Sunday, 16th March 1986
Goodison Park London
Attendance: 30,145
Referee: David Hutchinson
On arriving at Goodison Park in July 1985, Gary Lineker had a similar problem to the one Joe Royle faced at the start of his Everton career, except to a greater extent. The difference lay in the fact that while Royle only replaced fans' favourite Alex Young for one game, Lineker's £850,000 arrival from his home-town club Leicester City led directly to their then idol Andy Gray actually leaving the club. It was nearly Christmas by the time Lineker won over the Everton crowd-astonishing, given his phenomenal strike-rate of 38 goals on 52 games over the season. But Gray, the talismanic catalyst for the rise to the peak of European football, was a hard act to follow. Andy Gray and Graeme Sharp had shot Everton to the League Title and the Cup-Winners' Cup the previous season, and the fans' outrage at his replacement was perhaps understandable. Not that it can have affected Lineker very much, so freely did he score, and his goals looked like driving Everton to match those achievements – only for the blues to end up even bluer as they were pipped by Liverpool in both the League and the FA Cup.
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