Sean Dyche has now had six games in charge of Everton since his appointment. But after the draw at Nottingham Forest their predicament remains acute. Everton are running out of games to ensure safety. Sure, with two wins, a draw and three defeats there has been an improvement in form from 0.75 points per game this season under Lampard to 1.2. But the data backs up my instinctive nervousness. If they continue to accrue points at this rate for the rest of the season they would end on 36 points. Which would have resulted in relegation in 8 out of the last 22 seasons. Meaning, at best, a very nervy end of season.
While their predicament is acute it doesn't surprise me at all. After all, shortly after their astounding 3-2 win against Crystal Palace which ensured relegation was avoided in May, I wrote "Safe - for now" (25 May 2022).
One reason I said that was that there was still a risk of a legal challenge by Burnley or Leeds on account of Everton's huge losses being deemed to fall with the Financial Fair Play regulations. Burnley backed down after consulting with the Premier League, but Everton's willingness to sell Anthony Gordon in January when the squad is so thin in forward positions, together with the failure to buy any additional players in that transfer window, makes me wonder whether this particular horse rather than bolting is still munching away in the stable. I am made no less nervous by the news that Manchester City has been charged by the Premier League with over 100 breaches of financial rules over the period 2009-2018 revealing that there is no PL statute of limitations under which such charges are time barred. In contrast two years ago City were able to get a two year UEFA ban cancelled after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled some aspects were actually time barred under UEFA's rules and others were not adequately proven. Some of the new City charges relate to rules which require provision "in utmost good faith" of "accurate financial information that gives a true and fair view of the club's financial position". Hopefully Everton's shocking figures for losses published last year were accurate and not massaged but I remain nervous as it's clear the issue could get re-opened at any time.
But there is a second reason why I say safe for now: clubs that narrowly evade relegation in one season often struggle in the following seasons. Because they were there for a reason.
When Everton flirted with relegation in 1994 fans said it mustn't be allowed to happen again. But they started the next season very badly before changing the manager and bringing in some new players (one was Duncan Ferguson, who other clubs wouldn't touch with a bargepole). A big improvement ensued - although they still finished 15th, they won the F A Cup and then qualified for Europe via the league the next season. But over the next 8 seasons there were two more serious flirtations with relegation, five finishes at 15th or below and only one top half finish. Stability and a regular top half finish didn't return until David Moyes arrived and gave the club a fundamental reset.
It seems to me to be obvious that, while fans might hope that a near escape will bring a wake up call, I fail to see why anyone would expect more or less the same group of players to get a significantly better result. In Everton's case this season it was the same bunch of players minus Richarlison who, as we saw in the World Cup, is a forward of the highest class.
So I was worried from the outset that Everton's proud record of 120 years in the top flight and counting, which is more than any other club (Aston Villa come next with 109, then Liverpool with 108) might grind to a halt. They've been in the top flight for 69 years consecutive seasons - a record only bettered by Arsenal who were last promoted in 1919. (Controversially if you read about it and especially if you are a Spurs fan. Maybe the League can go back that far and look into the suggestions of bribery that led to Arsenal getting elected to the old Division One when football resumed after World War I).
Lampard was an outstanding footballer and is a bright guy as well as seeming to be a nice chap. I hoped he would do well but saw little to justify that hope in his record at Chelsea and Derby. He was at the helm when Everton survived last season, but one could argue that the outstanding support from the fans at home and away games inspired the team just as much to scrape out the necessary results. And they had Richarlison. You can't get away from the fact that Lampard's points per game stat is by far the worst of any recent Everton manager. Indeed the worst for any Everton manager ever apart from Mike Walker.
