Dyche must find a way of keeping Everton up or they face meltdown
I KNOW, given my history, that advice to Everton won’t exactly be welcome… but it’s time for the club I supported as a kid and their fans to get real.
There has been so much wild talk about what they want after Frank Lampard was sacked.
Some ridiculous names thrown in, like Mauricio Pochettino and Thomas Tuchel, but this is not the time for dreaming.
They are truly in a bad – I’d say desperate – situation at the moment.
But it could get a whole lot worse.
I don’t think I’m being harsh to say that, no matter who came in as manager, the odds are that they’re going down.
They have 15 points from 20 games, haven’t won a Premier League game since October, and have the fewest wins of any club in the top flight.
They need a magician, not a manager. I’ve heard many Blues supporters suggest it may be no bad thing to be relegated, so they can have a reset and come back much stronger. Are they having a laugh?
The grim reality of life in the Premier League is that, if you drop out of it, then it’s incredibly tough to come back. And if you are in a financial mess, almost impossible.
Again, it’s not being harsh to point out that they have a commitment to a brand new stadium that hasn’t been paid for yet… and are still searching for funding to finish it. What are the chances of attracting that financing if they’re in the Championship?
I laughed out loud when I saw
Farhad Moshiri wanted Marcelo
Bielsa (right) as his manager.
Yeah, he’s a coach with a great reputation, who has a very singular view of the job and his way of doing it.
I could have told them from the start that he wasn’t a manager to come in during
January and somehow scrap his way to survival. And it turns out he told them exactly that when he finally met Moshiri.
Again, it’s hilarious.
Apparently he said he’d work with the Under-21s until the summer, while someone else did the heavy lifting of actually saving Everton from oblivion. Then he’d come in when his methods had a bit more of a chance of succeeding. That tells you he has no feelings for the club or its future – just for his own coaching methods.
Which is why I think Sean Dyche was always the most sensible, logical choice. If they had carte blanche at the start of the season, then they wouldn’t choose him.
But right now, with financial constraints because of profit and sustainability rules, and with at least 20 points required to stay up when they’ve got 15 all season? He’s the best choice.
The thing about Dyche is that he knows how to be hard to beat.
He didn’t only survive in the Premier League with one of the smallest wage bills, he even took Burnley to seventh.
You don’t do that by playing open attacking football against Manchester City or Arsenal or Liverpool.
You do it by making your side tough to beat and your home ground a bear pit that opponents fear to come into.
He’s got more to him than that as a coach, he seems intelligent, thoughtful and he introduced some pretty modern methods at Burnley, including impressive analytics. But he’s not adverse to doing that. He will be ready to find a way to save Everton – not just from the drop, but from the threat of a meltdown that could destroy the club. He won’t put his own principles above the needs of the club. It’s vital Everton stay up. They risk becoming another Leeds or Sunderland otherwise, with years in the wilderness because their finances collapse.
I don’t see anyone available with better qualifications than Dyche. And for that, at least, Everton fans have to accept it’s time to get real.
Maybe they should stop thinking they have to compete with Liverpool and start looking at the clubs they are really competing against… those at the foot of the table.
Everton have to start beating those teams and put some distance between them – before they can start looking up again.
It’s tough advice, but it has to be heeded – because the alternative is unthinkable.