The photoshopped version of Sean Dyche comes from the Brighton fan site wearebrighton.com, which said before the recent 1-1 draw - a game that Everton very nearly won with Brighton equalising in stoppage time - "we need a cure for their Sean Dyche kryptonite". The reason being Dyche's teams, Burnley and Everton, have not lost at Brighton in 11 years, since August 2013 (so I guess that's now 12). A lot of those games were draws but it's a remarkable record, including last season's 5-1 win for the Blues.
I found the stat surprising but not a shock. On a good day Everton can be difficult to break down. They aren't too bothered about having little of the ball against teams like Brighton, or other teams who like to pass the opposition into boredom but aren't as good as Manchester City. While Dyche has made Everton more resilient, the better Everton teams of the last 15 years have been able to soak up pressure. It was Roberto Mancini who once bemoaned "there is no answer to the problem of Everton". The problem Everton have is the other way around - taking on teams at Goodison who sit deep.
I quite like Dyche as King Hal but Mrs H's moniker for him, the hoarse whisperer has stuck in our house. He seems a straight forward sort of bloke but there is more to him than meets the eye. He describes himself as a "6 foot 1inch skinhead" who "gets put in a box quickly", though it doesn't bother him ("let them decide"). He has clearly studied management quite a lot. When he first joined Everton my brother pointed me to the High Performance series of podcasts which feature interviews with elite performers in business, the arts and sport. Dyche has been interviewed three times for that series, the first while Burnley manager and the third, in January 2023, soon after his appointment by Everton. A lot of the chitchat was about management techniques and approaches to achieving high performance in general, rather than specifically football.
Dyche was also interviewed recently Mike France, the CEO of Christopher Ward, the online luxury watch maker, as part of Everton's own media PR propaganda. What was clear from all these interviews was that Dyche understands a lot about how to manage a complex enterprise and has studied how people lead businesses, mentioning what he's learned from CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (these are the largest companies in the world). In that case it was not to get too close to company activities and to maintain the ability to step back. In his case that means watching a lot of football matches but not all of them when he's got others who do that.
Before you guffaw "it's football!" Dyche notes that a lot of business folk are "blown away" by the complexity of running a football club. (I would add with a limited senior management. The clubs have at least ten times more staff than in the 1980s but many of them are specialists - in nutrition, data analysis etc, etc).
Listening to Dyche talk about alignment across the club (it was lacking when he arrived), getting buy in to change a business plan, fans pushing back against the club when he started at Everton, dealing with the "media view" and the fact that, especially with the financial difficulties, you "can't just click a switch to change all that" it's clear that Dyche has digested a lot of what's put in front of folk on business studies courses, about managing stakeholders for example. But, unlike many people I worked with who did MBAs and similar, he doesn't spout it in an apparent attempt to bamboozle everyone, in ways that make you wonder whether the speaker knows what on earth they are actually on about. What he says he tries to do is get his message across in an authentic way, keeping it simple and instilling his values, which he describes as "not old, or new, just good". He believes in working hard, with pride and honesty, as his parents brought him up to do.
The next bit is an extract from another interview - for someone who doesn't do social media and keeps his family life private he does a lot of interviews!
“I remember going over to France with Nottingham Forest when I was 16,” Dyche says. “I was a youth player and it was at the time my O-level results came out. I was quite bright but — like a lot of talented players back then — obsessed with football and didn’t put the hours in at school. So, frankly, I didn’t do that well in my exams. You can picture the scene. I am in an old-fashioned phone box in France, whacking coins into the slot, feeling very sorry for myself. I am blaming the teachers, the coaches, you name it. I am probably shedding a few tears, too. And Dad says, ‘Son, stop making excuses. Work harder. Don’t blame it on anyone else.’ That may sound hard but you know what? It was the truth. I didn’t feel a lack of love; quite the opposite. I thought, ‘It’s a fair point, Dad,’ even if I didn’t want to admit it.
“And I think love is shown by telling the truth. The whole truth. Sometimes, the brutal truth. Sure, you need to say it respectfully. Sometimes, you need to say it gently. But unless you are prepared to say it how it is, you are misleading someone. Maybe even lying to them. But this is the problem in the world today: people prefer perception over reality.
