The Nick Armitage Column
Columnist: Nick Armitage

When Skies Were Gray
7 September 2005

Walter Smith: highly respected manager?

Andy Gray typified all that was great about Everton in the 1980s.  Desire, ability and the willingness to go through a brick wall for the team.  Many blues have hammered him since leaving the club but I still believe Everton has a hold on his heart and that the man should be remembered fondly for what he gave when he wore that royal blue shirt.

Despite playing and working in England for the majority of his adult life, Andy Gray remains a jock; in the world of Sassenachs that make up English football, the jocks do tend to stick together.  Even taking that into consideration I reckon Andy Gray has made a major boob by using his column in the Liverpool Echo to sing the praises of one of his compatriots: Walter Smith.

Walter Smith achieved nothing more than turning one of the pioneering clubs of football into a laughing stock.  The football was atrocious and most of his signings were overpriced and overpaid.  When his players could be bothered to get their arses off the treatment table, they invariably did jack shit until their next injury and even if they did want to play a bit, nobody else around them had the slightest idea of what they should have been doing.  The club was in freefall and if he had been allowed to carry on we would have been relegated in 2002.

In Andy Gray’s column, he tells us of Walter that, “He's a good manager.”  I had to double-check the date to see if the article was dated 1st April...

Ask anyone who paid good money to sit through four years of the Walter Smith-managed garbage, whether they agree with that statement.  He was a woeful and clueless manager and if Gray had spent any time at Goodison Park, rather than playing with his tiddlywinks and Subuteo pitches at the studios of Sky Sports, he may have witnessed how bad Smith was.  I lost count of the number of times I sat in the Park End freezing my nuts off watching mindless and spineless capitulations.

I agree with Andy Gray when he says of David Weir, “Walter brought him to Goodison from Hearts for £250,000. Nowadays, some players would spend that much on a pair of boots!  His transfer was a real bargain — and something Evertonians should thank Walter for.”  I can’t argue with that; Weir is a great centre-half and only when he eventually goes will we see how much of a rock he is.  But the law of averages dictated that Smith had to get at least one right.

The one positive remnant of the Smith era is Weir... but let’s have a look at some of his less-inspired moments.  As if the signings of Nyarko, Ginola, Bakayoko, Tal, Gascoigne and Hughes (Mark and Stephen) weren’t bad enough, he gave Ferguson and Campbell two million quid a year, each, and then refused to pay our best player, Don Hutchison, less than half of that.

Let’s not forget when he nearly finished the career of Michael Ball and then added insult to his injury by selling him.  Remember when seven defenders once took to the pitch?  For those who don’t remember that day, those seven defenders weren’t seven out of two teams, they were seven out of one team of eleven — in blue shirts and at home.  And who could forget that Tranmere game?

Smith should have gone at least one year before Kenwright finally plucked up the courage to tell him to clear out his desk.  The only thing that Evertonians should be thankful for regarding Walter Smith is that he is far enough away from Goodison Park to never have any sort of influence over Everton again.

Nick Armitage

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