When I first started watching English football, most clubs favoured the 2-5-6-3 defence, but a few clubs tended towards having 4 at centre-back and 6 in midfield.
Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest were two such examples and so were Everton – during the club’s successes of the 1980s under Howard Kendall, captain Kevin Ratcliffe played in central defence with 4 on his back.
Ratcliffe lost his place in 1991-92 and ended up leaving the club during that campaign – Martin Keown became new skipper Dave Watson’s most regular partner at the back and he preferred 6 to 4.
When Keown rejoined boyhood club Arsenal in 1992-93, right-back Matt Jackson tended to be called upon to deputise in the middle when the need arose – late in that season, he wore 6 when partnering Watson and carried 5 for the last game of that campaign, scoring in a 5-2 win away to Manchester City.
City – and Leeds United – gravitated towards having numbers 8 and 9 in attack, with 4 and 10 forming the central midfield axis and that also formed the basis for Everton when fixed numbering came into force for the 1993-94 season.
1992-93 final game
1992-93 final game, 1993-94 squad numbers
1993-94 opening game
Watson was always going to be given 5 with Jackson in the number 2 where he would spend the bulk of his time – though, with Andy Hinchcliffe out, Jackson started the new season partnering Watson in a 2-0 win away to Southampton, number 6 Gary Ablett shifting to left-back.
Ian Snodin had missed almost all of 1990-91 and 1991-92 due to injury but when he featured during 1992-93, it was generally wearing 4 and he was allocated that – he did occasionally fill in at right-back or centre-back. Barry Horne, absent from the trip to face his old club, had worn 2, 4, 7, 8, 10 and 11 in 1992-93 and he was given 10.
While Peter Beardsley returned to his hometown club Newcastle United in July, it wasn’t until two days before the season began that the 8 he had worn since signing from Liverpool in 1991 was filled – given to the winner of the ‘Most Scottish-named Englishman Award’, Graham Stuart, when he joined from Chelsea. Incidentally, the Liverpool Echo article revealing the numbers confirms our suspicion that the Premier League mandated that, in those early days, 13 could only be given to a goalkeeper.
Incidentally, as recently observed by Daniel Gellatley of Kitted Off, Everton’s number 16 Predrag Radosavljević became the first player to have his nickname on the back of shirt with ‘Preki’.
When, two years later, Everton undertook a tidy-up for 1995-96, Stuart would shift from 8 to 7, one of a number of intra-1-11 swaps the Toffees have had – and that year also saw 4 return to central defence, as David Unsworth dropped down from 26.
The 1993-94 Everton squad in full was:
