Walter’s blueprint can help Everton beat drop
Lampard should stick to a plan like Smith did and stay calm, says ex-Goodison hero Jeffers
FRANK LAmpARd’s motivational strategies are more instinctive than is generally appreciated. He reminded his players of sean dyche’s declaration that Everton ‘don’t know how to win a game away from home’ ahead of the match against manchester United — a win which seems more vital than ever given Burnley’s rehabilitation.
But with fans planning a march of support on Goodison Road to lift the players as they arrive to face Chelsea tomorrow, the greatest source of inspiration is to be found in the story of the club’s extraordinary fight against the drop in strikingly similar circumstances 23 years ago.
Then, as now, they only hit the bottom three in April, with a defeat at Anfield contributing to the plunge. Then, as now, they couldn’t buy a goal despite a summer of substantial spending, as owner peter Johnson tried to justify the sacking of boss Howard Kendall. Then, as now, there were six games left to save themselves.
manager Walter smith’s decision that march to sign Kevin Campbell, who had been suffering unspeakable racist abuse at Turkish side Trabzonspor, seemed inauspicious after his home debut against sheffield Wednesday, which Everton lost 2-1 to fall into the drop zone.
But Campbell struck up a pivotal partnership with 18-year-old Francis Jeffers in which the pair scored 13 goals, secured four wins from five games and saw the team safe before the last day. Before spring was out, Jeffers had even been called up to Kevin Keegan’s England squad.
The secret to it all, Jeffers reflects, was the stability provided by former Rangers boss smith. setting out a plan and sticking to it.
‘The sheffield Wednesday game was a disaster and I remember coming off the field after it, as a player and an Evertonian, thinking: “Oh my God. We’re not going to be okay here”,’ he recalled.
‘But Walter didn’t change anything, despite all the clamour for change after a result like that. He trusted the plan. He maybe saw that Kevin and I did have a bit of an intuition — a sixth sense, really — and he stayed with that. By chopping and changing you can almost build pressure but he decided he’d fallen on something with us. It takes some b***s, that. What happened next wasn’t luck.’ Home wins against Coventry and Charlton were followed by a 3-1 victory at Newcastle, with Campbell netting twice in each. Then, after a setback at Chelsea, a 6-0 hammering of a West Ham side including Rio Ferdinand, paolo di Canio and Lampard. Campbell, who had just become the first loanee to be named player of the month, scored a hat-trick. don Hutchison, who set up Campbell’s first with a defence-splitting pass, just as he had at st James’ park, recalled how the two of them had a system of ‘opposites’ going on. ‘We worked on it through repetition,’ said the ex-scotland star. ‘If I saw him making to come short to feet, I knew he was going to spin off and get in behind. If he made to run behind, I knew he would check that run and come short. so much was dependent on Kev’s movement. You could see in his body language where he was going.’
scot Gemmill, signed from Nottingham Forest on deadline day six weeks earlier, remembers the sheer scale of support on the day of the West Ham game, where congestion outside Goodison park forced a delayed kick-off.
‘Everton had the highest attendance in the premier League that weekend and it felt like it,’ said the man who now coaches scotland Under-21s. ‘The sense of occasion, playing at home in front of those fans and to get the performance right, that was a real tipping point for me at Everton.’
But character and attitude were the most significant traits in that run of six games, said Gemmill.
‘It’s really hard for a team to start winning games all of a sudden when they haven’t been. I know that now and that’s why what happened back then was probably bigger than I realised at the time.
‘I took it all for granted but now that I’ve coached for the last ten years, I know you need players with attitude who are willing to do the work. We really had that.’
Everton also needed ice in their veins. some of their players had already survived on goal difference the previous season after a draw with Coventry at Goodison on the last sunday.
‘Everton is a demanding place, not always an easy place to play,’ said another former player from that time.
‘The city has an intensity and so many of the supporters are local and are part of that emotion.’
But Jeffers, who has since established himself as a coach at Everton and Ipswich, recalls Campbell’s extraordinary calmness in that crisis.
‘I felt it from the first time I met him in the corridor,’ he said. He saw the same characteristic in smith. ‘He never changed. He never gave anything away, in terms of feeling pressure.’
Now, as then, Everton are desperately looking for a goalscorer. Jeffers feels that salomon Rondon, the Rafa Benitez signing, could be that man. Hutchison, an analyst for the premier League’s match broadcasts, is not so sure about Rondon, but shares Gemmill’s view ‘charisma’ is critical to this fight.
‘It was a quality we had in ’99,’ he said. ‘defenders like david Unsworth, Craig short. Hand on heart, I don’t think Everton have enough at the back now, in the way we did then. If you were playing against them, your team talk would be: “If you get a goal they will go under”. That’s why getting dominic Calvert-Lewin back and keeping Richarlison firing seems fundamental to all this.’
Everton have urged fans to ‘bring your banners, flags, voices’ to the Chelsea game and perhaps an unexpected source of salvation really is out there once more.
The former mp Lord Barry Jones asked the bishops in the House of Lords this week if they would use their ‘considerable influence to pray hard for my team Everton Football Club’. A Conservative peer replied: ‘I cannot speak for the Lord spiritual,’ he said. ‘But I know prayers will be directed.’