The data tell stories

This year marks 40 years since an English manager last won the European Cup/Champions League. In the previous eight years (1977-84) English managers won it seven times. 

I do like numbers and sometimes they tell you a lot. If Gareth Southgate steps down as England manager after this summer's Euros the F.A. may have quite a problem deciding on a successor. After Southgate's success (don't laugh, compared with his predecessors all the way back to Very Tenables he's been a spectacular success) the F.A. would surely prefer an Englishman, given the underwhelming results obtained by supposedly stellar foreign coaches Eriksson and Capello. But who? Eddie Howe would be obvious but, unless their Saudi owners are getting impatient with him, rather than with the Profit and Sustainability rules that are holding them back, I can't see him quitting a long term project with a chance of winning things.

After Eddie the cupboard is pretty bare. There are six British managers currently at premier League clubs. Of those Scot David Moyes is, yet again, currently highest up the league at 7th. Gary O'Neill has Wolves in 9th place and did well in his one season at Bournemouth before that. Eddie Howe's Newcastle are 10th, then we have Sean Dyche's Everton in 16th (14th but for points deductions which aren't his fault), Welshman Rob Edwards of Luton who would get the ladies' vote but who is in the relegation zone (and I trust says there) and Chris Wilder who is doing his best at bottom placed Sheffield United.

So Gary O'Neill then? Graham Potter is also currently available, but he may be so traumatised by his experience at Chelsea that he wouldn't pick up the phone. But why so few options?

The English coaching system doesn't offer any ready progression to coaching jobs. Not the top jobs, because Premier League owners have their pick of the world and understandably go for coaches with a proven track record. But not really for assistant coaches, either. We have a fascination with people who have "been there, done that". Ex-players like Rooney, Lampard and Gerrard. And yet the head of football coaching and education in Germany from 2000 to 2007, Erich Rutemoller, believes that what characterises top modern day coaches like Klopp and Tuchel (who Rutemoller taught for their UEFA Pro Licences) is their academic approach to the game. Klopp, Guardoila and Thomas Frank all have sports degrees, Tuchel has one in business.

Although Guardiola played at high level he wasn't one of the stars in the team. Klopp, Tuchel and Wenger all had plenty of playing experience but never played at the highest level.  It seems that a broader understanding of management and sports science than just having played the game is useful.

But it's also about numbers. I read recently that, as of 2017, there were 15,459 coaches in Spain who held UEFA's top two coaching qualifications. In England it was 2,083. Wow, that tells a story!

Applicants for the F.A.'s courses complain that it's hard to get on them, with few places available. The F.A. say they don't run the courses to make a profit but they charge £9,890 for the UEFA Pro Licence course, the highest coaching qualification. Not a problem for a retiring Premier League player, but younger coaches find it cheaper to go to Spain to study, where it costs about a thousand euros. Which is ok if you are fluent in Spanish.

In the meantime the F.A. must be hoping England do well in the Euros and Southgate decides to carry on. As he's only 53 there seems no reason other than his own desire why he shouldn't go on for a decade till the 2034 World Cup.

Also in last weekend's sports pages was an article on Ruben Selles, the Reading manager who was in charge of Southampton in the Premier League for 17 months. Selles is young (40) but has coached in Spain, Greece, Russia, Norway and Denmark. He started coaching youth teams aged 16, went to university in Valencia and coached the uni football team and took it from there. He was attracted to Reading because of its £50m training ground and flourishing academy and believed what he was told by the club's Chinese owner, Dai Yongge, about the budget he would have and about club's problems being in the past. These problems had led to points deductions and relegation last season. The next day the club was served with a winding up petition by HMRC. The next month the club was put under a transfer embargo and Selles began pre-season with only seven players.  Subsequently his no 2, head of player development, head of media and several key academy staff were made redundant. His team of free transfers and academy kids, average age 23, currently sit 6 points above the League One relegation zone. But for 6 points deducted they'd be in touching distance of the top half. Selles has had to contend with fan protests - throwing tennis balls onto the pitch seems to be their favourite method of expression - and the club's training ground has now been put up for sale.

Jonathan Northcroft of the Sunday Times says that, if the vote for English football's manager of the season was held now, he would vote for Selles.

Selles isn't English. But how do we develop English coaches like him so that there are more options for English England managers? A sensible start might be to subsidise that Pro Licence course for English coaches who haven't played at high level. It might also be good idea to evaluate players who don't make the grade from academies as possible future coaches and referees and offer them a pathway to stay in the game. The F.A. need to go and sharpen their pencils.

