Complete with their “May the fourth be with you” slogan it’s not only Star Wars fans who can pick out this date on their calendars as being special, it also has particular significance for Evertonians as well. Today in 1987, Howard Kendall’s Goodison Park Empire was able to strike back and secure their second League championship in three seasons although some 35 years on – the longest such drought in the club’s history – it remains their last.
A generation on and Everton – who have added just one major trophy since in the shape of the 1995 FA Cup – currently find themselves fighting just to remain in the Premier League. Despite David Moyes’ observations when travelling through Liverpool en route to being unveiled as manager in 2002, prompting his iconic “People’s Club” observation, human nature being what it is, many a young fan will have been lured over to what Blues supporters would consider to be “The Dark Side” over the intervening decades.
Yet still at a time when their neighbours are challenging for what would be an unprecedented ‘quadruple’, there remain many thousands of loyal but long-suffering match-going patrons across the region devoted to the city’s senior club. Outsiders, particularly those not from this area, might be ignorant to Everton’s rich heritage and unique position within the game but as the club that enjoyed the highest average attendances over the Football League’s first decade, they can justifiably claim the title as being this country’s oldest major fanbase.
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Almost 134 years on from their first topflight fixture against Accrington in 1888 – with just four seasons missed in between – supporters of the Blues are going the extra mile to try and ensure their under-achieving team don’t suffer the ignominy of a first relegation since 1951 by attempting to roar Frank Lampard’s team to safety. Everton fans organised a rousing reception for their players long before kick-off against Chelsea on Sunday when thousands of them lined the streets outside Goodison Park to greet the hosts’ team bus on its arrival and similar plans have been hatched for their next home game against Brentford.
As the old Everton anthem ‘Banks of the Royal Blue Mersey’ proclaims: “We’ll fight, fight, fight, with all our might, for the boys in the royal blue jersey.” Whether or not it will prove enough to save their team, these supporters are making sure those on the pitch are as up for the battle as they are.
At face value, there might seem few similarities between Everton’s 1987 title-winning vintage and the current crop who over the course of the 2021/22 season to date have averaged less than a point per game. But one lesson that can be taken from Kendall’s second League champions – who secured their prize thanks to a 1-0 victory at Norwich City with Pat Van Den Hauwe netting just 55 seconds into the contest – is that the Blues often rise to the top when faced with adversity. Everton went into the 1986/87 season having just sold World Cup Golden Boot winner Gary Lineker, plunderer of 40 goals for them the previous term, to Barcelona but would ultimately end up sharing the scoring responsibilities between them.
They were also hit by a catalogue of injuries as Steve Johnson recalls in his book Everton: The Complete Record . Neville Southall didn’t play until late October; Gary Stevens didn’t play until December; Peter Reid until January; Van Den Hauwe until February; Kevin Sheedy was out from January to April; Graeme Sharp from February to May and Paul Bracewell missed the entire campaign. Yet somehow the Blues eked out results and stayed in touch with the leading pack.
A run of 10 wins in 13 matches between November and February took Everton from eighth place to the summit. A 2-1 loss at Watford saw them surrender top spot to defending champions Liverpool but then seven straight victories saw the Blues regain command and despite a 3-1 reversal at Anfield on April 25, they secured their crown at Carrow Road with two games still left to play.
Everton’s title was clinched on a Bank Holiday Monday and the timing, combined with a BBC decision not to run a Match of the Day highlights programme, ensured coverage of the feat amounted to just 1 minute and 15 seconds of footage on terrestrial television. Such a paucity of exposure for the feat prompted author Paul McParlan to give his book on the subject the title The Forgotten Champions .
Discussing his publication, which the lifelong Evertonian compiled with help from interviews with captain Kevin Ratcliffe, Alan Harper and Paul Power, McParlan told the ECHO back in September: “One thing that came across from all three of them was what that journey was like coming back from Norwich. What the party was like on the coach coming back to Liverpool. Them telling the coach driver to drive back as slow as possible.
“All three of them said that was the highlight of their Everton career, that party atmosphere coming back from Norwich City. Even more because they had won the title against all odds. It was a real sense of achievement having not only won it, but by winning it by nine points.”
The same might be said for Joe Royle’s Dogs of War and their aforementioned Wembley triumph over Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in 1995 or Moyes’ class of 2004/05, who went on to secure Everton’s highest Premier League finish just a year after they’d finished 17th on 39 points and then sold Wayne Rooney. The Blues have been backed into a corner again here and it might look like the chips are down but that only means it’s time to come out fighting.
