Pat Van Den Hauwe by Pat Van Den Hauwe

Author:Pat Van Den Hauwe [Pat Van Den Hauwe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784187088
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2015-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

12

ALL CHANGE

After regaining the Championship and, once again, happy that it was business as usual, the bombshell news landed that Howard had resigned and gone to manage in Spain. I was shell-shocked. Had he gone a year earlier after missing out on the League and Cup in a week to Liverpool, and having sold Lineker to Barcelona, I would probably have understood it a bit more. We were champions, had a decent squad and, in all honesty, Athletic Bilbao were hardly Real Madrid or Barcelona, so I could not understand it. And as it all happened during pre-season, there were no goodbyes – he was just gone.

Maybe Howard thought he had taken us as far as he could, given that the European ban had kicked in. Maybe he just fancied a change. Either way, it was a sad day for Everton Football Club. One positive thing to come out of it all was that Colin Harvey had agreed to stay and take over from Howard, at least meaning that we avoided bringing in some outsider with no idea how the club worked.

All the lads respected Colin; he was a great coach and I don’t think there was a single player unhappy when he was appointed to replace Howard. The only difference for us was having to call him ‘boss’, not Colin. He never asked for that, it was mutual respect from the players, but it was something that he never really seemed comfortable with.

His first season in charge was always going to be tough and, even though we got off to a good start when we won the Charity Shield beating Coventry at Wembley, we hardly got going in the league and never looked like we were ever in with a chance of retaining the Championship. To make the season even more depressing, Liverpool had an unbelievable campaign, going unbeaten from their opening game right through to the end of March when they equalled Leeds United’s record for the longest unbeaten run in league history from the start of a season. It was nice to beat them to stop them overtaking Leeds’ record but, in fairness, they won the league at a canter. Although we finished fourth, it was a poor season by our previous standards, made even worse by the fact they also knocked us out of the FA Cup.

We beat them in the League Cup at Anfield, as well as the game at Goodison, but the problem was nobody else could and they only lost a further two games all season. Once again, our home form was decent – we only lost two games at Goodison – but we won just five games away from home which was diabolical, considering we were reigning champions.

We came close to making it to Wembley again, but lost in the League Cup semis to Arsenal and, without blaming the amount of injuries we had, we rarely had a settled side. If I can put my finger on one thing that hindered us

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