The Official Everton Podcast

The Everton academy graduate speaks ahead of facing the Toffees with his current club, Dundee.

The latest guest in our ‘Bred a Blue’ series has had quite an eventful football journey since making his one and only first team appearance for Everton. Chris Long netted a friendly goal against Paderborn as a teenager and played at Goodison in the Europa League before accepting that the level of competition for striking places was just too much...although in hindsight he wishes he'd signed the three-year deal that Roberto Martinez offered him. “I was fuming when we signed Samuel Eto’o,” he grins, looking back at his struggle to break through. “We had Jelavic, and Lukaku was on fire. Arouna Kone was there too, but I knew I was better than him!” Chris Long can also name Harry Kane and Eric Dier as teammates, and he admits that he never saw an England record breaker when he first partnered the current Three Lions captain in an international youth team. And he credits a current Everton Academy staff member with helping Dier become an international Premier League footballer. After leaving Everton, Long played for Sean Dyche, worked with David Weir, got knocked out on his debut for Motherwell and quickly learned that being a professional footballer isn’t always the glamorous existence it seems. “Everyone thinks it’s sunshine and rainbows but it’s actually not. I’ve had more lows than highs and I wish I’d had more highs than lows but it’s the best job in the world and I love it. I thought I’d be Everton’s number nine for years and be the main man but football isn’t like that. And life isn’t like that. But at least I can tell my son I played for Everton.” Chris Long’s career has been something of a rollercoaster but he’s back enjoying his football and is looking forward to the start of a new season…on the other side of the world!

To mark 10 years since the passing of Everton great Howard Kendall, two key players from his trophy-winning Blues side – Peter Reid and Kevin Ratcliffe – discussed what made the legendary boss such a brilliant manager. Kendall – who also shone as an Everton player as part of the Holy Trinity with Colin Harvey and Alan Ball – led the Toffees to their most successful era in the 1980s, winning two top-flight league titles, the FA Cup and European Cup Winners' Cup.

The latest Bred a Blue podcast is with Tony Grant. Grant came through the Everton ranks to make 79 Senior-Team appearances and speaks frankly and openly about his time with the Club. For example, the night he made his debut away at Newcastle United, when Barry Horne and Earl Barrett were both sent off and how only his second start in the side was at Wembley! He also recalls the time he was offered a new contract only to find out that the manager had been sacked when he turned up at Bellefield to put pen to paper! Grant also discusses his frustration at various managers signing players to play in his position and he reminisces about the only period in his Everton career when he actually felt like a regular. He reveals what he’d “do differently if I had my time again” and rates the best players he played with at Everton. The podcast also covers his coaching experiences as assistant to Robbie Fowler in India, Australia and Saudi Arabia. Tony Grant was a gifted footballer, always good to watch. He’s good to listen to as well!

The latest Official Everton Podcast episode is all about Kevin Campbell. The former Blues striker passed away in June at the tragically young age of 54 and the podcast looks back at the influence he had at Everton Football Club. Darren Griffiths is joined by Dave Prentice and Gavin Buckland, with audio contributions from Kevin’s former Arsenal team-mate Alan Smith and his striking partner at Everton, Francis Jeffers. We also hear snippets from Kevin himself as he recalls the circumstances in which he joined Everton, THAT goal against Liverpool and the first-time he encountered a schoolboy Wayne Rooney. He also speaks about the night Arsenal won the First Division title at Anfield and then bumped into some celebrating Evertonians after the game! We look back at the career of a man who cemented his legendary status at Goodison within weeks of joining the football club and assess the attributes that took him to the top. For example, he was a prolific goalscorer as a youth, but he developed his game so well that he became the perfect foil for every conceivable type of fellow centre-forward – as his partnerships with Smith, Ian Wright, Paul Merson, Francis Jeffers, Nick Barmby and Rooney would confirm. Campbell is the Premier League’s leading English goalscorer never to have been capped, he scored 51 goals for Everton, and he captained the club, but as this podcast discusses, bare statistics only tell part of the Kevin Campbell story.

