Former Everton managers seem to be like politicians these days when it comes to playing fast and loose with the truth and coming up with their own revisionist recollections of their tenures at Goodison Park. There was a time in the not-too-distant past that Blues fans might dread the international breaks, fearing that one of their players might talk up a potential move when away with his country and then inevitably try and claim the quotes were somehow lost in translation.
However, the current interruption in Premier League fixtures – even more frustrating because it comes after the recent fixture postponements following the Queen’s death and ahead of a six-week mid-season winter break due to the World Cup finals in Qatar – has featured not one but two ex-Blues bosses opening up to Sky Sports News to give interviews trying to explain just why their highly-paid assignments working for Farhad Moshiri were supposedly so difficult. First Rafael Benitez claimed that because of his past employment at local rivals Liverpool “maybe I couldn’t make some decisions” yet the director of football Marcel Brands; star players James Rodriguez and Lucas Digne plus director of medical services Danny Donachie all left during his six-month tenure while he was able to splash out almost £30million on two new full-backs Vitalii Mykolenko and Nathan Patterson in the January transfer window.
Ultimately it was just one win in his last 13 Premier League matches in charge, a sequence that included nine defeats and which chairman Bill Kenwright would later describe as “unacceptably disappointing” that would end the Spaniard’s Everton reign rather than previous Anfield connections but with the 62-year-old perhaps now feeling that his batteries are suitably recharged and a few employment opportunities might be coming up to provide what could be one last shot at the big time, such vague, intangible platitudes have replaced those once famous Benitez facts and help mask the reality that a Blues side that hadn’t finished below 12 th over the previous 17 seasons, looked to be plunging headfirst towards the Championship on his watch. During his struggles at Everton, Benitez declared: “I am certain we will improve in the second part of the season,” regularly trotting out the mantra that’s what his sides tended to do, but a careful examination of his career record shows that’s not necessarily accurate as during his 17 full seasons in European football, there were been seven seasons in which his teams accumulated more points in the first half, eight that produced more in the second half and two that finished level.
Talking of league finishes brings us of course to Ronald Koeman whose own cosy sit down chat with Sky aired just three days after Benitez’s. The old Dutch master – in playing terms at least – only had one full season at Goodison Park to remember but as my fellow Everton reporter Adam Jones pointed out on Friday, he still managed to wrongly claim they came sixth rather than their actual position of seventh.
An honest mistake? Perhaps, but these managers are paid millions because they supposedly possess sharp minds and if so it was rather convenient in that it was an inaccurate statement that moved the Blues up a place in Koeman’s recollections and crucially one that makes it look as though he broke up the dominance of the big six who he name-checked individually when it came to describing the difficulties of competing at the top end of the Premier League.
Koeman also suggested his finish – remember Ron, seventh NOT sixth – was “maybe the best record in the last 15 years* (it sounded distinctly like he said 50 but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here given that such a period would include a brace of League Championships) but Everton had come fifth under his predecessor Roberto Martinez with a club record Premier League era points haul of 72 just three seasons earlier. The difference between these failed Blues bosses rewriting history and politicians being interviewed though would be surely those in public office would actually be picked up on their inaccuracies by diligent reporters asking the questions.
Here though the self-aggrandising errors go unchecked by the same station who gave us the car crash television that was Vitor Pereira’s phone call to blow his own trumpet broadcast live back in January this year as he desperately tried to convince a fanbase that didn’t want him and was perplexed by his repeated links to the job, why he should become the next Everton manager. How could Koeman get it so wrong about what he did with the Blues and the context of what he achieved? (Or didn’t as the case may be).
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Maybe, as many Evertonians feared at the time, he never really ‘got’ Everton because he never actually tried to. Making his first managerial appointment, the Blues’ new owner at the time Moshiri decided that Koeman – whose stellar reputation is probably much more from his feats as the game’s pre-eminent goalscoring defender rather than his journeyman career as a coach – was the big name he needed to compete among the galaxy of stars patrolling the technical areas of North West England at the time, a region he’d dubbed as football’s “New Hollywood.”
The warning signs were there from the start when rather than cut short his family holiday, Koeman was unveiled as Everton manager from a villa in Portugal and he’d go on to commit the infamous faux pas of the red decorations on his Christmas Tree, which he subsequently blamed on his wife Bartina! To some, the hue of festive baubles might seem innocent enough, trivial and even petty for Blues to take objection to but they’d be outsiders to the deep feelings of rivalry in English football’s most-passionate city and so it seems was Koeman as he appeared to treat his lucrative contract at Goodison as just another job.
Maybe he was so ignorant to Everton’s heritage, even their recent past, he genuinely did not know what they had or hadn’t done? What isn’t in doubt though was that Koeman presided over the biggest spending spree in the club’s history in 2017 when the Blues embarked on a major squad rebuilding programme.
Although Romelu Lukaku, whose 25 goals had spearheaded their march to seventh – remember again Ron, NOT sixth – the previous season was sold to Manchester United for a club record £75million, Goodison chiefs gave the green light for a much bigger outlay on new faces. The problem was, while the likes of Jordan Pickford and Michael Keane at £25million apiece both remain at Everton some five seasons of varying success on, their other investments that summer now appear misguided to say the least.
There was the trio of ‘number 10s’: Davy Klaassen (£23.6million); Wayne Rooney (undisclosed fee) and Gylfi Sigurdsson (a club record £45million). There was also Sandro Ramirez, who looked like a calculated risk at £5.2million but was on huge wages and proved a major flop; Henry Onyekuru (£6.8million) who never played for the club because he couldn’t get a work permit and Nikola Vlasic (£8million), spotted playing against the Blues in a Europa League qualifier who has now failed in the Premier League twice.
A failure to integrate some of this eclectic bunch and slide into the relegation zone following a 5-2 home defeat to Arsenal, caused Koeman’s rapid downfall, rather than “good players” choosing to go to the ‘Big Six’ and “not for Everton” as he suggests. The Dutchman did at least make one accurate observation about his former employers and that’s after Moshiri going through half a dozen managers in as many years, loyal but long-suffering Blues know that a revolving door approach in the dugout is not a recipe for success.
Added to that, Everton finally again have a manager who shares their passion for the club. Whether it was Koeman’s aloofness or Benitez’s bloody-mindedness that having defied the anti-Liverpool vitriol from the Chelsea terraces, he could repeat the trick across Stanley Park, both endured a disconnect with the fanbase which has now been cured by Frank Lampard, who despite his own London roots and Stamford Bridge playing connections, recognises the importance of the supporters who are the lifeblood of the club and harnessed the feeling of unity such ardour brings.
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