The Merseyside derby was a different animal in the 1980s, but Everton have always enjoyed raining on Liverpool’s parade
By Steven Pye for That 1980s Sports Blog
The 1987-88 season was not an easy one for Everton. Defending their title was always going to be difficult but Howard Kendall’s departure to Athletic Bilbao hit the club hard. Colin Harvey stepped up to the top job, but he was not the first or last assistant to discover that replacing a legendary manager can be a thankless task.
That first post-Kendall season was a tough watch for Evertonians. While they toiled to a fourth-place finish, their neighbours were sweeping all before them. Boosted by the summer signings of Peter Beardsley, John Barnes and Ray Houghton, Liverpool left the rest of the league standing. While John Aldridge and the new arrivals were hitting the net regularly up front, their defence was proving just as efficient at the other end of the pitch. They won five games 4-0 before Christmas and put together a run of seven straight clean sheets around the New Year, showing that every component in the engine was firing. Before long, talk turned to records this team could set.
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