It might not feel that way just now – it certainly didn’t on a wet and windy night at Turf Moor just 10 days ago – but there’s a chance for a bright new beginning at Everton, if they can just survive this current, awful season. The hard-working 1-0 victory over Manchester United brought light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the Blues’ attempts to escape from relegation danger but they now need to follow that up with another success at home to Leicester City to ensure that renewed hope isn’t snuffed out.
Like in politics, a week can be a long time in football, but whereas the party continues for Prime Minister Boris Johnson despite being fined for breaking the rules his own government had brought in at the height of lockdown, Sean Dyche has become the latest Premier League managerial casualty, just one match after the Burnley boss had crowed about telling his players that Everton “don’t know how to win” when trailing at half-time during his side’s 3-2 comeback victory. The now out-of-work gravel-voiced gaffer won the battle but Frank Lampard’s men – many of who were visibly crestfallen after the final whistle sounded in East Lancashire – are still capable of winning the war
Dyche’s previous achievements over almost a decade in charge at Burnley (a period in which there have been eight managers at Goodison Park) appeared to have bought him enough credit in the bank to survive seasons of struggle like this – he remained popular with Clarets fans who renamed a pub in the shadow of their ground ‘The Royal Dyche’ after they qualified for Europe in 2018 – but those in Turf Moor’s corridors of power have now gambled to dispense with their team’s long-serving leader in an attempt that represents one last throw of the dice in the hope that a potential ‘new manager bounce’ might help avoid relegation.
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While Everton of course had their own mid-season change in the dugout, dispensing with Rafa Benitez, the former Liverpool manager who represented the most-controversial appointment in the history of the most-passionate city in English football, only to make those previous Anfield connections a mere side show to the awful run of results he presided over, here is a very different scenario. Under Lampard, the Blues continue to struggle badly on the road, as the aforementioned collapse against Burnley highlights, but at least under a boss who has united a browbeaten fanbase in desperate need to reclaim their identity after the misery under his short-lived predecessor, Goodison is becoming an intimidating arena for visitors again.
Ex-Everton defender Richard Dunne who told the ECHO in February that Lampard had made a “smart move” in giving Blues fans their team back and “Once you can Goodison Park rocking and the fans on your side, there’s no harder place for an opposition team to go to,” reiterated those sentiments this week by insisting that Goodison could be the key to their survival hopes and “having support and intensity will really help them.” That was evident as Everton edged out Manchester United, a match in which their players ran over 10km more than their visitors to secure the three points but it cannot stop there.
We all know that there are more daunting fixtures on the horizon but as much as Leicester City, Premier League champions in 2016, FA Cup winners last year and now inaugural UEFA Europa Conference League semi-finalists have represented a blueprint to Everton over how ambitious sides from outside the top flight’s ‘big six’ can challenge the division’s established elite, a home game against them under the lights represents another genuine opportunity to secure three points.
A big part of the Blues’ struggles in a season which regardless of whether they stay up or not, threatens to produce the lowest equivalent points per game total in the club’s history, has been their lack of consistency and only once throughout the campaign have they secured back-to-back wins – 2-0 at Brighton & Hove Albion on August 28 and 3-1 at home to Burnley on September 13, again with a gap in between, on that occasion due to an international break.
Again, even if Everton can avoid the dreaded drop, a fate they last suffered back in 1951, it seems like a stiff ask right now for them to finish any higher than 17th which would be their lowest finish since they came fourth from bottom some 18 years ago after a curious late slide having never been in genuine relegation danger. But just as the darkest hour was the one before dawn for David Moyes in 2004 ahead of the following campaign in which he steered his unfancied side to fourth – still the Blues’ highest placing in the Premier League era – so Lampard must hope that much better times lie ahead if he can keep the team’s head above water in these last eight matches.
Along with the likes of Jonjoe Kenny, Asmir Begovic and Andy Lonergan who might all be retained for potential bit-part roles, there are a clutch of high-earning but lesser-spotted players out of contract this summer in the shape of Fabian Delph, Cenk Tosun and Gylfi Sigurdsson, offering significant scope for removing a large chunk of the wage bill and squad rebuilding alongside new director of football Kevin Thelwell. Some new recruits, hopefully younger and hungrier than those they have replaced and possessing the kind of mental and physical attributes that the club requires, might even get an early run-out in the American sunshine after the ECHO revealed this week that Everton are set to return to the US this summer as part of their pre-season plans.
Throw into the mix, this week’s other big story, the club signing an agreement with Laing O’Rourke which will lock in construction costs and see the contractor deliver the next and final phase of development of the club’s new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock and brighter days really might be around the corner. In many ways it’s roll on 2024 – both on and off the pitch – but all this optimism hinges on getting things right over the next five weeks.