Here are some other numbers in the sports news:

Preston North End received £15.6m from the Premier League between 2019 and 2022. Not bad considering they've never been in it.  PNE's chairman Peter Risdale (remember him, Leeds fans?) complains former Premier League teams in the championship are paying five times more in wages than they are because of parachute payments. But, as Martin Samuel points out, those teams have at least had a connection with the Premier League. A rather large one in the case of Leicester City. Five mill a year for nothing doesn't seem bad to me but still Rick Parry keeps  banging his drum that the EFL "deserves" a bigger handout from the Premier League. And, strangely, seems to get a hearing from a Tory government set on having a football regulator which issues threats to the Premier League to give more. The Premier League clubs have businesses to run but then this government long ago made clear it didn't understand business.

Meanwhile, more than 1,000 lower league and women's clubs have been supported by the Premier League Stadium Fund (PLSF) administered by the Football Foundation. It has awarded more than 5,500 grants worth £193.5m to improve facilities and sustain the game outside the Football League. A much better way to spend the money than giving it to the EFL in my view. 

Simona Halep's doping ban from tennis was reduced from 4 years to 9 months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). She claimed that the roxadustat (sometimes called "oxygen in a pill") found in her collagen-based food supplement was contamination she didn't know was there. Her expert witness found contamination in the samples of the supplement. Two WADA labs couldn't find any. But here's the problem. Even if you take the highest level of contamination supposedly present and the lowest level of roxadustat found in her urine samples, she would have had to consume more than 50 times the recommened daily intake of 10g of the supplement. Half a kilo a day would literally be difficult to swallow. If you take the average values of supposed contamination in the supplement and Halep's average urine level it would be 5,000 times the normal daily aount. Does anyone seriously believe she was eating 50 kg a day of the supplement? I certainly can't swallow that.

Sometimes numbers just sing, don't they.

Oh, of ourse it was the CAS who turned Manchester City's ban from European competitions into a fine. Hmmm.

P.S. I decided after some reflection it should be the data tell, not the data tells, stories as strictly speaking the data are plural, data being the plural of the latin datum. Pedant, me?

The return of Halep gives me very little confidence in the fight against doping. David Walsh. Sunday Times 24 March 2024

Why is the Premier League missing title-winning English managers? Tom Allnutt, Sunday Times 24 March 2024

Impossible Job. Jonathan Northcroft, Sunday Times 24 March 2024. A fascinating interview with Reading manager Rueben Selles.

Risdale reality check was in Martin Samuel's Sunday Times column on 17 March 2024

Will the Tory implosion end in a black hole?

 Like many I bought Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time. Like some I read it, or at least tried to. But I don't claim to be one of the few who understood more than the opening chapter. I do remember, however, that Hawking mused on the possibility that the expanding universe would one day contract, leading to the universe collapsing back into a giant black hole - an inverse of the big bang that he called the big crunch. 

Has the universe of the Tory party started an inexorable contraction towards its own big crunch? Danny Finkelstein noted that in only 14 years there have been five prime ministers without a change of  ruling party. Indeed, if you confine it to the period since 2015 when the Tories have governed alone there have been five in nine years.

To put this in perspective he noted that the last time we had five different PMs without a change of ruling party was between 1721 and 1762. That's over a period of more than 40 years and it was before the development of the modern British political system. And even then it only happended because Henry Pelham died in office.

Calling this destabilising and humiliating for British democracy, Finklestein noted that it has happened because the party has either put in office people who weren't suitable or it could not agree to support the people it installed. Sometimes both.

So what do some Conservatives propose to do about this lamentable position? It is, of course, to have another change of PM. He noted a degree of "pitch rolling" for various potential candidates, loud enough to form a background noise without it being obvious where it comes from, "like a group of schoolchildren humming to annoy the teacher".

There is a danger that this background hum could become much louder if (when!) the Tories do abysmally in the May elections.

Finkelstein feels that Sunak made an error in not defining himself as a contrast to the ethical and ideological errors of his predecessors. Rather he chose to manage his party, rather than the country, leading to "countless missteps" such as the appointment of Lee Anderson. Oddly, he says, this is what his critics most like about him. But they think he wasn't loyal enough to Johnson or supportive emough of Truss's disastrous platform. They blame him for failing to make memories of those fiascos disappear.

So they suggest changing the leader, again. Finkelstein says no Tories are suggesting drawing lines Sunak didn't draw. No putative leader proposes an approach the Tories haven't already tried. Nobody is presenting a team that Sunak has somehow ignored. Instead they hold a "vague...pointless hope" that the party should try rolling the dice again.

