Colin Harvey’s struggles to extend Howard Kendall’s Everton glory years are examined in a new book reviewed by Eric Brown….
BY ERIC BROWN
Howard Kendall steered Everton back to the summit of English football as he became the club’s most successful manager with two league titles and an FA Cup win.
Yet club insiders insisted his number two Colin Harvey was the most significant influence during those 1980s glory years.
Harvey and Kendall first teamed up as members of the club’s legendary Holy Trinity midfield trio which, along with Alan Ball, is commemorated by a Goodison Park statue.
When their Everton playing careers ended, they headed in different directions until returning to the Toffees management. Harvey returned under Billy Bingham and, as reserve team coach, supervised the development of Gary Stevens, Kevin Richardson and Kevin Ratcliffe among others. In 1981, Kendall promoted Harvey to first-team coach and later assistant manager.
The foundations of Everton’s most successful decade were complete. When Kendall surprisingly left for Athletic Bilbao in June 1987, Harvey was invited to succeed him by a board keen to follow Liverpool’s successful tradition of appointing managers from boot room staff.
What happened next is the subject of a revealing new book “Succession” on the three-and-a-bit years of Harvey’s reign.
It should have worked, given Harvey’s respect from Everton players, but in fact he presided over an era when the club slipped from title contenders into top-flight also-rans.
He was on a hiding to nothing from the start, according to author Nathan O’Hagan. Other clubs experienced difficulty replacing legendary managers such as Matt Busby at Manchester United. Other coaches experienced difficulty being shunted into the manager’s office, such as Brian Kidd, a coaching great at Old Trafford but managerial flop at Blackburn.
So it was with Harvey. He always appeared uncomfortable with the increasingly important public relations side of the job and proved mostly unsuccessful in the transfer market.
Despite spending his whole life in football, these were aspects of the industry he had never before dealt with. Harvey was probably the right man at the wrong time. As if replacing Kendall wasn’t going to be difficult enough, he faced the monumental task of evolving Kendall’s team at a time when top home players fled the country in droves because of the European ban on English clubs following the Heysel chaos.
Gary Stevens and Trevor Steven left to seek new clubs in European competition, and Harvey’s attempts to bring in galvanising new blood mostly didn’t please survivors of Kendall’s old guard. This led to an obvious split between the two camps, often leading to open disagreement.
@zopemedia Colin Harvey – born a Blue We interviewed Colin in 2010 for the Reds and Blues project, asking him about growing up a Blue and what it meant to him. Colin Harvey played 320 times for Everton, scoring 18 goals. Nicknamed 'the white Pele', he won the league in 1970, the FA cup in 1966 and won 1 England Cap. His managerial career saw him manage Everton between 1987 and 1990. Like and subscribe for more content #EFC #Everton #EvertonFC
♬ original sound – ZopeMedia
Kevin Sheedy was unhappy at Harvey insisting he remained on the left of midfield because he wanted to play a central role. Graeme Sharp didn’t gel with his expensive new strike partner Tony Cottee, who he felt could have contributed more. Neville Southall, probably the world’s best goalkeeper when Harvey took over, frequently had transfer requests rejected and his resentment boiled over into protest when he sat with his back to a goalpost during half-time at one match.
A spate of injuries haunted Harvey too. He used seven different players at fullback, only one of which was a specialist in that position.
Some of his transfer dealings descended into farce. Manchester City accepted £1.7million bids from Everton and Spurs for striker Paul Stewart, which concluded with the player saying he would join the London club. Next day, Harvey was startled to discover Stewart had turned up at Everton’s Bellefield training ground for talks. Stewart was swiftly sent packing.
Harvey showed plenty of ambition to sign big names even if the board didn’t seem 100 per cent convinced. He tried for Gary Lineker, Bryan Robson, Ian Wright and Paul Gascoigne. None of them signed, although Wright seemed interested before a broken leg scuppered any deal and typified Harvey’s luck.
So instead of those stellar names, he ended up with Ian Wilson, Mike Milligan, Ray Atteveld and Stephan Rehn who are remembered with little affection by the Goodison faithful.
Harvey simply struggled to replace Kendall’s ageing stars with others of similar quality, and Everton plummeted into relegation trouble. An insipid draw on Luton’s plastic pitch left Everton in 18th place with one win in their first 10 games then a League Cup defeat by Sheffield United led to Harvey’s sacking on November 1, 1990.
But that wasn’t the end of Harvey’s Everton story. Just days later, he was back at Goodison as assistant to Kendall in a prodigal partnership. Harvey’s trials and tribulations in the Goodison hotseat are vividly recalled by author and Everton nut O’Hagan, who scrutinises a rarely examined period of the club’s history.
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