The latest guest in our Bred A Blue podcast series is former central defender, Neil Moore. Moore is a lifelong Evertonian who lived the dream… just! He played six senior games for his beloved Blues under Howard Kendall and Mike Walker before accepting that the level of competition was always going to be just too much. “I had Dave Watson, Kevin Ratcliffe, Martin Keown, David Unsworth, Gary Ablett all ahead of me,” he recalls. After progressing through the ranks, Moore made his debut at Goodison Park in October 1992. Everton defeated Rotherham United 3-0 with Moore replacing Barry Horne in the 87th minute. “Howard sent me on up front and all I did was run around for three minutes without touching the ball,” he says. “I got slaughtered for that in the dressing room afterwards!” Two of his subsequent Premier League appearances for Everton were against Manchester United and Arsenal, so Moore found himself competing against the likes of Paul Merson, Kevin Campbell, Eric Cantona and Mark Hughes. He also played 45 minutes as an emergency striker again alongside Peter Beardsley at Goodison against Sheffield United! Like every player who worked with Howard Kendall, Moore was immensely fond of him, describing him as a ‘fantastic character and a brilliant man’ but he admits that he got more of a sniff when Mike Walker came in. “It’s all about opinions and about trust, and Mike trusted me,” he says, “which was fantastic from my point of view.” Eventually though, Moore realised that his future lay beyond Goodison Park, ‘Joe Royle just didn’t fancy me which was fair enough because that’s football’ and, ironically, it was Walker who offered him a way out – taking him to Norwich City. However, a friendly fixture at Carrow Road while he was still technically on loan, ruined his chances of a lengthy career in Norfolk. Norwich were playing West Ham but the referee called it off because the stadium was shrouded in thick fog. “You couldn’t see the half-way line,” says Moore. That’s when it got bizarre! The referee refused to take the game, so an appeal went out and a qualified official happened to be in the crowd. He duly officiated the game, in ridiculous conditions, and Moore suffered the most horrendous bad luck. “I broke two vertebrae in my spine so the chance of playing in the Championship was basically over before it had begun.” As enthusiastic an Evertonian as you could ever wish to meet, Neil Moore went on to have a long-playing career at lower league and non-league level and his love for the Blues has never wavered. He recalls his days of cleaning Neville Southall’s boots (after first knocking on the men’s dressing room door to be allowed in), buying chocolate bars with the coins intended to wash the kit in the laundrette, being coached by Mike Lyons and Jimmy Gabriel, and much, much more!

The latest guest on our Bred a Blue podcast series is Preston North End midfielder, Ryan Ledson. Ledson first came to Everton’s attention when he was just four-years-old and he completed the full journey in 2014 when he made his senior team debut. He speaks about his upbringing with the Blues and being handed his Under-21s debut by Alan Stubbs when he was just 15-years-old. His big moment in an Everton shirt came on 11 December 2014 when he was one of four senior debutants against FK Krasnodar in a Europa League tie at Goodison Park. Kieran Dowell, Chris Long and Gethin Jones also made their bows that night. “The team was named an hour-and-a-half before kick-off and I was in it!” says Ledson. Sadly for the player, despite performing well, it would be his one and only appearance for Everton. A highly successful loan spell at Cambridge United in the 2015/16 season really whetted his appetite for senior football and he realised that his future lay beyond Goodison. “I had a year left on my contract at Everton so I could have stayed in the building but I played in a 21s game coming back after Cambridge and I remember thinking during the game that I couldn’t do that anymore.” He made the decision to switch to Oxford United where he impressed sufficiently enough to earn a move to the Championship with Preston. Ledson speaks about the teenage pressure of being capped at every level by England and the frustrating injury that prevented him playing alongside Club teammates Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Jonjoe Kenny, Dowell and Ademola Lookman when England Under-20s won the World Cup in 2017. Ledson also reveals that he had an agonising decision to make when the Under-17s European Championships clashed with Everton’s last Premier League fixture of the 2014/15 season at Hull City. He chose his country, despite thinking that he’d play at Hull. He is now approaching 200 games for Preston, but he retains his genuine affection for Everton and said this about one of his Blues teammates: “He’s the best player I’ve ever played with. He was a step ahead of everyone in training and played balls that you didn’t even think were on. And not only that, he was a top fella who really helped the young lads.”

