A statistical summary of Everton’s unforgettable (for all the wrong reasons) season.
Everton
Harry Cooke – Dixie Dean’s Saviour
On 5th May 1928, Dixie Dean scored a hat-trick against Arsenal on the final day of the 1927/28 season. The last of those goals was Dixie’s 60th league goal of the season – a record in English football, beating George Camsell’s record of 59 in a season. No player has come close since and it is extremely likely that this tally will never be beaten. However, Dixie came really close to not playing in the game at all. In the previous game against Burnley, he picked up a thigh injury. The record was in sight but the injury made Dixie’s hopes of breaking it fade away. But then along came Harry Cooke.
In an interview with Liverpool Echo journalist Michael Charters in May 1971, Dixie thanked long-time trainer at the club Harry Cooke for making the 60-goal season possible. Cooke was determined to make him fit for the Arsenal game and beat it.
You see, if it hadn’t been for old Harry Cooke, I wouldn’t have played against Arsenal at all. Harry was the trainer at Everton in all my years there, and he was a great character. His birthday was the same day as mine, on January 22nd, and he was like a father to me.
The position was this: George Camsell, the Middlesbrough centre-forward, had set the League scoring record at 59 the season before, but that was in the Second Division. With two games to go, I had scored 53 goals in 37 League games, so I wanted seven goals from the last two matches to beat George’s record.
The first of these two games was at Burnley on the Wednesday of the last week of the season. I got four that day, all before half-time, and I was particularly pleased because I was playing against big Jack Hill, the England centre-half in those days, and a particular pal of mine. He was reckoned the best in the business then, but any rate, I got four against big Jack and he rubbed his faced on the ground when the fourth one went in. I didn’t do anything in the second half because I pulled a thigh muscle badly, and I was in some pain. Old Harry Cooke was shaking when he found out about it – and so was I.
Harry was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to play against Arsenal. So when we got back from Burnley that night, he came with me to my home in Alderley Avenue, Birkenhead. He wanted to put hot plasters on my leg to get the muscle right. You’re supposed to put these plasters on pretty hot and leave them for about ten to twelve hours, but Harry wasn’t content with that. He wanted to change them every two hours so that the heat from the plasters would really work. So I went to bed and he sat in a chair in my bedroom and woke me up every two hours so that he could put a fresh plaster on. He did this for three nights on the run – the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights before the Arsenal game.
Without him, I’d never have played that day and never broken the record.
What we used to do was that in the morning, I’d run him to his home in Wallasey before we went over to Goodison for more treatment. I don’t know how he stuck it for three nights on end without much sleep, but he told me he used to try and get a few hours sleep each afternoon before he came back to my home in Birkenhead to start putting on the plasters all over again.
He was a wonderful man – all the lads at Everton would do anything for him, and he was a wonderful man to me.
For decades, Everton fans have been adulating Dixie for breaking the record, but there has been little mention of Harry Cooke. He was Everton through and through and his key contribution to Dixie’s record should be talked about more often.
Everton’s Forgotten Prodigy
The word “wonderkid” has been bandied about a lot in football nowadays. Any young player having one or two good games has been described as one. Although, it did used to mean something. In Everton’s case, some prodigies ended up having great careers, such as Dixie Dean, Joe Royle and Wayne Rooney. Some, however, didn’t meet their expectations, such as Michael Branch, Francis Jeffers and Jose Baxter. But one prodigy in particular has been completely forgotten about. A wartime wonderkid who was compared to Everton legend Torry Gillick – Billy Lowe.
How Dixie Joined Everton
Dixie Dean is unarguably Everton’s greatest ever player. When he was at Tranmere, umpteen other teams were interested in signing him, with one even giving him a tour of their stadium. He ultimately decided to join the club he supported since he was 8 years old. But how did he come to join Everton?
Fred Geary’s Brush With Death
In his debut season at Everton, Fred Geary scored 22 goals in 18 league games, which helped Everton finish 2nd in the second Football League season, just 2 points behind champions Sunderland. In all competitions, he scored 27 goals in 20 games. Of those 20 games, he failed to score in only 3. An impeccable start to his Everton career. However, it was very nearly a short one.
Tommy Lawton At Rock Bottom
Tommy Lawton was once considered to be the next Dixie Dean. He had a remarkable goalscoring record, becoming the First Division’s top goalscorer twice, despite being only a teenager. The outbreak of World War II prevented him from fulfilling his potential, however he still had a magnificent wartime goalscoring record, scoring 152 goals in 115 games for Everton. After the war, he left Everton for Chelsea for a fee of £11,500 in 1945 and then he joined Third Division South side Notts County for a British record fee of £20,000. He then had spells at Brentford and Arsenal before becoming player-manager of Kettering. He won the Southern League title in his debut season by 8 points, which was enough to impress his former team Notts County and hired him as their manager in 1957 after the season finished. From then on, it all went wrong.
The Downfall of Ronald Koeman
Ronald Koeman’s tenure as Everton manager lasted 496 days. During his time at the club, Everton have spent nearly a quarter of a billion pounds. £150 million of which were spent last summer. Ronald Koeman, like Roberto Martinez, had a great first season. But also like Roberto Martinez, he had a disaster afterwards and fans quickly turned on him.
