You arrived at Goodison as a player around the same time as
Howard Kendall arrived as manager and goals from Andy Gray
and yourself against Stoke arguably started the glory trail for
Howard and the team, could you sense Everton would do well
under him. What were some of his qualities.
Yes, 1981. I was Howard’s first signing although he did not know
me at the time.
I was at Queens Park which is an amateur club in Scotland and
had been watched by Everton for about a year when Gordon Lee
was the manager. I went to meet Gordon at Goodison on the day
he was sacked. Would you believe that despite having just been
sacked he told me I should sign for Everton as it was a great club.
I had a number of clubs I could have chosen from (twenty-six in
total) including Manchester City, who had just won the FA cup,
Rangers, Celtic and many others in England and Scotland , but
Gordon saying what he said clinched it for me. In the early days
following Howard’s appointment the headlines in the paper were
“Howard Kendal’s Magnificent Seven, as he had just signed seven
players, which didn’t include me. I guess headlines reading
magnificent seven plus one or the magnificent eight did not have
the same ring to it!
Howard had great qualities, The players wanted to play for him.
Howard was not necessarily a coach in the true sense of the
word, Colin Harvey who became his assistant was more of the
coach, but Howard had great man management skills. I learnt
more from Howard about how he dealt with players and
situations than I did on the training field. He and Kenny Dalglish
were brilliant man managers. While l learnt more from Colin
Harvey and Ray Harford about coaching.
To answer the second part of your question During 81-82 we had
really good players coming through in the reserves. Players like
Sharpe, Higgins, Ratcliffe, Richardson to name a few, I remember
saying to myself, these boys can play. What we needed was
time and I have to say the board at Everton were brilliant during
that time. Fans were not happy with the first team’s performances
and the board were under pressure to sack Howard. Others clubs
may have given way, but they stuck with him and the rest you can
say is history.