The 1984/85 football season was arguably the greatest in Everton’s history.
They won the league championship by 13 points, held aloft the European Cup Winners’ Cup in Rotterdam, where they beat Rapid Vienna 3-1, and, in their bid to complete the treble, lost 1-0 to Manchester United in the final of the FA Cup at Wembley, a match that went to extra time.
It was a team which, on the pitch, had a strong physical presence with the likes of Peter Reid, Gary Stevens and Pat Van Den Hauwe. They also had some seriously strong characters in the shape of goalkeeper Neville Southall, skipper Kevin Ratcliffe, Graeme Sharp and Andy Gray.
But into the mix, they added skill and flair, through wide men Trevor Steven and Kevin Sheedy.
It was a team to be feared in many different ways and, during that momentous campaign, they completed the league double over their greatest rivals from across Stanley Park.
Brilliant Strike
They won at Anfield in October, when Sharp scored one of the most famous and stunning goals of any season – and always worth a viewing on YouTube – before winning the return fixture at Goodison Park in May. By then, Everton had already clinched the league title, with 20-year-old striker Paul Wilkinson scoring the only goal of the match – for a third 1-0 win over Liverpool that season.
Back in August, as FA Cup winners from May 1984, the Toffees edged out the Reds in the Charity Shield at Wembley with a bizarre 55th-minute own goal by keeper Bruce Grobbelaar.
But, sadly for the blue half of Merseyside, 1984/85 remains the last time Everton secured the league double over Liverpool.
There have been a few close calls since then: In January 2011, a Dirk Kuyt penalty midway through the second half secured a point for Liverpool who had lost at Goodison in October. A similar thing happened in 1998 when Paul Ince’s equaliser denied Everton the double.
But the nearest Liverpool have come to losing both league fixtures during the same season, since the mid-1980s, came in 1996 when Robbie Fowler netted three minutes from time to claim a 1-1 draw. Andrei Kanchelskis had scored twice for Everton in their 2-1 win at Anfield the previous November.
But times have changed greatly since even the mid-1990s.
Most worryingly for the Blues right now is that they have not scored against their local rivals in more than 290 minutes, and the last time they netted twice in the same game was in November 2013 – 12 fixtures ago.
And this was reflected in the Premier League betting for the Merseyside clash at Goodison in early March when, despite being the home team, Everton could be gobbled up at 5/1.
UK Life 1984/85
So what was happening in the world 34-35 years ago when Everton enjoyed the most momentous season in their history.
The day after Sharp’s goal beat Liverpool on October 20th, 1984, Niki Lauda claimed his third F1 world title. And eight days earlier tragedy had struck in a Brighton hotel when a bomb exploded during Conservative party conference week, killing four people.
The two most popular singles in the UK early autumn were Stevie Wonder’s (I Just Called To Say I Love You) and Wham’s (Freedom) – both No 1s.
The winter, spring and early summer of 1984/85 witnessed the Miners’ Strike, which proved catastrophic for many families and communities in the country, while Bob Geldof began organising Live Aid and Midge Ure wrote Do They Know It’s Christmas. The average price for a house in the UK was £32-33k.