It's not possible for all young footballers to make the grade. And yet, Dyche says, if you tell a player that they haven’t got a contract, instead of parents accepting your judgment, they say you are harming their kids. So you have to tell a weird version of the truth; you have got to sugarcoat it — ‘Yeah, you are good enough but we didn’t have quite enough room.’ It is madness.”
This extract came from an interview in the Times with Matthew Syed, one of my favourite journalists. Syed asked Dyche "what does it mean to care, to show compassion, to reveal empathy?" and the above was what spilled out.
To say Syed was impressed by Dyche would be an understatement:
"I’ve met quite a few politicians down the years but I think I can say — truthfully and without condescension — that nobody has more eloquently articulated the malaise in modern society than Sean Dyche. Across a flowing interview, we range across VAR, sin-bins (Dyche thinks its impractical to have a player sitting down getting cold for 10 minutes and then go straight back onto the pitch because of the risk of injury. "And where would they sit? Are you going to give them headphones to drown out the torrent of abuse from the stands and an exercise bike to keep warm? Only someone who doesn't understand the game would come up with this") points deductions, head protocols, diving (he tolerates professional fouls but hates no contact diving), 4-4-2, music, beer and the relative merits of Inspector Morse and The Sopranos."
Syed said he was "transfixed by Dyche's words" and summarised him as "one of those rare people who combines fierce intelligence and a prodigious work rate with that sense of fun you so often see in the best leaders. Life’s an adventure and you have to approach it in the right spirit,” he says. It isn’t a bad summary of the philosophy of one of football’s most singular and impressive characters."
Remarkable. I'm not always convinced by Dyche's logic but some of it is, I'm sure, a front, to portray himself as a straight forward, simple, man. As an example, a few weeks ago he was asked a question at a press conference about the prospect of Everton having two cases PSR/financial fair play cases dealt with before Manchester City's is heard. He said "Just like everyone else we are all wondering what makes one rule for one and one rule for the other... I don't know the ins and outs but I think we are all asking that".
He went on to say "I don't know what the exact number is but they reference over a hundred charges....I don't know the detail of them (sic) charges....I'm not questioning Man City or whatever they've done stuff or not done stuff... That story has been going round for while now... if you're going to do it with them (i.e. fast track Everton and Nottingham Forest) then you have to start doing it with everyone and you're going to have to fast track everything because it's relevant now".
I'm sure Dyche is well aware that the Manchester City charges are very different and very much harder to assess. But in terms of putting pressure on the Premier League his comments were to the point and clever.
As I say, there's more to him than meets the eye.
However, there is a big but. His team is currently on a very bad run indeed. Excluding cup ties (one win and two losses, one on penalties) they've not got a win in eleven Premier League matches. Before that they'd gone on a run of four consecutive league wins, scoring 8 and conceding none. They've only scored 7 goals in those 11 games with five draws and six defeats. To be fair, of those eleven matches only four have been at home. They have included two against Manchester City, two against Spurs, away games at Man United, Brighton, Fulham, Wolves and Palace and home games against Villa and West Ham.
I went to the West Ham match and, not surprisingly, the team were nervous and tentative. After all, it was seen as a winnable game even though the Hammers, having been on a poor run, had just recorded a couple of wins. Yet again Everton made the better chances and could easily have won the match. But they didn't.
Some folk say the club has had a hard run of matches and there are easier ones to follow. Having had a derby match against Liverpool postponed, next up is away at Bournemouth. The Cherries have been on a poor run at home but had a morale boosting win against Luton, winning from 3 goals down. Then it's Newcastle away for Everton, followed by Burnley at home and Chelsea away. There is then what should be an appetising run of games against Forest and Brentford at home, Luton away and Sheffield United at home before they go to Arsenal for their final match.
The problem for Dyche is that games against the likes of Sheffield United and Luton are exactly the kind of games Everton have performed poorly in over recent years. And they'll all effectively be six pointers. Even if Everton have recorded a couple of wins before they get to the end of that run, no-one knows what will happen in their second PSR hearing and then the inevitable appeal so every match could matter even if the table at the time says otherwise. That will be a challenge for Dyche and his motivational skills.
