It was on a Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, at Liverpool’s Bridewell pub, that Everton’s top post-war goalscorer, and pivotal member of the club’s greatest ever team, stood up to talk.
The pub, a wonderful place, steeped in history, is where a number of the extraordinary side of 1984/85 – who won the title, a European trophy, reached the FA Cup final and were World Soccer’s European team of the year – have recently shared reminiscences, though it was with far more uncertainty that Graeme Sharp had agreed to do the same.
That’s how things have been for more than two years now. In January 2022, Sharp accepted a request by the late Bill Kenwright to join Everton’s the board as an unpaid ‘advisor’ and link back to better days. In time, he found himself associated with the club’s mismanagement, denigrated by some of the fan base and ultimately told, along with other board members, to stay away from Goodison Park for his own safety. Those without the remotest respect for one of the club’s great servants had the temerity to raise banners demanding: ‘Sharp Out.’ He last watched the side play in January last year and resigned six months later.
‘You have to go back to Goodison,’ several of Sharp’s audience in the Bridewell told him at the recent event, the first at which he’d discussed Everton since his links with club were severed.
‘I’ll never go back. I can never go back,’ he said, in a way that laid bare how deeply this severance from his club has cut him. The conversation ended there. Rather suddenly, a cut-up Sharp gathered his things and left.
Former striker Graeme Sharp remains one of Everton’s greatest ever players in their history
Sharp (left in blue) enjoyed several memorable moments and won eight trophies with the club
However, the 63-year-old (second left) has been ostracised by some Everton supporters for his association with the likes of Bill Kenwright, Denise Barrett-Baxendale and Farhad Moshiri
Other members of that Everton band of brothers – Adrian Heath, Peter Reid, Kevin Sheedy, Andy Gray and Kevin Ratcliffe – fear that their old friend will be a marginal figure next year when, as the 40th anniversary of their extraordinary success coincides with Everton’s leaving of Goodison, there will be remembrance on a scale the club has never known.
Everton are applying great thought to the leaving of the Grand Old Lady, as the stadium is known. Retired journalists who have reported on Everton from there down the decades are being invited to home games. Liverpool council is already discussing the logistics of a farewell concert which might possibly see The La’s get it together again, for old times’ sake.
Noone warrants a place in the ultimate farewell tour quite like Sharp – a player remembered for his touch, his hold-up play, his selflessness and – of course – his goals: 159 in 446 appearances. Important goals. Often spectacular goals.
Evertonians of a certain vintage will always tell you about that goal, scored 40 years ago this very weekend: the dipping right foot shot over a cap-wearing Bruce Grobbelaar at Anfield to secure a first league win over Liverpool team in six years. It engendered a belief that helped Everton to go on and take the title. Check out clips of the volleyed finish against Tottenham at Goodison in 1982, with the young Sharp interviewed afterwards.
It’s fair and right that many fans were furious with the board which has reduced Everton to a shadow of what they once were. But Sharp was neither Moshiri nor Kenwright.
He brought a perspective to a club in grave need of it. He would sometimes urge restraint if there was a rush to offer a big new contract to a player who still had things to prove. He offered another view to the recruitment team who interviewed Frank Lampard and was also among those who spoke to Rafa Benitez (though Moshiri would have recruited the Spaniard, regardless.)
Sharp was the subject of intense fan protests last year which have kept him away from the club
The vast image of the former striker on the stadium’s exterior wall, unmissable as you walk down Goodison Road, speaks volumes for what he means to the majority of Evertonians
Sharp needs to return to Goodison Park before Everton say a grand farewell to the stadium
Sharp’s perceived crimes appear to be an unwillingness to resign on a point of principal, as Everton failed, and an interview for what was a 500-word football story, published when he when staying away from Goodison on the security advice. He said some anti-Everton protests had gone ‘over the top’ and that the club’s chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale, also staying away, was ‘working tirelessly’ on Everton’s new stadium. Hardly inflammatory, though in the tribal, binary world of 21st century football, reasons to hate are sought out everywhere.
It feels like it will take something substantial to restore Sharp to his place at the club’s heart. Some entreaties from the prospective new owners, the Friedkin Group, would be a classy and appropriate gesture. Sharp will also need to put behind him the recent past and fears that he will be confronted. The vast image of him on the stadium’s exterior wall, unmissable as you walk down Goodison Road, speaks volumes for what he means to the majority of Evertonians.
Last Friday, it was Adrian Heath’s turn to speak at the Bridewell, and Reid was there to hear him. The conversation turned to the subject of ‘Sharpy’, the man who’d scored all those goals for them. He had to be part of all that lies up ahead, the two players agreed. ‘We’ve got to get him back to Goodison,’ said Heath.
Mendy dragging football through the mud
And now football descends even deeper into the legal swamp, as the dismal Benjamin Mendy sues Manchester City for more than £11million in wages not paid to him during his trial on multiple charges of rape and sexual assault.
City agreed to pay Mendy £6million every year. City signed him to a contract in which he would ‘not knowingly or recklessly do anything or omit to do anything which is likely to bring the club or the game of football into disrepute.’ Mendy, who is currently dragging the names of numerous City players into the swamp at an employment tribunal like none other, sees no problem in his conduct. Despite testifying to say: ‘We all drank alcohol. We all had casual relations with women. We all breached Covid-19 restrictions.’
Mendy, who was eventually acquitted of six charges of rape and one sexual assault relating to four women, before two more not-guilty verdicts were returned at a retrial, could not train for City because he was either in prison or on remand, facing those charges. He was also subject an Interim Suspension Order imposed by the Football Association. Unpaid wages? You’re a disgrace, Benjamin Mendy. Get your preposterous claims out of our tribunal court. Get back to the lower reaches of the French leagues, where you belong.
Former Man City man Benjamin Mendy is suing the club for more than £11m in ‘unpaid wages’
Ferguson exit not a good look for Ratcliffe
Perhaps Sir Jim Ratcliffe does not see Sir Alex Ferguson, at the age of 82 and in less formidable health than of old, making a major contribution to the intellectual and philosophical life of Manchester United that he once did.
He’s entitled to feel that way, though I would venture to say that the pages of the book, Leading, which Sir Alex co-wrote with the venture capitalist Michael Moritz in 2015 revealed the value that his age and experience brought, in surprising ways. There is an entire chapter, entitled ‘Failing’, in which the fragility of players’ confidence features.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s decision to axe Sir Alex Ferguson’s role as an ambassador doesn’t look good
But making one of the pillars of the club – representative of all that has defined United and made them great – part of the INEOS Old Trafford cost-cutting programme, at a time when an estimated £3.5million is going on the wages of grossly underperforming players? Astonishing. Does anyone appreciate how poor that looks?