It wasn’t pretty, the match-winner never enjoyed much acclaim at the club and the result didn’t signal the end of the team’s struggles but October 29 is the anniversary of one of the most-important victories of David Moyes’ long Everton tenure.
Two minutes before half-time at St Andrew’s on this day in 2005, Simon Davies tried his luck from over 30 yards out with a shot the bounced wickedly past Birmingham City goalkeeper Maik Taylor and into the net.
It seemed a wildly ambitious effort, but if you don’t buy a ticket, you’ll never win the lottery and the Blues – sporting grey on this occasion – were due a slice of good fortune after the way things had been going for them.
Steve Bruce’s side pressed hard for an equaliser and Liverpool players past and future Emile Heskey and Jermaine Pennant both went close only to be denied by Nigel Martyn as the visitors stood firm.
The win ensured that Everton moved off the bottom of the table with their opponents taking their place in last spot.
Right now, Moyes, almost two decades on from first becoming a Premier League manager, is enjoying a renaissance having guided West Ham United into the top four and becoming the first opposing boss to defeat Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in the League Cup for over five years since neighbours United defeated them 1-0 on October 26, 2016.
Back when he was in charge at Goodison and the purse strings were tight, the Scot would refer to tackling the financial muscle of nouveau riche City as “taking a knife to a gun fight” but before their rivals from down the East Lancs Road even landed their UAE Sugar Daddies, Moyes had steered the cash-strapped Blues to the Champions League, well the qualifying round for it.
Just 12 months after the nadir of finishing 17 th on just 39 points – a position confirmed with a 5-1 defeat at City – Everton completed one of the Premier League’s most remarkable year-on-year improvements as they finished fourth above their Champions League-winning neighbours, who were of course managed by Rafa Benitez.
Coming off the back of what happened in the previous campaign, and the subsequent sale of home-grown hero Wayne Rooney to Manchester United, it was a monumental achievement, and remains the club’s highest Premier League placing to date.
However, no Evertonian needs reminding of what happened with the Blues’ short and anything but sweet dalliance with Champions League football against Villarreal and a certain Signor Collina.
Having put so much into getting to the cusp of the game’s land of milk and honey (or money), the early exit seemed to knock the stuffing out of Moyes’ men for a time.
Their defeat in Spain was the first of six straight losses – a run that included the humiliating 5-1 reversal at Dinamo Bucharest having been parachuted into the UEFA Cup.
Indeed, a futile 1-0 second leg victory over the Romanians at Goodison was Everton’s only win of any sort in an 11-game run over more than two months following a 1-0 success at Bolton Wanderers back on August 21.
A 1-0 home loss to Middlesbrough in the League Cup ensured the Blues had been knocked out of three competitions before the clocks went back, bringing even greater importance to this early ‘six pointer’ in the West Midlands just three days later.
Having finished fourth, Moyes’ summer purchases did not all have the desire impact to ensure the club kicked on.
He was able to turn Mikel Arteta’s loan move into a permanent switch and Phil Neville proven to be a solid citizen for the next eight years, bringing with him many of the good habits he’d been raised upon at Manchester United, but others proved far less successful.
Nuno Valente and the on-loan Matteo Ferrari were solid squad players but considering that Moyes was often lauded for doing due diligence on prospective signings (or even mocked as being ‘Dithering Davy’, such was his attention to detail – he watched Joleon Lescott play no fewer than 24 times before deciding to sign him), the high-profile acquisitions of Serie A pair Per Kroldrup and Andy van der Meyde were nothing short of disastrous.
Although he was the hero on this occasion, this proved to be Davies’ only goal for Everton in 53 matches for the club – hardly a satisfactory return from an attacking midfielder – and given that he too came for a pretty penny, costing twice as much as Arteta – the former Tottenham Hotspur man returned to London a flop to join Fulham after 18 months on Merseyside.
A second consecutive 1-0 victory against Middlesbrough a week later provided further respite as the Blues moved out of the relegation zone but they were still far from being out of the woods.
They’d suffer a hat-trick of 4-0 defeats in the Premier League before the end of the calendar year to West Bromwich Albion, Bolton Wanderers (at home) and Aston Villa, the latter of which saw Kroldrup, the centre-back who reputedly couldn’t head the ball properly, make his only English top flight appearance.
A mere 48 hours after that, a ‘demolition’ derby at Goodison resulted in a 3-1 defeat with Everton having both Neville and Arteta sent off.
Their watershed moment didn’t actually arrive until New Year’s Eve when played off the park at rock bottom Sunderland, they somehow snatched an undeserved stoppage time smash and grab with through a Tim Cahill header after a string of Martyn saves had kept them in the contest when on the ropes.
That victory would prove the springboard to a nine-game unbeaten run and the Blues would ultimately rally to finish 11 th but it doesn’t bear thinking about what kind of trouble they might have been in had things not gone their way in Brum.
