The day after the Liverpool Echo had printed the first artist's impression of Everton's proposed new home, a super-stadium poised to rise phoenix-like somewhere or other on the city's outskirts, a phone rang on the paper's sports desk. The caller announced that after nothing more than a cursory examination of the drawing he had discovered a major fault with the new ground's main stand.
With barely suppressed delight, he managed to squeeze out the words: "It faces the pitch," before he and those draped around his shoulders dissolved into furious laughter. That sort of mirth-making at Everton's expense has become all too familiar over the last few months. So, when precisely did it all go wrong? The more astute would say, not the summer of '97 but the summer of '87 when Howard Kendall resigned as the club's manager for the first time, leaving the best side in England to disintegrate inside two seasons.
Kendall is now back in charge for a third time, the man closest to a vacant seat when the music stopped six weeks ago. His appointment pleased many, disappointed some and mystified a few. But, it did at least serve to draw a line beneath the club's ludicrous, ham-fisted search for a successor to Joe Royle who departed in March. The day after Royle's departure Everton chairman Peter Johnson allowed his boyish enthusiasm to get the better of him. "We shall appoint a world class coach," he promised. "There will be many pleasant surprises for our supporters in the months ahead." Oh dear. What ensued was embarrassing. A Keystone Cops-like pursuit of former England manager Bobby Robson was followed by everyone but everyone being linked with a job Johnson believed to be the most attractive in world football. The hunt appeared to end on the doorstep of Andy Gray, a television pundit who had never managed a professional football team in his life, but he opted to jilt Everton and signed a vastly imporved contrcat with Sky TV.
Kendall was to swiftly discover that he could not even throw someone else's money at a problem not of his own making. Paul Ince preferred Liverpool, Les Ferdinand preferred Tottenham Hotspur, Ciri Sforza preferred Kaiserslautern and, most famously of all, Fabrizio Ravanelli preferred to stamp his aristocratic feet like a sulking child. Everton offered Ravanelli £35,000 a week but it wasn't enough. "It could well be that we will have to enjoy a complete season of relative success before the big name players sit up and begin to take notice of this great club once again," said Kendall. "We may even have to qualify for Europe in the season coming up before the high calibre players I am looking for will join us. If that is the way it's got to be, then so be it," he added. And so, when Crystal Palace travel to the North-west this Saturday to open Everton's season, the faithful will have to make do with John Oster and Gareth Farrelly, new boys selected from football's bottom drawer. Many are forecasting disaster. Who knows, Gray and Ravanelli may well be among them. Everton's veteran captain Dave Watson begs to differ. "This is a different Howard Kendall to the last time he was here," he says. "He has a look about him, a steely determination in his eyes.
