Football: Nervous Everton missing target man

Everton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Oldham Athletic. . . . . . . . . . . .2

IN 1970, Joe Royle and Howard Kendall steered Everton to the Football League title. They may both have another shot next season, such is the poor form of the clubs they currently manage.

A point apiece in a strangely passionless relegation get-together was the first for Kendall's Everton in five attempts and Royle's Oldham Athletic in four. There the similarity of supineness ends. Everton, fifth from bottom, have enough class players, like Peter Beardsley and Ian Snodin, to avoid the drop; Richard Jobson and Neil Adams apart, Oldham's ranks already look filled with First Division spear-carriers. Their supporters, who outsang the locals, deserve better.

All Everton are missing to maintain their 39-year association with the top flight is one commodity that comes from within - concentration - and one from outside - a target-man striker who can be spotted in a crowd.

Unceasing commitment to the very end would have brought the Blues maximum points: leading, with four minutes left, through Beardsley's penalty and Stuart Barlow's header, Everton should have killed the game off by closing down Oldham whenever they ventured across the half-way line.

But they backed off, allowing Royle's battlers the space to engineer the unlikeliest of turnarounds. In front of the Gwladys Street-enders who (briefly) lauded his name, Adams drove in a penalty to halve the deficit. That should have been the signal for Everton to tighten up sharpish, but instead they let the splendid Jobson dribble forward.

The England B defender - a prime target for monied managers if the Latics do fall - slipped the ball to Gunnar Halle on the left. The Norwegian's raking cross into the box was flicked on by Ian Marshall for the unmarked Adams to thump in the equaliser. A fine goal, but Everton should never have let it happen. The strong positional sense of Kenny Sansom, who should have been watching Adams, seems to be on the wane.

Kendall has used 25 players this season but the key character may not be on the staff: a prolific front- runner which Goodison has grown to expect from Dixie Dean in pre- War years, via Alex Young and Royle in the 1960s, Royle and Bob Latchford in the 1970s and the spitfire bursts of Andy Gray and Gary Lineker in the last decade.

Tony Cottee, who formed an occasionally penetrating partnership with the pacy Barlow, was described in the Everton fanzine, the aptly titled When Skies Are Grey, as 'the thinking man's Gerd Muller'. But what Goodison requires is a drinking man's Karl- Heinz Rummenigge, a forceful figure to make a nuisance of himself in the opposition's goalmouth.

Goals: Beardsley pen (20) 1-0; Barlow (60) 2-0; Adams pen (87) 2-1; Adams (88) 2-2.

Everton: Kearton; Jackson, Sansom, Snodin, Watson, Ablett, Kenny, Beardsley, Cottee, Horne, Barlow (Rideout, 80). Substitutes not used: Radosavljevic, Reeves (gk).

Oldham Athletic: Gerrard; Fleming, Halle, Henry, Jobson, Redmond, Adams, Ritchie, (Moulden, 37), Marshall, Milligan, Brennan (Palmer, 64). Substitute not used: Gray (gk).

Referee: K Cooper (Pontypridd).