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    Re: The most enjoyable festive Everton games Archived Message

    Posted by Deeter_the_Pearls on December 26, 2023, 3:33 am, in reply to "Re: The most enjoyable festive Everton games"

    Yes, hard to dispute the festivities at St James's.

    Said it for beards that the football we played that day exceeded anything that we served up in 84/85.

    Arguably the whole period from mid-December onwards to, say, QPR (when we couldn't really play well) was higher purity than any 84/85 vintage, save Rotterdam.

    (Similar to how those who saw 68/69 and spring 1968 always maintained that the better stuff was played then, rather than 1969/70 and especially amidst the attrition of wearing Leeds down through sheer tenacity in spring 1970. Odd how these things work.)

    The beauty of Watson finally getting Kendall's defensive system in late autumn 1986 - and to think it was later 'reinvented' under the fancy label of 'zonal marking' (*) - changed the whole trajectory of that winter.

    The clockwork maturity of that squad was sublime. Loved the 86/87 mentality. Just a completely different animal to the euphoria of 84/85.

    (* you mean, the common sense of just 'passing-on' the responsibility of negating any moving attacker to the next available defensive partner who's obviously in a better position and body shape than the one in the former 'zone' that the threat
    has just moved through? Not exactly footballing brain surgery is it? Just being sensible but having the managerial wisdom to identify players capable of executing it, whatever their age, within reason)

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