Everton were spanked with a wooden spoon in May 2004. The Toffees’ weary final-day showdown with Manchester City would decide who ended the season in 16th and who finished 17th, as the worst side to cling on to their Premier League status. Everton lost 5-1.
The climax of their campaign had come like the slow collapse of a circus tent, long after the festival was over. David Moyes might have been inclined to tell his players to just forget about it; unwind over the summer and relax. But when he walked into the dressing room and saw them packing away for the end of term, the gaffer had no such team talk in mind.
“I don’t remember the exact wording,” chuckles Leon Osman, who was in the room when it happened. “None of us were singled out. But it was a talk about the whole season: why we had been so poor, where we go from here… and it finished with him saying, ‘Have a right good think about this as you go on your summer break’. If we didn’t, we weren’t coming back at all.”
Many a Scottish tirade has transformed lacklustre losers into warriors in the fire of battle. What happened next, however, was scarcely precedented. Everton didn’t just get their act together – they sold boy wonder Wayne Rooney and doubled their win tally to clamber into the top four ahead of rivals Liverpool. Not even Real Madrid’s bonkers acquistion of linchpin Thomas Gravesen in mid-season could derail Everton’s dash to the Champions League play-offs.
When Moyes produced a suitable sequel to that caper, 16 years later in a more difficult era of the Premier League, he