The latest guest on our Bred a Blue podcast series is former Everton reserves goalkeeper, Jamie Speare. By his own admission, the mention of his name to Toffees of a certain age will only prompt the response ‘his name rings a bell’, but in the mid-late 1990s, Speare was one of a number of young goalkeepers waiting in vain for Neville Southall to give them a sniff of first team action! It never happened but Speare and the Blues legend struck up a friendship that has endured to this day. It wasn’t all plain sailing initially though. “Neville pushed me to the point that I nearly quit three weeks into the first month of my YTS,” Speare says. “He was giving that much stick out and I really didn’t know how to take it. My mum took it up with the Club, but Neville said to me: 'If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t bother you,' and I thought ‘fair enough.’ “We got on great and still do. He drove all the way from Kent for my wedding, which he didn’t need to do.” Speare played youth team football with Graham Allen, Jon O’Connor, Gavin McCann, Jamie Milligan, John Hills, Phil Jevons, Michael Branch, Michael Ball, and Richard Dunne, all of whom progressed to play senior football. Speare came close, but just not close enough. He played in a friendly against Aberdeen, made the odd substitutes bench in the Premier League and was in Joe Royle’s squads for the ECWC ties against Reykjavik and Feyenoord in 1995. The closest that he got to a senior appearance was against Blackburn Rovers, but it wasn’t as a goalkeeper! “It was at Ewood Park and Anders Limpar went down injured,” he explains. “Joe had used all his other subs so he told me to get warmed up. Anders got back up, so I never got on!” In this Bred a Blue conversation, Speare speaks openly about being released by Everton and talks us through his subsequent career – which included European football with Cwmbran Town, more than 300 appearances for Accrington Stanley and a short spell at Sligo Rovers. These days, Speare in the assistant manager of Northern Premier League Division One West team Nantwich Town, after being set on his coaching career by a PFA funded course. It’s another fascinating story from a young man still involved in football after an Everton Academy upbringing. Don’t miss the incredible story of the dramatic and historical Everton message that he mistakenly pulled off the fax machine at Bellefield while waiting for one for himself!

The latest Official Everton Podcast is all about last day dramas! Evertonians have had more than their fair share of mixed emotions on the final day of a football season and host Darren Griffiths is joined by Dave Prentice and Gavin Buckland to look back at some of them. We feature the last-gasp escapes of 1994, 1998, 2022 and 2023 – and hear from one of the goalscoring heroes, Gareth Farrelly. We learn which future Blues hero made his professional debut as a teenager for Arsenal during the very last game at Goodison Park that wasn’t filmed! And which Everton player is the only one to have ever scored the very last goal of a Premier League campaign – a 93rd minute winner? We also reveal that the legendary Denis Law goal for Manchester City against Manchester United in 1974 did NOT relegate United – Mike Lyons did it a week earlier! And when did Everton get their first penalty-kick of the season with just ten minutes of the final game to go! We also speak about Duncan Ferguson’s last goal for Everton with his last kick of the last game against West Bromwich Albion and a wonder strike against Chelsea from Jermaine Beckford. And, of course, April 1978 when Bob Latchford just about reached his famous target of 30 league goals!

The latest guest on our Bred a Blue podcast series is former striker Phil Jevons. Jevons joined the Everton Academy as a schoolboy and went on to make nine senior appearances under Walter Smith. He recalls his early days at Netherton and Bellefield when the ‘friendly and challenging environment’ helped him develop, playing alongside the likes of Leon Osman, Franny Jeffers, Danny Cadamarteri, Michael Ball, Richard Dunne and Jamie Milligan. Jevons also played against international footballers when he reached the reserve team: “We played Manchester United at Old Trafford and they had Scholes, Jordi Cruyff and Solskjaer.” The Liverpool-born centre-forward helped Everton to win the FA Youth Cup in 1998 and the FA Premier Reserve League in 2001 – and in between he made his senior debut away at Blackburn Rovers. "I’d been top scorer for the reserves for three years on the run, so I felt like I was ready,” Jevons said. He went on to have a hand in the Everton goal in a 2-1 defeat: “I played an early ball to Don Hutchison and he found Bakayoko who scored.” The turn of the century was a challenging time to be a young striker at Everton because the competition was intense. Jevons was battling with Duncan Ferguson, Franny Jeffers, Kevin Campbell, Nick Barmby, Ibrahim Bakayoko and Danny Cadamarteri for a starting role. It was the subsequent arrivals of Joe-Max Moore and Mark Hughes that convinced Jevons that his future lay beyond Goodison Park “Joe-Max Moore was a good player and a great lad but I didn’t think he was any better than I was,” he says. “But my squad number went up from 20 to 26 so I had an inkling!” Jevons left Everton with no regrets and during the podcast conversation he reveals the player who had the biggest influence on him during his time with the senior squad. “He was fantastic with me. He was the ultimate professional, fit as a fiddle. He told me how to live my life, how to eat and how to train.” He left Everton in 2001 and joined Grimsby Town, for whom he scored a never-to-be-forgotten League Cup winner at Anfield against Liverpool! “I still get Evertonians coming up to me to talk about that goal!” Jevons went on to have personal and team success with Yeovil Town and Bristol City before winding down his playing career and moving into coaching – starting off at the Everton Academy where he was involved in the development of Kieran Dowell, Nathan Broadhead, Liam Walsh, Tom Davies and Calum Connolly. Jevons left Finch Farm to join Sunderland and he speaks honestly and with clarity about the ruthlessness of senior coaching environments. It’s another fascinating football story that has its roots at the Everton Academy.