League Details

Top Scorers

- John Willie Parker 31 goals
- Dave Hickson 25 goals
- Tommy Eglington 11 goals

Highest Scores

- 8.5 v Plymouth Argyle at home 
- 6-1 v Brentford at home
- 6-2 v Derby County away

From left to right :
Back row : Moore, Farrell, T.E. Jones, O'Neill, Donovan, Lello, Leyfield (trainer).
Front Row : Wainwright, Fielding, Hickson, Parker, Eglington.

Everton began the 1953-54 season determined to end their exile from the top flight of English football and buoyed by the previous season’s FA Cup exploits they got off to an excellent start. With seven wins and four draws in the first eleven games, fans began to dream that promotion was more than just a possibility. Despite a slight dip in form Everton ended the year in second place, behind recently relegated Leicester City.

The team were attracting gates averaging over 40,000 and a run of five wins in February and March, including a 6-2 win at Derby and home wins against Brentford and Plymouth (6-1 and 8-4 respectively) saw Everton sitting on top of the table. The club’s promotion push, however, suffered two setbacks, firstly they went four games without a win to see the side slip to third spot and in the 1-1 home game against Stoke City they lost the services of Jock Lindsay for the rest of the season with a broken leg.

With just five games left Everton were now behind Blackburn Rovers and league leaders Leicester and after winning the first of these and drawing the next two they went into the final Saturday of the season, with a game in hand, knowing that four points would be enough to secure promotion. The game on the Saturday was against Birmingham City and a crowd of 62,865 packed into Goodison Park to hopefully cheer the side to victory. They did, and a Dave Hickson goal was enough for the home side to take the points and set up a nerve wracking final game at Oldham Athletic the following Thursday evening.

Everton travelled to Boundary Park knowing that any sort of victory would see them promoted but a victory margin of 6-0 would see them go up as champions. Oldham Athletic had already been relegated and they were no match for an Everton side hell bent on not letting promotion slip away from them. Goals from Parker (2), Hickson and Jones saw the away side 4-0 up at half time and although they could not score the other two goals needed to go up as champions it did not seem to matter, Everton were back in top division of English football. There was, however, to be no Merseyside derbies in the coming season because Liverpool had gone the opposite direction to Everton and would spend the next eight seasons in division two.