League Details
Played |
Won |
Drawn |
Lost |
Goals For |
Goals Against |
Points |
|
| Home | 21 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
48 |
46 |
19 |
| Away | 21 |
6 |
4 |
11 |
32 |
46 |
16 |
| Total | 42 |
12 |
11 |
19 |
80 |
92 |
35 |
Top Scorers
- William Ralph Dean 23 goals - George Martin 15 goals - Tommy White 11 goals - Jimmy Stein 10 goals
Highest Scores
- 5-2 v Newcastle United at home - 4-0 v Derby County at home - 3-0 v Liverpool at away
Despite the warnings from the previous season, 1929-30 was to turn out to be the most traumatic in the club’s history. The season started badly, one win in the first seven games, and got steadily worse and by the Christmas of 1929 the team had lost half of the 24 games played, winning only five. During this period,however, several notable players were to embark on their Everton career; Tommy White, who was signed from Southport in 1927, was starting to establish himself in the side, Jimmy Stein who had signed the previous season from Dumbarton; like White he started to make a first team place his own and Ben Williams joined the team in December when he was signed from Swansea for a fee of £4,300.
The turn of the year saw a brief improvement in the teams’ results and also saw the debut of Ted Sagar, in which he kept a clean sheet in a 4-0 win over Derby County at Goodison Park on 18 th January. Fortunes changed for the worse and by the end February Everton were embroiled in ferocious relegation scrap; the club’s Directors had to act quickly.
Alec Troup left the club to rejoin Dundee and in March Jock Thompson made the reverse trip when he joined Everton for a fee of £3,850. The club’s officials were determined to do all in their powers to maintain the club’s proud record of never being relegated and they had not finished in the transfer market. Tommy “Tosh” Johnson also arrived in March from Manchester City with Everton paying £6,250 for his goalscoring talents.
Everton were in the middle of a six game losing streak, and on 5 th April, following a 5-4 defeat at the hands of Leicester City, the team dropped to the bottom of the table. Next up was a home fixture was against fellow relegation candidates, Grimsby Town, and in a game Everton should have won they managed to be disappointingly beaten 4-2 and were now three points adrift at the foot of the table with just 5 games left.
Everton won three and drew one of the first four of the remaining games to give themselves a chance of staying in the first division. Five teams went into the final day of the season with the threat of relegation hanging over them, Burnley, Sheffield United, Newcastle United and Grimsby Town being the other four. Everton’s destiny, however, was out of their control and no matter what they did at home to Sunderland they were relying on the other teams losing.
Everton did all they could by winning the game 4-1, Tommy White scoring an impressive hatrick, in front of the season’s biggest crowd of 51,132. None of the huge crowd left the ground at the final whistle as they waited anxiously for the results of the other games. Their worst fears were realised when the results of all the other games came in to reveal that all of Everton’s rivals had won, sending Everton, along with Burnley, down to the second division.
After 38 years of uninterrupted top-flight football Everton were relegated and this did not go down well the club’s next Shareholders’ AGM and when the balance sheet was revealed to show a loss of £12,000 for the relegation season, the unrest increased. There were demands for Everton to follow the lead of many of their rivals and appoint a team manager; there were also calls for the board to be sacked. The club’s directors refused on both accounts and survived a vote of confidence by 82 votes to 61.