I do have specfic concerns about Dyche, however. Once Dyche got players fit earlier in the season he adopted a formation and style of play that worked well with the squad he has available: a back 4, two holding midfielders, two wingers who work hard and stay compact in defence and Doucoure breaking forward from midfield to support a traditional centre forward.
It has certainly worked defensively: only four clubs (the two Manchester teams, Liverpool and Arsenal) have conceded fewer in the league this season. And it should be working in attack: Everton has the 9th best "xG", the expected goals stat that says what a team would have been expected to have scored from the chances they have made, in Everton's case 43.7 goals. The problem is they've actually only scored 29, the next worst tally in the league.
Which leaves me with two concerns. The first is his flexibility. Not physically, but in terms of how he sets his team up and approaches games. There's no variation. Frank Lampard was the same: once he got Idrissa Gana Gueye back at the club and had the personnel to play 4-3-3 that's what he always did. For a few weeks it worked and then it didn't any more. You didn't need to pay a video analyst to predict how Everton would set up. And you don't now, unless key players are unavailable. The play is predictable. That's ok if you're Manchester City but otherwise it's asking for trouble.
The second is what on earth is Dyche doing to coach his team in attacking play? This is a question Mrs H will confirm I've been asking for several months but there was a crescendo of it online after the defeat at Manchester United, where they had 23 shots to United's 15 but still lost 2-0. Everton have 13 coaching staff inlcuding Dyche* and it's not clear to me if any of them work specifically on attack. Not just scoring, but what to do in transitions when the team wins the ball, what runs do players make etc. But yes, shooting as well!
Sitting watching a number of Everton games over the last year or so under Dyche it has been painfully obvious at times that other teams know how to pick them off. Why can't we do the same the other way round? On several occasions against West Ham there seemed to be no understanding between players when Everton broke. It's as if they've been told "when you get the ball, just do whatever seems best". Which is ok if you have talented attacking players rather than a workmanlike team. The organisation that is so apparent in defence seems utterly lacking in attack.
It was much the same under Frank Lampard. He got found out and, maybe, so has Dyche.
Can he respond? We'll find out. After all if Everton don't start scoring they'll go down whatever happens off the pitch in the kangaroo court of supposed financial fair play.
It will be a serious test of Dyche's managerial ability to get performances out of his squad under the pressure they will face. He more than convinced Matthew Syed that he knows what he's talking about. But there's a very unforgiving practical exam about to start in earnest.
P.S. It's odd how Arsenal away has been the club's final fixture several times in recent years. Not a game they will fancy if they need a result, especially if Arsenal need a win to potentially clinch the title...
*The 13 Everton coaching staff are Dyche, assistant managers Ian Woan and Steve Stone, two goalkeeping coaches, two fitness coaches, a chief analyst, two video analysts and a match analyst, a head of academy coaching and a trainee coach. See https://www.transfermarkt.com/fc-everton/mitarbeiter/verein/29
The Brighton fan article is at https://www.wearebrighton.com/matchday/brighton-need-a-cure-for-their-sean-dyche-kryptonite/
High Performance podcast, Jake Humphries and Damien Hughes, available of youtube. Episode 175 Sean Dyche - why I'm ready to manage again, January 2023 https://www.thehighperformancepodcast.com/podcast/e175/seandyche
Sean Dyche - what makes him tick? Youtube interview with Christopher Ward (12mins approx) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md7LJmgiZbM. This is a corny title as Christopher Ward make watches and are an Everton Women's team sponsor as well as Everton's "first official global timing partner" - ? They are making a limited edition Dixie Dean chronometer - 60 off, of course, price not quoted but I'm sure not cheap.
Matthew Syed's article Sean Dyche: Love is shown by telling the whole brutal truth was in the Times on 17 February
"One rule for one and one rule for the other" - Sean Dyche on Everton, Manchester City and Financial Fair Play. Liverpool Echo, 9 Feb 2024 https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/everton-man-city-ffp-dyche-28597334
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