moshiri who back in January made Lampard his seventh manager since 2016.
It was clear that some kind of fresh approach was required – hence the strategic review and appointment of Kevin Thelwell as director of football – but regardless of how he and Lampard go about reconstructing a group of under-achieving players who were widely reported as commanding the biggest wage bill in the division outside of the Premier League’s ‘Big Six’, a rekindling of 2004’s mood could help revive fortunes as another new era beckons at Everton.
