Book For Christmas

The Everton Miscellany – Mark O’Brien

I’ve always been a fan of Mark O’Brien, initially through the When Skies Are Grey fanzine and now via the best Everton fan site out there with the online version of WSAG. It’s irreverent and doesn’t take all things Everton FC too seriously. After all, it is only a game. Crucially for me, it keeps the real whiners at bay.

The Everton Miscellany is part of a well-trodden football book formula, throwing in facts, trivia and short stories to create a perfect book for dipping in when you fancy it. All the main UK football clubs have one; Everton dragging along at the back, beaten to the publishers by Leicester City. The 148 pages is packed full of balanced bits of trivia and interesting text. The short, punchy paragraphs avoid getting too detailed and the entire book is nicely broken up by ‘player pics’, biographies of a handful of our greatest players, a few who also became managers. Legends one and all. It all starts with Dixie Dean as early as page four and quickly onto the second most prolific scorer in the club’s history, Graeme Sharp. No sign of Stuart Barlow.

There’s an account of Latchford’s 30-goal season, the ’64 betting scandal, Ball’s white boots and non-player related info on the origin of the Z-Cars theme tune and Eddie Kavanagh’s race across the pitch from Wembley ’66. We’re 9th on the all time Premier League table – somehow that doesn’t surprise me - and there is a nice bit on Poll’s bottling the Goodison derby result in 2000, disallowing Hutchison’s goal. A classic understated post-match quote from Walter Smith, manager at the time: “the referee took the easy way out”. You don’t say Walter.

The list of foreign players to have donned a royal blue jersey makes for painful reading in the chapter ‘Foreign Legion’. I know every club has a comparable list compiled over the last 15 years, but what a shower in the shape of Kroldrup, Nyarko, Bakayoko, Tal, Claus Thomsen, Rehn, Degn and Li Wei Feng. Incidentally, Sweden has provided the most imports down the years (totalling five) with Limpar being the only really good one.

It’s a nice piece of work and short on faults. OK, I don’t think David Johnson is listed in the section on players who had two spells with the club, and Bjarni Vidarsson is Icelandic, not Norwegian. The hand-drawn pictures that accompany the Goodison Legends biographies are, however, diabolical. Joe Royle looks like a cross between Desperate Dan and Alan Shearer and I couldn’t begin to guess who the drawing of Howard Kendall is actually based on. But in a way they add to the appeal in their awfulness.

So, to remind yourself of Peter Reid’s ‘just for men’ transformation, Fergie’s 8 dismissals for Everton and an account of our most recent, and maybe last title win from 1987, rush out tomorrow and treat yourself to this little blue book for £9.99. Or buy two and give the other to someone who needs reminding of the words of Alan Ball, “once Everton has touched you nothing will be the same”.