In spite of a fantastic home record last season, Everton’s poor away record more or less evened it out. Everton fans wanted the club to break the top 6, and now they have money, they felt that it can be achievable. The task was made harder following the sale of Romelu Lukaku and fans desperately wanted them to sign a top-class striker as the signings of Wayne Rooney and Sandro Ramirez as well as the deadline day signing from the previous summer Dominic Calvert-Lewin are not good enough to be classed as such. Olivier Giroud was the one Koeman wanted but he decided to stay. After that, the club didn’t seem to have a plan B. But why did Everton have to wait for Giroud to make a decision on his then-questionable future when there were other players available like, for example, Javier Hernandez and Kelechi Iheanacho? Both would have been great signings for Everton, but they ended up joining West Ham and Leicester respectively instead. The blame there lies with not only Koeman, but Steve Walsh and the board as well.
The lack of a top-class striker was evident in Everton’s abysmal start to the season. Not just that but Everton’s lack of attacking threat as a whole. So far in the Premier League this season, Everton had 59 shots from the inside the area but only 6 resulted in goals – a success rate of just 10.2%. Only Southampton, Bournemouth and Crystal Palace have a worse success rate. Dominic Calvert-Lewin in particular had 16 shots from inside the area but scored no goals. Everton had their chances but they didn’t make the most of them. With a top-class striker, it could have been entirely different.
Another problem is tactics. Ronald Koeman just didn’t have a plan. All he did was change the formation over and over again and hoped for the best.
| Opponents | Formation |
| Ruzomberok | 4-2-3-1 |
| Ruzomberok | 3-4-1-2 |
| Stoke | 3-4-2-1 |
| Hajduk Split | 4-2-3-1 |
| Manchester City | 3-4-2-1 |
| Hajduk Split | 4-2-3-1 |
| Chelsea | 3-4-2-1 |
| Tottenham | 4-2-3-1 |
| Atalanta | 4-2-3-1 |
| Manchester United | 3-4-2-1 |
| Sunderland | 4-2-3-1 |
| Bournemouth | 4-2-3-1 |
| Apollon Limassol | 4-2-3-1 |
| Burnley | 4-2-3-1 |
| Brighton | 4-2-3-1 |
| Lyon | 4-1-4-1 |
| Arsenal | 3-4-2-1 |
The players had difficulty gelling at the start of the season, but they are still having difficulty gelling now. But how can they gel when the formation almost always changes and there’s no plan? The tactics were too defensive and there was no width. Everton fell behind in 11 of their last 12 games in all competitions. The one game they didn’t fall behind in was against Sunderland. And when they fell behind, they didn’t bounce back and believe they could still win. The one time they did, they relied on a player Ronald Koeman refused to give a locker to. The mess Everton were in on the pitch is shown below.
Everton players' average positions in their Premier League and Europa League group stage games. #EFC pic.twitter.com/muCNqGno2I
— EFC Statto (@EFC_Statto) October 3, 2017
Everton had a difficult start fixtures-wise – they had to play Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham, Manchester United and Arsenal in their first 9 league games. They were bound to be difficult games but that doesn’t mean they weren’t beatable. Burnley managed 5 points out of 12 away from home against Chelsea, Tottenham, Liverpool and Manchester City (plus 3 points at Goodison!). Everton only managed 1 point against the top 6 teams. Everton’s performances against the teams on paper they should have beaten were also below par. And their overall performance in the Europa League group stage was awful. Before this season, Ronald Koeman won only 3 of his previous 25 European matches. Was the writing on the wall but we just walked past it?
The final nail in the coffin was the Arsenal game. Purely for this statistic alone.
Goals at Goodison in 2017/18 PL:
Everton – 5
Arsenal – 5Shots on target at Goodison in 2017/18 PL:
Everton – 15
Arsenal – 14#EFC— EFC Statto (@EFC_Statto) October 22, 2017
Everton are currently in the relegation zone and virtually out of Europe because of dreadful tactics, players being at sixes and sevens (especially in some games where they easily could have conceded six or seven) and zero killer instinct. Some people might say that Ronald Koeman was let go too early. Some might say Steve Walsh and the board were more to blame for not signing the right players. However, in order for a manager to succeed, they need to relish these challenges and sort out a plan that suits the team and stick with it, play players who actually play in those positions and believe there’s no such thing as “expected defeats.”
Everton have spent £150 million to be a laughing stock. The fans deserve better. And it’s vital that Koeman’s successor turns things round.
The Secret Evertonian
On December 3rd, 1892, Everton were playing league leaders Preston. One name in particular stood out – a certain “Thompson”.
Source: Liverpool Mercury
His name was air-quoted for a reason: he’s not called Thompson at all. He is called J. Campbell.
Heads Or Tails?
A coin toss is normally used in football to decide who kicks the game off. Also, to decide who plays in the Euro 1968 final. But it has also been used to help a player decide which team to join.
Farewell Anfield
On April 30th, 1892, Everton played their last ever game at Anfield as the club’s home against Football Alliance side Burton Swifts. After months of conflict over rent and sneaky one-upmanship, Everton were evicted from Anfield. They said goodbye to Anfield by playing one last game in front of 5,000 fans.