Everton denied Liverpool 'team of the century' title with win 'no other side' could achieve
Jubilant Evertonians were certainly Singing the Blues on this day 36 years ago after Wayne Clarke’s goal prevented Liverpool from setting a new top-flight unbeaten record.
Everton supporters of course love to belt out their own version of Guy Mitchell’s 1956 Number One hit song with adapted lyrics whenever their own team triumph and their neighbours are beaten, and it’s all the more sweeter for them if those two permutations are achieved from the same fixture. That’s the nature of football fan schadenfreude around the world but particularly on Merseyside where some followers of the Reds have in recent years revelled in the ‘Unbearables’ tag when it comes to basking in the reflected glory of their own side’s successes.
Back on March 20, 1988, Liverpool were attempting to become the first team to go 30 games unbeaten from the start of a First Division season. They’d already equalled Leeds United’s 29-match run from 1973/74, prompting The Mirror to proclaim that if they avoided defeat at Goodison Park then they would be “the team of the century.”
Everton knew that 1987/88 would not be their year and that despite being defending champions, the title would be moving back across Stanley Park, for what proved the last time in a sequence of to and throwing that had taken place since 1984. However, denying the Reds a special place in the game’s annals would prove a satisfying consolation prize at least for Colin Harvey in his debut campaign at the helm after former boss Howard Kendall had departed for Athletic Bilbao.
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