Adrian Heath

Adrian "Inchy" Heath joined Everton from his home town club, Stoke City, in January 1982 for a then club record fee of £700,000.

Graeme Sharp described the partnership they formed as one which was formed almost immediately, and the fact that the pair developed a great understanding of each other's game very quickly led Heath to become the club's top scorer in his first full season, bagging 18 in all competitions in the 1983-84 season, and getting into double figures every season until 1988, despite only playing 17 games in the 84-85 campaign.

The goal that everyone remembers Heath for though, is the one credited with turning around Everton's fortunes in the 1983-84 road to the League Cup Final at Oxford.

Latching onto a poor Kevin Brock back-pass, Inchy scored the equalising goal away at Oxford to earn Everton, and indeed Howard Kendall, one more chance to turn things around. They did so, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Heath himself says of the goal, "It’s the goal that people talk about the most because it meant so much to people at the time and there was all the talk of it possibly being Howard’s last game. If that were true, then I couldn’t have repaid his faith in me any better."



Heath was a tremendous goalscorer, and for league goals in the past 30 years, is 3rd behind only Graeme Sharp and Tony Cottee, with 71 league goals to his name. Sadly, however, he missed out on an England career after a challenge by Seffield Wednesday's Brian Marwood put him out of almost the entire 1985-86 season.

He did, however, recover to become a big part of the title winning side the following season, scoring 11 times to help Everton raise the Championship trophy once again.

He left to join Espanyol in 1988, only to return to England 12 months later for an ill-fated 6 months at Aston Villa before a successful 2 and a half years at Manchester City.

His managerial career has seen him as manager at Burnley, Assistant to Howard Kendall at Sheffield United and back at Goodison Park, and he is currently Assistant Manager at Coventry City.

Honours won with Everton 2 League Championships (1985, 1987) FA Cup Winner (1984) European Cup Winners Cup Winner (1985) 4 Charity Shields