[Lord Snooty]

Huddersfield Town v Everton
The Premier League
Saturday April 28th - 15:00 ko
at the John Smith's Stadium

Huddersfield Town welcome Everton to Leeds Road on Saturday for our penultimate home match in this season's Premier League campaign.
Hopefully, we will have a similar outcome to the last home game when a last minute winner from Tom Ince gave us a memorable win over Watford. Similar to that day, one of our rivals at the foot of the table are involved in the lunchtime match. Then, it was Southampton giving us a great start to the day by throwing away a two goal lead at home to Chelsea. This time it's Stoke City who are playing away at Liverpool. Hopefully it'll be the same Liverpool that trounced Roma for 80 minutes on Tuesday night that turns up at Anfield. If Stoke lose, that will mean they can only catch us on goal difference, as they will only have two more games left to play, and they're the only team in the division with a worse one than ours.
Kicking off at the same time as us are Southampton, at home to Bournemouth. A defeat for them, as well as Stoke and a Town win would almost be enough. That would leave them needing to win their remaining three, whilst we wold have to lose our three games left.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We all know it's going to go down to the last day, but let's just dream that Town, for once, do it the easy way!


A brief history of Everton: founded in 1878 by a church congregation in the Everton area of Liverpool, becoming known as Everton FC the following year so as non church goers could join in. They were founder members of the Football League in 1888 and won their first title in 1891. They beat Newcastle 1-0 in the 1906 Cup Final to lift the FA Cup for the first time and secured their second league title in 1915 before the league was suspended for the first world war.
Their third league title came in 1928 as they finished two points above runners up Huddersfield Town. The main reason for this success was their prolific striker Dixie Dean, who scored 60 goals in the season, a FL record that still stands today. They went down a couple of years later, but bounced straight back, won the FA cup again, recorded their 4th league title and then their 5th in the season prior to the 2nd world war.
They were relegated in 1951 but came back up again in 1954 from which time they have been in the top flight continuously, a record only bettered by Arsenal. Two more league titles came in the 1960s and an FA Cup triumph, 3-2 against Sheffield Wednesday.
Not much followed for a few years then bang!....They were up and running again in the 1980s under Howard Kendall. They won the FA Cup in 1984, beating Watford 2-0 in the final. Then followed that up with their only European success, the Cup Winners Cup, beating Rapid Vienna 3-1 in the final. They also won another league title in the same season and even came close to winning a treble but lost to Man Utd in the Cup Final. The next season they finished runners up to Liverpool, but did win the league again in 1986/87.
That was their last league title and all they have won since was the 1995 FA Cup when a Paul Rideout goal was enough to beat Man Utd in the final.

Head to Head



Everton lead in the overall head to head with 25 wins to Town's 21, with 14 draws.

The programme in the image above is from the last time Town beat the Toffeemen in any competition. It was a 1-0 win in March 1956, with a goal ironically from Everton legend Dave Hickson. We got relegated at the end of that season and have only met each other 8 times in the following 62 years. We managed 3 draws against them in our couple of seasons in the top flight in the 70s and then we've had some League Cup ties. One of those was a 2 legged affair in 1998. Wayne Allison had got us back in the tie in the 1st leg which ended 1-1 and then Marcus Stewart gave us a 1st minute lead in the 2nd leg to get us all dreaming of a huge cup upset. But it wasn't to be and we went out 3-2 on aggregate.
The most famous Town win over Everton though came in 1953. It was the second part of a 2nd division Easter double header. Having lost 1-2 at Goodison on Easter Monday, we played them again the following day at Leeds Road and stuffed them 8-2. Four of the goals were scored by Jimmy Glazzard, all from Vic Metcalfe crosses. The other goals came from Willie Dunn, Metcalfe, Alistair Gunn and Tommy Cavanagh. The picture here is a quite famous one of Glazzard leaping high above the Toffee's keeper to head home in this match.

In the Premier League meeting earlier this season, the Toffees won 2-0 with second half goals from Gylfi Sigurdsson and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.






So what's happening at Goodison Park?  Managed nowadays by ex Town centre back Sam Allardyce, who also had a brief spell recently managing the England national team. Well there's not much we can say about this fella that isn't already well known. He played loads of games for many clubs and has managed loads of games for loads of clubs.
He started his playing career at Bolton, probably the club he is most associated with, and turned out in almost 200 matches for them before moving to Sunderland, Millwall, Tampa Bay Rowdies and Coventry City before coming to Leeds Road for one season. Signed by Mick Buxton in 1984, his one season saw us finish in 13th position in Division 2 (The Championship as is now), winning only one of the first 9 fixtures which saw us next to bottom. In that run was a 1-5 home defeat to Shrewsbury Town, but in the next 9 fixtures we won 8 and drew the other, including a home win over the mighty Leeds. But the most famous incident of the season came in March when in a home match with Fulham, David Burke got his leg broken by a wild tackle from Fulham's Jeff Hopkins. So incensed was Big Sam that he absolutely lamped the Cottager, knocking him right off his feet. They were both sent off.
At the end of the season, Sam headed back over the hills to Bolton.

