Kevin Thelwell spent Wednesday night sat next to Everton grandee Joe Royle in the Goodison Park director’s box.
Royle, the last Everton manager to win a major trophy, has a simple creed for managerial success that extends to three words: recruitment, recruitment, recruitment. He will have found a kindred spirit in Thelwell, the man appointed by the Toffees to ensure they never again find themselves in such an excruciating position going into the final weeks of a Premier League season.
That Everton could kick off at Anfield in the bottom three is a shuddering reminder of the wastefulness of the Farhad Moshiri era. While Liverpool have soared thanks to a strategy that put trust in a razor sharp team of data experts, the Toffees recruitment has been – in the words of one industry insider – “all over the place”.
Thelwell, the former Wolves and New York Red Bulls director of football, is the man handed the sizeable task of changing that by the club’s fretting hierarchy.
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“He’s been really impressive so far. Every speaks really highly of him,” an Everton insider says of Thelwell’s early impression. Lampard – who greenlit Thelwell’s appointment after an exhaustive interview process that preceded his own appointment – has already struck up a decent working relationship with the man who works in the office next door to his at Finch Farm. However gruesome things get in the next few weeks, Everton desperately need his appointment to work out.
One of his main jobs is to ensure the Toffees rediscover some sort of identity. “No one knows what the big idea was behind our recruitment recently – it’s just thrown together. Kevin’s responsibility, ultimately, is to make sure that is sorted out,” one insider says.
Everton, like their cross-city rivals, want to unlock the potential of their academy and Thelwell will be responsible for installing a unified playing style that spans across the under-18s and under-23s and up to the first team.
Asked what he can bring to recruitment, one source said he was “well connected”. “He’s got the respect of agents, he can pick up the phone to anyone and they’ll be sure their client is going to a club where there’s a plan,” one told i.
At Wolves, he managed a tricky political situation with Jorge Mendes influential in the club’s recruitment. Mendes might have done some of the fixing but Thelwell was the man who effectively ensured things went smoothly when players arrived. “Wolves would never have got the likes of Neves without Mendes, but they wouldn’t have made the impact they did without Kevin,” a source says.
The situation requires a revolution but Everton is also a club that needs healing. Supporters have jumped on board with Lampard but are less forgiving about the club’s hierarchy. Something needs to be done.
And change is coming at Goodison Park, whatever the result of their bruising brush with relegation. A major overhaul of the squad is required along with club operations that have pushed them to the brink of Financial Fair Play limits.
If they have to start again in the Championship, the lacerations may be deeper and recriminations louder. But even if they see off the challenge of a resurgent Burnley, there must be no return to the days when summers were spent with a director of football and manager in unacknowledged open warfare.
Ronald Koeman and Steve Walsh started that tradition and Rafa Benitez and Marcel Brands did a fairly good tribute act in the close season just gone. But Thelwell is not that sort of character. He and Lampard are in agreement about what the squad lacks and the need for the club to rediscover its identity.
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“He will make the hard decisions and isn’t afraid of confronting issues but he does it in the right way. Kevin’s probably exactly what Everton need with the scale of what’s going on there.”
The first major decision will be a new academy director after the departure of David Unsworth (which had been in the works before Thelwell’s appointment). It is a chance for the new director of football to make his mark.
With Everton in such dire straits, a lot is resting on his shoulders.
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