Tosh Farrell Soccer Magazine June 2020 | Page 15

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.