Club Connections:  

James Vaughan; now laking for Wigan in League One, he started his career at Everton and is still the Premier League's youngest ever scorer. Coming on as a 2nd half sub against Crystal Palace, he scored on his debut aged 16 years and 271 days. So when he came on loan to us from Norwich, despite it feeling like he'd been around for donkey's years, he was still a relatively young 23.
That was our first season back in the Championship and he was an instant success. After a season on loan he signed a 3 year contract, but unfortunately he also had a permanent pass for the treatment room and so never fulfilled his potential with us. He was one of the first players shipped out by new manager David Wagner in November 2015 when he joined Birmingham City.
He bagged 33 goals in his time at the Town.

Danny Cadamarteri; now a youth coach at Burnley, you may find it incredible that this lad from Cleckheaton, who was a very average looking striker when he came to us, was in a previous life a very potent Premier League striker, turning out on almost a hundred occasions for Everton. He, like Vaughan, was still a kid, only 17 when he scored his first Premier League goal, against Barnsley (yes, Barnsley in the Premier League) in 1997. He followed that up with goals against Arsenal and Sheffield Wednesday, before the crowning glory of his Everton days, a goal against Liverpool in a 2-0 win at Goodison Park. It's true I tell you. Look at the video evidence.

He scored 8 goals in his time as a Terrier, one of which, against Forest, he over celebrated by jumping into the crowd and getting a 2nd yellow followed by a red. Twerp! He did however set up the last minute winner at Bellend Road in the centenary season for Michael Collins to shank home. Instead of going to the corner flag to secure an away point he turned back towards goal and delivered a perfect pass. After three seasons with us he went up north to star in the Scottish Premiership with Dundee Utd before returning and helping us to reach the 2011 play off final.

Dave Hickson; was an Everton legend who had two spells at Goodison Park sandwiched between a couple of seasons at Leeds Road. The most famous day in his Everton career was in the FA Cup of 1953 when they were in the 2nd division and drawn at home to play Manchester Utd. The game attracted almost 78,000 people into Goodison Park and Hickson scored the winner, covered from head to toe in his own blood following a clash which gave him a gash above his eyebrow, reports saying that his shirt was as red as the opponents red shirts.
He joined Town for a couple of seasons in 1955 and as mentioned above scored the goal for our last ever win over Everton. We got relegated at the end of that season though but in the opening game of the following season he scored in front of the Kop in a Town 3-2 win over Liverpool at Anfield.  After a couple more seasons he moved across the city to join rivals Liverpool, who weren't much of a rival back then but a struggling 2nd division team about to be revived under Bill Shankly. After he left Anfield, he went to Cambridge City, Bury and then completed the Merseyside triangle ending his playing career at Tranmere Rovers.
Later in life he returned to Goodison Park working in an ambassadorial role on matchdays. In his Town career he scored 28 goals in 54 matches.

Ray Wilson; not only a Town and Everton legend but also a World Cup winner with England. Unfortunately, he and his his World Cup winning team mates Martin Peters and Nobby Stiles are all suffering from Alzheimer's disease, which my dad had and is bloody awful.  
Ramon Wilson MBE, started his football career at Leeds Road and played there for 12 years before moving to Everton. He worked part time on the railways to start with and then was called up for National Service before becoming full time under Shankly and making his debut in 1955. He turned out in 266 matches for Town before that move to Goodison Park in 1964. By the time of the move though, he was already established as the regular left back in the England team having gained 30 caps, making him our most capped England international. He won the FA Cup with Everton in 1966 before returning to Wembley a few weeks later to win the World Cup with England, beating West Germany 4-2 and made the last of 63 caps in the 1968 European Championships.
After retiring from football he returned to Huddersfield and became an undertaker.

There have been others. Barry Horne scored the goal that stopped Everton getting relegated in 1994, a thirty yard thunderbolt, before joining us in 1997 as part of the famous Great Escape team. Kevin Kilbane played for Everton for 3 seasons in the Noughties and then came to us on loan from Hull, helping us get to the 2011 Play Off Final. Jermaine Beckford played for both and scored his first Everton goal against us in the League Cup.
Any more? Probably but that's all that I can recall for now.


Recent form: Town are 16th in the Premier League with 35 points. Everton are in 8th with 45 points.


