The Way We Were: Aston Villa vs Everton, November 1989
Aston Villa’s 6-2 demolition of Everton in November 1989 was a spectacular game. But it’s the broadcast, the kits and the feel of the contest that show how much English football has changed in two decades.
On Sunday the 5th of November 1989, Aston Villa hosted Everton in a First Division fixture broadcast live on ITV’s ‘The Match’. Graham Taylor’s Villa side, promoted the season before, were seventh in a tight table. Everton were fourth, knowing a win would send them top of the league above Chelsea. The game that followed was a goal-filled spectacle, but it also serves as a document of a lost world of English football, just before the television-fuelled revolution of the 1990s.
It is a world both familiar and alien. The football itself feels surprisingly modern, a high-quality affair between professional sides. But the context is entirely different. The presentation is spartan, the build-up almost non-existent. Host Elton Welsby and his studio guest Andy Gray offer thirty seconds of chat before handing over to Brian Moore and Ian St John on a cold-looking gantry. No clock, no score graphic, just the game.
Platt Inspires a Rout
The differences extended to the pitch itself. Villa Park still featured the vast terracing of the Holte End, with fences still in place behind the goals, seven months after the Hillsborough disaster. The teamsheets contained just one non-British or Irish player: Villa’s Danish defender, Kent Nielsen. Once the game started, though, Villa’s quality shone through. Gordon Cowans gave them the lead after just five minutes.
It was a young David Platt, however, who ran the show. He was already being recognised as a prodigious talent, and it was easy to see why. Playing with confidence and wit, he dominated the midfield. Ian Olney doubled Villa’s lead on nineteen minutes after the Everton goalkeeper spilled a routine save. Six minutes later, it was 3-0 thanks to a gorgeous flicked header from Platt, his eighth goal in twelve league matches. Everton, wearing an atrocious away kit of narrow grey and white stripes with blue shorts, were shell-shocked. They spent the rest of the half camped in Villa’s half but could only muster half-chances against a team that had taken its foot off the pedal.
The commentary from Brian Moore was a model of calm, authoritative neutrality, a world away from the manufactured hysteria of today. There were no constant promotions for what was coming up next on ITV, just a focus on the action. He kept his co-commentator, Ian St John, on a tight leash; this was not the ‘best buddies in the pub’ style that would come to define the genre.
Damage Limitation
Any hopes of an Everton comeback were extinguished four minutes into the second half. A neat side-step and finish from Platt made it 4-0. The appeal of Graham Taylor to the FA was becoming obvious; this was not the dour, agricultural football he would later be associated with. Three minutes later, even the gangly Ian Ormondroyd turned on the style, his run leading to Olney making it five. The Villa supporters grew more hysterical with each goal.
What did Everton manager Colin Harvey say to his players at half-time? It’s impossible to know, but they were clearly in damage limitation territory. They held out for another fifteen minutes before Kent Nielsen nodded in a sixth goal. Only with less than ten minutes to play did Everton stir, with Tony Cottee pulling one back before an own goal from Paul McGrath gifted them a second. It was far too late. 6-2.
The post-match analysis was as brief as the pre-match build-up. A quick summary from Elton and Andy, a look at the previous day’s goals, and that was it. The drama came from the football, not from being reminded of the money at stake or from whooshy graphics.
The game itself showed that English football’s on-pitch transformation was already underway before the influx of television money. The players could all play, but the pace was a little slower, the tempo more staccato without the modern backpass rule. It was football, pared down to its essence.
Today’s Premier League is often football on steroids, pumped full of cash and hyperbole. This 1989 version was simply a football match on television. And it was no less entertaining for it.