1997–98 season | |||
---|---|---|---|
Chairman | Peter Johnson | ||
Manager | Howard Kendall | ||
Stadium | Goodison Park | ||
Premiership | 17th | ||
FA Cup | Third round | ||
League Cup | Third round | ||
Top goalscorer | Ferguson (11) | ||
Average home league attendance | 35,376 | ||
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During the 1997–98 English football season, Everton competed in the FA Premier League (known as the FA Carling Premiership for sponsorship reasons).
Everton began the season with three significant new signings – Slaven Bilić, John Oster and Gareth Farrelly – but the big news at Goodison Park was the return of Howard Kendall for his third spell as manager.
With financial problems growing and fans growing ever more hostile towards chairman Peter Johnson, Kendall was soon facing the biggest struggle of his managerial career. Everton – top division members continuously since 1954 – were battling against relegation and looked anything but a trophy-winning team that they so often had been during Kendall's earlier spells. They ended up surviving, but only avoided relegation to Division One because they had a greater goal difference than 18th-placed Bolton Wanderers. That kept Everton up, but Kendall resigned just weeks later and was replaced by the former Rangers manager Walter Smith.
Updated to games played on 10 May 1998.
Source: Premier League
Rules for classification: 1) points; 2) goal difference; 3) number of goals scored
1 Chelsea qualified for the Cup Winners' Cup as defending champions and were the League Cup winners.
2 As Arsenal qualified for the Champions League, their Cup Winners' Cup place as FA Cup winners defaulted to Newcastle United, the losing finalists.
3 Despite being relegated, Crystal Palace qualified for the 1998 Intertoto Cup.
(C) = Champion; (R) = Relegated; (P) = Promoted; (E) = Eliminated; (O) = Play-off winner; (A) = Advances to a further round.
Only applicable when the season is not finished:
(Q) = Qualified to the phase of tournament indicated; (TQ) = Qualified to tournament, but not yet to the particular phase indicated; (RQ) = Qualified to the relegation tournament indicated; (DQ) = Disqualified from tournament.