Last 6 matches:
Spurs 2-0 Town
Town 0-0 swansea
Town 0-2 Palace
Newcastle 1-0 Town
Brighton 1-1 Town (Mounie)
Town 1-0 Watford (Ince)

Everton 2-0 Brighton (Bong og, Tosun)
Stoke 1-2 Everton (Tosun 2)
Everton 1-3 Man City (Bolasie)
Everton 0-0 Liverpool
Swansea 1-1 Everton (Naughton og)
Everton 1-0 Newcastle (Walcott)

Everton's line up at home to Newcastle on Monday night:

1 Jordan Pickford - ex Bradford City, now England keeper.
23 Séamus Coleman - Irish right back, recently returned from a broken leg.
6 Phil Jagielka - England defender with over 600 1st team games behind him.
4 Michael Keane - Defender who they forked out £30m for.
3 Leighton Baines - 42 career goals, almost all of them from the penalty spot.
17 Idrissa Gueye - Helped relegate Villa, then left because he thought himself too good for the Championship.
2 Morgan Schneiderlin - Defender who they forked out £24m for.
10 Wayne Rooney - Record goalscorer for England and Man Utd.
11 Theo Walcott - Wasted the majority of his career on Arsenal's bench.
14 Cenk Tosun - German born striker who plays for Turkey.
7 Yannick Bolasie - ex Plymouth, Rushden & Diamonds and Barnet winger.

Substitutes
15 Rhu-endly Aurelio Jean-Carlo Martina - or Cuco for short. Dutch defender.
19 Oumar Niasse - Senegalese striker who went on loan to Hull City last season.
25 Ramiro Funes Mori - Argie defender, just back from a serious knee injury.
26 Tom Davies - 19 year old midfielder who came through their academy.
29 Dominic Calvert-Lewin - scored against us in December.
33 Joel Robles - ex Wigan, Spanish goalkeeper.
54 Beni Baningime - 19 year old midfielder from the Congo.

[jjamez]

There was that useless striker we had on loan from them too. Had a paddy on the pitch when he was subbed

[Lord Snooty]

There was that useless striker we had on loan from them too. Had a paddy on the pitch when he was subbed

Oh aye. Locust Jokeavitch.

[SHEP_HTAFC]

Just in from Fat Sam.....
We have injury concerns over Morgan Schneiderlin, Leighton Baines and Dominci Calvert-Lewin. All three will face fitness tests tomorrow.

[theo_luddite]

Top Toffee to chew on that one Snoots.

Which defence will unravel first?
Will the lads in stripes go mint?
Will one side be found to have a soft centre?
Or will both have a tough outer shell that is too hard to crack, everything will get sticky in the middle and the game will just suck for all 90 minutes?
Will Rooney turn up for the Friday evening Grab-a-Granny night at the Gas Club?
Will the Jam Butty and Treacle mines be closed for the day, or are they now closed for ever?
Will Town get the points we need all neatly wrapped up and in the bag by the final whistle?
Or will there be a twist at the end of each half?
Here's hoping it all works out sweet for us at the end of the match



Answers to all these questions and more will be revealed to the nation on Saturday at 5:00pm on BBC Radio 5 Live when the ghost of James Alexander Gordon reads out the results. Haven't a clue who does it now, I'm never back to the car in time since they started taking nigh on half-an-hour for a haf-time cup of rosy lee and slice of orange.

[Lord Snooty]

Tom Ince is out with a hamstring injury.

Cometh the hour. Cometh the Quaner.

[theo_luddite]

Between Quaner tripping over his own feet and Van the Man tripping over everyone's feet (in his mind) no wonder we can't put a cross on a pools coupon, including today's electronic one's

[Lord Snooty]

Ooh. Deathly silence. Is there anybody there.

[theo_luddite]

Just nod if you can hear me, is there anybody home?

Well, another less than stellar day at the office. Loads of possession and fook hall to show for it, again including shots let alone goals. Apart from Swansea every other result went the way we didn't want it to. Whether they can win another game between them, given Swansea play two of them, is another matter. Hey, what the hell, we can't finish bottom. Every numpty and his dog had us at least 10 points less than the Baggies have now before we kicked a ball. We ain't seen nothing yet, no, no, no baby, we ain't seen nothing yet.

[Lord Snooty]

Hmmm.  A bit Uncomfortably Numb at the moment, theo.

I thought we were awesome in the first half, except of course, that we just can't bloody score.
Then one wayward pass, everybody too far upfield, a couple of passes later and we're one down.
Let's face it. We're a Championship team, playing against seasoned Premier League lakers. They were saying on 606 that Everton have spent £200m in the last year. And we think £13m on a striker is going to make us competetive. No chance.
If we stay up, it'll be the biggest against all odds story of all time. If we don't......sod it, we go again next season.
I'm not giving up yet though. And neither is Wagz. We will take points off those Big Six. We will.

COME ON!!