This season there have been fan protests against the board, who are still staying away from home games because of what are reported to be realistic threats. I wondered whether there was much sense in these protests but the club has been dysfunctional for many years and arguably that starts at the top. Chairman Bill Kenwright, who I have a lot of time for, has loved Everton man and boy and is a good businessman. He appointed the two managers who have had the best record since Everton last won a trophy: David Moyes got us into 4th place, the Champions League and an F A Cup final and Roberto Martinez got Everton's highest ever season total of premier league points. But does Luvvie Bill understand modern football? There has been a lot of change in the last decade, with the onset of data analysis and so on. The current CEO, Denise Barrett-Baxendale MBE is one of the most prominent and respected women in sport. She took Everton's outstanding community programme to ever greater heights when she took responsibility for it in 2010. Within 2 years she was the club's Chief Operating Officer, has been on the board since 2016 and CEO since 2018. She is football's only representative on Sport England, the national body for grass roots sport. All extremely worthy.
Barrett-Baxendale was a member of Tracey Crouch MP's 'fan led' review panel that recommended regulation of football, which makes me wonder if she actually knows her arse from her elbow when it comes to football. But maybe that recommendation was inevitable and she did her best to try to make it sensible (no, I agree, that's not possible). And is she as smart a cookie as Karren Brady of West Ham? Brady famously negotiated on her own with a large team from the London mayoralty for the lease on the London Stadium. She got such a good result that there were complaints from Arsene Wenger that it was like West Ham winning the lottery and from others that it was tantamount to state aid. West Ham only pay £2.5m a year rent. They contributed to the cost of converting the stadium for football but the London Legacy Development Corporation agreed to pay all the stadium running costs including stewarding and even corner flags. All of which made Barry Hearn, who unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a deal for Leyton Orient to ground share at the stadium with West Ham, to say that his dog could have negotiated a better deal for London. Brady retorted that, since Hearn hadn't got a deal for his club, maybe he should have let his dog do the negotiating.
Still Everton's board have worthy people on it and not so long ago the club had the reputation of being well run. I had taken the view that Everton's ADHD approach to recruiting managers and players was all down to majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri's influence over the board. But maybe the fans are right and the fish has been rotting from the head.
Moshiri may be about to secure new investment in the club, which should ensure completion of the new stadium, construction of which is proceeding apace. This picture is from last month:
There have been suggestions that any such investment, perhaps from a company like New York based MSP Sports Capital, would bring commercial expertise to Everton on how to strengthen the club's global brand. I'd suggest it would be much more important to do things to strengthen the club's football performance and recruitment.
In the short term, though, can Sean Dyche produce the performances that will get the fans fully behind the team? As he doesn't have many forwards in the squad he has inherited he has little choice but to play uncompromising football. Can any manager, however good a motivator and tactician, can get the necessary performances - nay, just the necessary goals - to survive with a squad so unbalanced that for the last home game against Aston Villa the 20 man squad had 11 defenders and goalkeepers and only 4 forwards? The 9 man subs bench included 1 midfielder and 2 forwards, one of whom is youngster Ellis Simms. Simms has done well for the under 18 and 23 teams but has only 6 first team appearances and has spent most of the last two years on loan at Blackpool, Hearts and Sunderland.
Exactly why Everton failed to sign forward reinforcements in January is a matter of speculation. They had a deal lined up to bring in Arnaut Danjuma from Villareal but Spurs barged in and he chose them (understandable but with their squad he won't get many games). Everton clearly felt they had no option but to sell promising but want away starlet Anthony Gordon. It looks very much like they had to be sure of selling before they bought, raising concerns about whether the club is still in a financial fair play bind. It is also reported that Moshiri had lined up a deal for Marko Arnautovic but Bill Kenwright vetoed it. I can understand that - Marko is 33, hasn't played in the Premier League since 2019 and he wanted a two and a half year contract on £150k a week. This would have committed around £20m with agent's fees on top but more importantly would have bust Everton's pay structure* when their last accounts already had the pay bill at 95% of turnover. (Some have been pushing for that ratio to be part of finacial fair play and to be set at a maximum of 70% for sustainability). But still, to bring in nobody capable of playing up front seems culpably negligent.