Which he says fails to acknowledge a public view that the Tories have had all their dice rolls and that it is no longer their turn.  One voter said "It's like we've got alcoholic parents. Everything's crazy and then the next morning it's suddenly 'sorry' and 'let's go and feed the ducks'. You can't help but love your alcoholic parents but you might want to go and live with your auntie for a bit."

When I'm considering how I might vote in the general election - some might say when "even I" - and am considering the attraction of a rather boring auntie with some fairly strange associates - this seems a fitting parable for the situation to me.

Finkelstein says responding to this with another Tory leadership election is bananas. Some say the Tory position can't get any worse. He thinks they're wrong, things can always get worse and an attempted coup would be one way of making it so. 

The problem for the Tories is the number of votes leaking to Reform which could leave both of them pitifully represented in the next parliament. I've felt for a long time that the political situation had similarities to the mid 90s when it seemed the electorate had decided long before the 1997 election that the Tories had to go. That was a huge defeat but the Tories could face a much bigger collapse. Maybe not quite on the lines of the Progressive Conservatives in Canada in 1993 who, after nine years in power, lost 167 seats and only retained two. But at the moment even a big crunch on that sort of scale wouldn't totally shock me.

The problem for me is the lack of a grown up alternative for non ideological, socially conservative, free marketeers who believe in sound money. Hmm, that almost sounds like the original SDP...

Hawking posited that the big crunch could be followed by another big bang, in a never ending cycle of creation and destruction. The Tories must be hoping that is what happens to them and there is an eventual rebirth after the cataclysm as it's becoming difficult to see that big crunch being avoided.

Of course some people think the universe won't collapse but will go on expanding for ever... I wonder if they're Tories?

Daniel Finklestein Can it get worse for the Tories? Oh yes it can. The Times 26 March 2024

Newman's cartoon was in the Sunday Times on 31 March 2024, the day the clocks went forward

Justice, natural justice and double jeopardy

The picture here is meant to show Lady Justice and her scales with a football under one arm, though it looks more like a cannonball to me. Which is fairly appropriate really as the Premier League continue to pursue its blunderbuss Profit and Sustainability regulations, hitting walking wounded targets Everton and Nottingham Forest while leaving Manchester City and Chelsea as untouched as a stealth bomber targeted by a musket.

Nottingham Forest got docked four points by the Premier League for exceeding the Profit and Sustainability threshold (as it applied to them as a club promoted during the rolling three year period covered by the regulations) by £34.5m. Everton got docked six points, reduced from 10 on appeal, for being £19.5m over the limit. Forest were in breach by 57%, Everton by 19%. Go figure, as they say.

Forest had an apparently reasonable mitigation plea. They delayed the sale of Brennan Johnson until after the relevant end date having received an offer of £43m as they thought he was worth more. I agree it would hardly seem sustainable to sell players for less than their market value. However, he was only sold for £47.5m two months later. And they had continued to buy players in the previous January window: three permanently, two on loan and one on a pre-contract basis, having been on such a huge buying spree in the previous window that the rules on squad size meant they had to loan some players out in order to register all the new acquisitions. 

Even if they planned to sell Johnson they must have known that they wouldn't get top dollar in June. In contrast Everton pushed through a fire sale of Richarlison by 30 June 2022.

The Premier League noted Forest had a larger proportionate breach of the limit than Everton and sought an 8 point deduction but the commission decided both club's breaches were in the "significant" band so stuck with the same level as Everton - 6. But they then reduced it by a third for Forest's "early plea" and "co-operation".

Everton now faces a second charge, which it has already effectively admitted, this time as promptly as Forest did, though they will probably claim they were only in breach of the rules a second time because they were found to be in breach the previous time, so they had no opportunity to take action to avoid the second breach.

The points I've been pondering for some time (as Mrs H will attest) and on which the media has slowly caught up are how, when the target is on a rolling annual basis, can you be charged twice in one season? And what penalty would be appropriate when they have already been sentenced for two of the three seasons?

The reason Everton can be charged twice is that the timetable for clubs to submit their PSR calculations was brought forward from March to December to allow cases to be heard in the season a charge is brought, after a lot of whinging from a number of clubs (yes, I mean you Leeds and Leicester).So this is a once-off situation. It's crazy, because the accelerated progrtamme still does not ensure a final verdict before the last matches of the season are played. To accelerate the programme but not by enough seems incompetent to say the least.

But is it fair? Sean Dyche says Everton's second PSR charge in one season may be double jeopardy. The Athletic put Everton's arguments to sports lawyer, barrister Samuel Cuthbert.

He disagreed because the Premier League rules allow a second charge covering, in this case three of the four seasons for which the club has already been punished. However he does feel that it contravenes the concept of 'natural justice' since penalties for overlapping periods should be judged holistically to avoid disproportionate outcomes.

