THE RAIN was falling gently and inside Goodison Park the last line of stewards had received permission to leave their posts after the frantic draw with Coventry which secured Everton's Premiership future and sparked celebrations verging on hysteria. It looks like something from the bloody Somme, said one as he cast a backward glance at the Goodison pitch, from which huge chunks had been torn by fans eager for a souvenir.

So it did. And as the groundsmen looked on ruefully, the thought occurred that even if Everton double their record of nine championships and five FA Cups, even if one day they win the European Cup, they will not better the drama or top the passion of the afternoon on which they saved their Premiership lives. For compelling action it was irresistible - encapsulating much of the good and some of the bad of the Premiership. There was the hostile protest against chairman Peter Johnson - a man who seems to have forgotten that a chairman's duty is to act as custodian of the history of a great club and not just make a fast buck on the back of soccer's burgeoning appeal. There was the dignity and honour of manager Howard Kendall, who in his third reign at Goodison has worked on a shoestring and kept his nerve when the pressure was greatest. There was the grit and determination of the vast majority of the players alongside the attitude of Mickael Madar, earning more in a week than a nurse in a year, but who played as if he couldn't be bothered. To Kendall's credit he replaced the Frenchman soon after half-time. And then there was the astonishing loyalty and passion of fans whose weekly existence, somewhat sadly, seems to revolve exclusively around whether their team wins or loses. Anyone who thinks that soccer is still just a game, a largely meaningless trivia, should have been at Goodison yesterday as the ebb and flow of the 1997-98 season ended in a tidal wave of emotion. Yes, the statistics show that the big three - Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool - sit once again on top of the Premiership, while the three minnows - Bolton, Barnsley and Crystal Palace - prop up the rest. But behind the statistics was a more revealing story.

For this was the season which proved the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of our football with a foreign coach in Arsene Wenger taking the championship title for the first time ever. In the process Wenger stripped the ‘Boring' and ‘Lucky' tags from an Arsenal side which amassed 10 straight victories playing the sort of vibrant, inventive and entertaining football of which the 1971 Double-winning team could only have dreamed.

It was the season in which the now-famous phrase you'll never win anything with kids should have read you'll never win everything with kids as Manchester United promised so much in the fresh and breezy days of autumn but had blown themselves out by the time the really serious action was unfolding. As so often happens the first real whiff of failure could now work in United's favour as the corporate fat cats behind the Old Trafford money-making machine now show signs of releasing the serious funds which Alex Ferguson undoubtedly requires to build a squad to compete on all fronts. It was the season Liverpool unearthed a rare jewel in 18-year-old Michael Owen, whose frightening pace and lethal penetration could yet prove to be England manager Glenn Hoddle's most potent weapon in the World Cup in France next month. And while they were let down by a defence with holes at times as big as the Mersey tunnel, manager Roy Evans deserves another season in charge, at last having grasped that when you're dealing with precocious and wilful footballers a steely edge is a prerequisite to a nice guy image.