The squad that Dyche took over wasn't just unbalanced but had been on a truly appalling run of form. Sky Sports showed a graphic in January which had the recent form of Everton's bottom 5 rivals. West Ham had won one of their last 8 matches, against Everton. Wolves had won 2 of their last 10, one of them at Everton. Bournemouth had won one of their last 11, against Everton. And Southampton had won 1 of their last 9 matches, at Everton. Not just utterly dire, but losing key matches to relegation rivals who were also on appallingly bad runs, sparking hope and confidence in them.
Arguably Everton have been unlucky. It wasn't their fault that Putin invaded Ukraine and Moshiri's even wealthier buddy Usmanov, whose company had been sponsoring the training ground, became persona non grata. Or that their costliest ever signing, Gylfi Sigurdsson, had to be suspended in summer 2021 for alleged multiple sexual offences. The CPS is still reviewing the evidence against him before deciding whether to prosecute or drop the case but in the meantime his contract has lapsed anyway. Or that another expensive signing Jean-Phillipe Gbamin got injured as soon as they'd signed him on a 5 year deal in 2019. He only played 6 matches in three years and is now, like Dele Alli, out on loan in Turkey. England international Dominic Calvert-Lewin has only been fit to appear in 9 out of 26 premier League matches this season, two of those as a sub. But then he only started 15 games last season. Waiting for DCL is the Evertonian's version of waiting for Godot.
But you can't get away from the fact that Everton spaffed a huge amount of money on some very ordinary players. A couple of years ago Everton had signed more £20M+ players than any club bar Liverpool, Man United, Chelsea and Man City. At that point Everton had signed 19 such players, while Tottenham and Arsenal had signed 12. When I tell you that Everton's signings included Cenk Tosun, Yannick Bolasie, Davy Klaassen, Theo Walcott and Moise Kean, who cost over £120M between them, you can see why they got into financial difficulties.
I think Dyche is a good fella and they might do it, though to do it the limited "new manager bounce" they have delivered will have to bounce rather more, which isn't what usually happens in these situations. Even if they do, going forward I worry about Everton's propensity to play what I have for some time been calling "dinosaur football".
The new ground is due to open in August 2024. The obvious question is which division will the team be playing in then? Because even if they escape this season, by my argument above they are also likely to struggle in the next.
And if they don't bounce back straight away, the question becomes whether the tighter fair play rules of the EFL will keep the club hidebound, or even in a tail spin like Derby County or QPR.
I think you can tell I'm not optimistic.
P.S. I changed the title of this post after Mrs H referred to Dyche as the hoarse whisperer. I thought she'd said "horse whisperer" and didn't know what she was on about, till she said "well isn't your manager the guy who whispers and sounds hoarse?". Which indeed he does. So Hoarse Whisperer it is.
P.P.S. Everton did get a win against Brentford, one of the form teams in Europe (don't laugh, there were only three teams in Europe's major league top divisions unbeaten in 2023 until 11 Mar and Brentford was one of them). But I'm still not confident looking at the remaining fixtures. Their next four games are Chelsea (A), Spurs (H), Man U (A) and Marco Silva's Fulham (H). I'd be pleased with 4 points out of that lot. After that games include Newcastle, Brighton and Man C with crunch games against Crystal Palace, Leicester and Wolves (all away) and a potentially decisive final fixture against Bournemouth at home. Squeaky bum time indeed
* Everton's payroll is reported to have 3 players on £120k a week (Doucoure, Mina and Iwobi) and 4 on £100k a week (Pickford, Calvert-Lewin, Onana and Tarkowski). https://www.spotrac.com/epl/everton-fc/payroll/
Other sources:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3540918/Revealed-truth-Karren-Brady-s-Olympic-Stadium-deal.html
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/16/west-ham-olympic-stadium-karren-brady-taxpayers-celebrate?CMP=gu_com
Kenwright blocked last gasp Everton signing after Moshiri had a greed a deal, Football Insider: https://www.footballinsider247.com/everton-news-arnie-sources/
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/everton-wage-bill-club-accounts-23543609
Everton manager records: https://www.evertonresults.com/managers7.htm
www.football365.com/news/every-20m-signing-ever-made-by-a-premier-league-club-4