The barrister pointed out that, as Everton remained guilty after their appeal then they cannot say "we've done nothing wrong before", which could affect the further level of sanction given if found guilty again. But he went on to say that there is a nuance because the sanctions cover multiple seasons.

“There is a general principle in law that, if a party who is bringing a charge is aware of facts that should lead to another charge, then those charges should all be brought at the same time. That’s just natural justice because, otherwise, you can drip-feed charges and keep a club constantly in front of disciplinary commissions for years.

“Double jeopardy isn’t quite the right term because that’s a criminal allegation. It’s more just a question of natural justice; that if the Premier League had been aware of facts for some time — and they presumably have been — then all charges ought to be brought at the same time so that they can be considered holistically and appropriate sanctions given."

“You can’t hold back facts that you are reasonably aware of and then subject a party to multiple charges. You shouldn’t have to fight allegations which could and should have been brought all at the same time.

“I do wonder whether that’s a slightly theoretical argument because Everton have admitted a level of breach, so the issue is sanctions. They will say that sanctions should have been considered holistically."

I guess this means Everton could not have the chance to do the equivalent of asking for other offences to be "taken into consideration" in a criminal case. The barrister went on to say

“That then brings me back to my original point — that, as a matter of natural justice, they should have been heard at the same time.”

“Essentially, if you’re going to charge over a period, you need to bring everything that you want to charge in relation to it,” he says. “Otherwise you end up in a Kafka-esque situation where you are just constantly being pulled back in over the same period over matters that could and should have been brought at the same time."

The truly Kafka-esque situation would be where a fine levied for the first charge makes it certain that the club would be found guilty under the second charge. The EFL rules are different and prevent a given season being considered more than once. However, that did not stop Derby County being hit with a series of penalties which made their relegation from the championship inevitable and then continuing to hit them with a transfer ban the following season when many of their players had left, leaving them fielding a lot of academy players.

As I understand it on Everton's original interpretation of its accounts it was under the PSR limit but it accepted some of the Premier League's interpretation in the first hearing, putting it over the limit, which is why Everton could not be found not guilty on appeal. But if that change also tilts them over the line for the second charge then that would appear to me to go against natural justice, as put forward by barrister Cuthbert, as they had no opportunity to take action, such as selling players by 30 June 2023 given that their first hearing didn't even take place until November of that year.

However, I don't understand how the barrister can argue that the matters could have been brought at the same time as the subsequent season's accounts weren't available then. I think it's daft that the club can be effectively charged again for some of the seasons for which it has already been penalised and that, to me, would seem to go against natural justice. But the problem with that argument is that "rules are rules" and the clubs signed up to them a long time ago.

They are, of course, a bad set of rules put in place for bad reasons - to keep the richest clubs at the top for ever, which is why Manchester United and Liverpool are such big supporters of the concept.

Perhaps Everton's strongest argument will be that, if the second breach is found to be "significant", the six point penalty tariff proposed by Forest's Commission should be reduced by two-thirds (for the seasons already penalised) and then by a further third for an early plea and co-operating, like Forest. Which would make it a one point deduction.

If I were a betting man I'd say it will be a further three points for Everton (the minimum tariff for a breach as proposed by in the Forest commission's report) but maybe two points.

On the current table that would put Everton, Luton and Forest all within a one or two point range, scrapping it out for the third relegation place, assuming Burnley and Sheffield United are effectively gone. Brentford, currently in a tail spin with only one point from their last five games (Everton and Luton have two) could also get drawn in. 

Nevertheless it's going to be a funny end to the season if we don't know what each club needs to do to survive on the last day - and still don't know after the final whistles have gone what the final league table for the season will be.

That situation might be avoided if Everton's case is decided in April, the penalty is light and they choose not to appeal. Whether it's justice, natural or not, it's pathetic. The relegation scrap is one of the most riveting aspects of the season. But possibly not this year, which can only harm the Premier League's brand.

Everton and Nottingham Forest confirm Premier League PSR breaches https://www.premierleague.com/news/3858986

Nottingham Forest docked four points for Premier League financial rules breach. The Guardian 18 March 2024

The independent (sic) commission's report to the Premier League is downloadable from the Premier League website, see https://www.premierleague.com/news/3936397

Assessing Everton's PSR arguments: Is double jeopardy a valid defence? Patrick Boyland and Jacob Whitehead, The Athletic 17 January 2024. https://theathletic.com/5208105/2024/01/17/everton-ffp-psr-double-jeopardy-efl/

Is there more to King Hal the Hoarse Whisperer or is he just another fat Frank?

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