As someone who has spent a lifetime in the theatre, the Everton chairman, Bill Kenwright, knows the sound of booing when he hears it.
It was not however pantomime jeers that greeted the final whistle at Goodison Park on Wednesday night. It was vicious, seething and directed at him and his director of football, Marcel Brands.
“Get out of our club,” Brands was told by one apoplectic supporter who then pointed at the pitch to where the last remnants of an Everton team were seeking shelter in the dressing-room after their worst defeat in a Merseyside derby since November 1982. “Did you recruit them?”
To which Brands replied: “Is it only the players?”
Given the demonstrations outside the Main Stand in the aftermath of a 4-1 defeat by a Liverpool side operating on a different plane, the Everton fanbase would agree with Brands. Their anger was directed not primarily against the players but the board.
Usually, there is only one outcome when a manager loses six games out of seven and hears calls for his employers’ dismissal. It is a statement with the words “by mutual consent”.
This, however, is not the end for Rafa Benitez. In a text message to the TalkSport presenter, Jim White, the Everton owner, Farhad Moshiri, said Benitez would be backed rather than sacked. Perhaps significantly, Moshiri was not at Goodison on Wednesday night, though he is due to watch Monday night’s game against Arsenal.
“Football is about crisis one day and glory the following day,” Moshiri wrote from the United States. “Rafael is a good manager and the underperformance is largely due to the injuries.
“In the next two weeks we will get a full squad and, in the meantime, the results will improve. Rafael needs time to have his mark on the squad.
“He will be supported to add depth to the squad. Managers need time. I have no doubt we will have a strong second half to the season.”
Some of this is wishful thinking. Neither Yerry Mina, the Colombian defender who perhaps significantly has missed all of Everton’s last seven games with a hamstring injury, nor their most effective forward, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, has even returned to training.
Moshiri’s promise of money in the January window is unlikely to cut much ice since his net spend of £213 million over the past five years puts Everton behind only the two Manchester clubs, Arsenal and Chelsea. Encapsulated by the £250,000 a week paid to James Rodriguez, much of it has been abysmally spent.
As for his insistence that “results will improve”, the cynic might say that after taking one point from the last 21 there is nowhere else for Everton’s results to go.
When the Everton board have listened to their fans, the decisions now appear disastrous – firing Roberto Martinez, denying David Moyes a chance to return to Goodison. When they have ignored the supporter base by appointing Benitez with all the baggage he carried across Stanley Park, the outcome has been the same.
Everton have been here before. In November 1994, bottom of the table, they appointed Joe Royle, who as a forward nearly a quarter of a century before had won the title at Goodison.
Royle’s first game was at home to Liverpool. He packed the midfield with four defensive-minded players and harried his way to a 2-0 win. Six months later Everton, long since safe, had won the FA Cup.
Royle is in well-deserved retirement but Duncan Ferguson, who scored the first of those goals, would step into the limelight. Unlike Everton’s last two managers, he may not have won the Champions League but he would be a focus for two things the club have lacked; unity and identity.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3lwwEtQ
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