There is always one Premier League club embroiled in a full-blown crisis. At the moment, it’s Everton’s turn.
The Toffees have taken only six points from the last 42 available and were it not for a lack of quality beneath them, they would have plummeted rather than meandered down the table. They are also without a manager and have been since the doome Rafa Benitez was dismissed on 16 January, triggering a messy and farcical search for a successor.
“It’s a bit of a shambles and has been for an awfully long time,” is former Everton and Chelsea winger Pat Nevin’s concise summary of events. “It has not been obvious what the direction has been.”
Previously revered for their stability and togetherness, Nevin’s former club are now more commonly associated with chaos and disunity. Owner Farhad Moshiri is on the lookout for a seventh permanent manager in six years and the relationship between board and supporters is becoming increasingly strained. Were it not for the building of a new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock, it might have already ruptured completely.
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Long-serving chairman Bill Kenwright’s roots are in theatre and so it is perhaps fitting that his and Moshiri’s disagreements behind the scenes have evolved into a power struggle played out in public. As reported by i earlier this month, Benitez was Moshiri’s man, while Kenwright championed the cause of Roberto Martinez, Everton’s longest-serving manager post-Moyes, in the summer.
Once a renewed move for Martinez had fizzled out this month, Vitor Pereira emerged as the leading candidate, but such was the depth of mistrust from Evertonians towards the former Porto and Olympiacos boss – and Kia Joorabchian client – he seems to have been sidelined. Pereira took the bold step of outlining his credentials live on Sky Sports News after some fans had daubed “Pereira Out, Lampard In” on the walls of Goodison Park.
“When I was chief executive of Motherwell and I was looking for a new manager, I had three or four really cool candidates and if any of them had gone on the tele and talked about it they would have been out of my running immediately,” Nevin states. “I’d just get a big red pen and put it through it. You just don’t do that.”
Frank Lampard has overtaken Pereira as the bookies’ favourite for the job and would appear to be a popular choice with fans. “Frank Lampard is the favoured option, because he isn’t Vitor Pereira,” Mike Richards from the Unholy Trinity Everton podcast told i. “For me, it’s that simple.”
“Chelsea fans thought he did a good job,” reflects Nevin on Lampard, whose managerial credentials have been questioned since his departure from Chelsea a year ago. “He brought a lot of the youngsters in really quickly and it was brave to be able do it. He was a good manager but they just happen to have a great one now.”
On whether Lampard would be the man to instil a set philosophy at Everton, a club that has sorely lacked any semblance of one, Nevin, who watched the former midfielder’s time at Stamford Bridge closely, adds: “He’s very positive and attack-minded, Frank. It would be a high tempo game and he would have a philosophy but it would need a bit of time.”
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19-year-old man arrested after Cash and Digne hit by bottle in Aston Villa's win over Everton22 January, 2022Another tick in the Lampard box are the connections he has cultivated during his playing career and in management. “Say you get Frank Lampard in, he’s got an excellent relationship with Chelsea. That’s quite a good thing to have at the moment because if you look at the players that they have [and] that they can loan out and that you may be able to get quickly… wow. He’s a very good coach, but he’s also got amazing links with Chelsea and Manchester City because he played there as well.
“I’d definitely prefer Frank’s links [to Pereira’s with “super agent” Joorabchian], to be honest, because of what he can get in and how respected he is in the game. He might not have a direct link to an agent to that extent but I suspect that’s probably a good thing because then you have a wider net that you can throw.”
Throughout a 40-minute phone call, Nevin is eager to stress that Everton’s current predicament is more a result of structural rather than individual failings and that it will take more than a competent manager to fix. “I dare you to put Pep Guardiola in that situation and see if he’d do much better,” he argues when discussing Benitez’s demise. “What if Frank can’t change what is a limited squad? Or if Calvert-Lewin gets injured again or Richarlison’s not at his best? Good luck!”
The situation for a new manager is further complicated by the imminent closure of the transfer window. Everton have been busier than most, adding three players to their squad – Vitaliy Mykolenko from Dinamo Kiev, Nathan Patterson from Rangers, “that’s a cracker” says Nevin, and Anwar El Ghazi on loan from Aston Villa. But time is rapidly running out to bring in any more.
“It is the most bizarre thing to make a change and then stutter over bringing a new guy in when the base problem is very, very clear and you’ve just taken 27 days of that and you’ve only got 31,” he says. “It strikes me as incredibly poorly thought out. Whoever it is, they’ve got three or four days and it doesn’t matter which one of them it is, they need to get squad depth and some quality players in.”
That lack of depth and quality is why Nevin does not apportion any blame to Everton’s problems to their unpopular former manager.
“I’m not really having people saying that Rafa is any main part of the cause, it’s not got anything to do with him really. There’s an analogy with Scotland. Scotland kept on failing to get into Euros and World Cups, time after time for decades and every time it was ‘that manager’s useless’ and I’m shouting every time ‘do you think it might not be the manager? Do you think it might just be something else?’
“In comparison to what Everton should be and also the money they’ve spent, it’s just an uneven squad, too small a squad and not enough depth of quality. So Everton fans are angry and I understand their fury. The one area that I don’t share their fury towards is Rafa because I think that’s just a ridiculously easy target. Funnily enough, [appointing him] was one of the better decisions they made.”
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