If Everton survive relegation, they actually have a very bright Premier League future

The last four months have not been pretty for Everton fans.

In 20 matches since the turn of the year, they have lost 12 and won just six, two of which came against Brentford and Boreham Wood in the FA Cup, a competition that, in hindsight, they could’ve done without this season.

Words such as “dysfunction” and “mess” and “crisis” have frequently escaped the lips and keyboards of pundits, commentators, journalists, headline writers, gleeful rival supporters and angry Evertonians.

And to think: they had actually started the season brightly under Rafael Benitez. Three wins and a draw in their opening Premier League games – and only one defeat in their first nine matches in all competitions – yet the remainder has seen them slide gradually and painfully downwards. Plot their league position on a graph after every result and it looks roughly like the decline in value of the latest crypto fan token your club thought it was a good idea to sell you.

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At one point, from October to January, there was one win in 15, even that scraped after falling a goal behind against Arsenal at Goodison Park before Richarlison levelled on 80 minutes and Demarai Gray hit a 90th-minute winner.

The denouement reached peak hysteria recently when there were calls for Everton to ban former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher from future matches at Goodison for his perceived “biased” commentary working for Sky Sports on the Merseyside derby that forced former Everton captain Alan Stubbs to hit mute. (No, Everton are not going to ban Carragher from future matches at Goodison.)

It’s easy – and quite natural – to paint Everton in these dark tones: a founding member of the Football League in 1888, only relegated from the top-flight twice – in 1930 and 1951 – and not once in the Premier League era, facing the abyss. Yet peel back the many layers of a football club and underneath is not the rotten core you might expect to discover.

Those inside Everton are not deluded – it’s accepted they’ve made some considerable and costly mistakes during a period of time when they firmly believed a few major signings would propel them towards Champions League qualification if they could only get them right.

And they went for it, spent around half-a-billion on transfer fees alone in the past six years. The club thought signings such as Gylfi Sigurdsson – £45m from Swansea – and Theo Walcott – £20m from Arsenal – and £12m for an Ashley Williams two weeks shy of his 32nd birthday on big wages were the answer, but it always felt as though they didn’t really know what the question was.

It created a £500m patchwork of players stitched together by multiple managers under two directors of football, Steve Walsh and Marcel Brands, who have all now left the club.

And the exit of Benitez on 18 January is meant to have marked the end of an era of expensive errors. The owner, Farhad Moshiri, has listened to fan protests, has admitted mistakes, ordered a top-to-bottom strategic review in December that has overhauled the club’s philosophy and structure and completely changed the profile of player they are targeting. Phase one of the review was completed in February, although it will remain an ongoing, evolving process.

“Young and hungry” is the new mantra. The sale of Lucas Digne, on wages of around £130,000 per week, and his replacement, the £18m 22-year-old Vitaliy Mykolenko, is seen as indicative of the new approach.

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The hungry part applies to academy recruitment, too. And it goes for the managers. Gone are the coaches who clearly saw Everton as time-filler, a brief interlude, a managerial gap year – such as now-Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti – or saw it simply as a stepping stone to something better (Marco Silva). Wayne Rooney would have fitted the bill and in Frank Lampard they have found a young and hungry manager with an attractive CV but a point to prove. In order to get the appointment right, Tim Cahill – a throwback to better times – acted as a consultant for chairman Bill Kenwright.

And one insider described the “green shoots of recovery” emerging at Finch Farm when I spoke to them last week. Kevin Thelwell, 48, was appointed director of football in February after developing a growing reputation in the game (get to know him more in this piece by i‘s northern football correspondent Mark Douglas) and there has been a tangible change of direction. Grant Ingles, a former Deloitte consultant, is finance director and has overseen record annual revenues.

They have regularly been the only football club in the top “100 Best Large Companies To Work For”. They moved headquarters to the Royal Liver Building, one of Liverpool city centre’s prime office locations. And they press on with a new stadium construction at Bramley-Moore Dock due to be ready for the start of the 2024-25 season. All of this is overseen by highly respected chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale, whose track record includes leading the fight against the breakaway European Super League last year.

There has been reflection on the David Moyes years, when he so successfully out-performed their xGs and XAs and xGOTs before the terms even existed and built a modest dynasty over 11 years that earned him Sir Alex Ferguson’s seal of approval as his replacement as Manchester United manager. Just as they contend with financial fair play rules now, back then at one point Kenwright re-mortgaged his house to give Moyes the funds needed.

Can they stay up now? They are in the relegation zone but going by the form book you’d still back them. Taken in microcosm, the two wins, against Manchester United and Chelsea, draw with Leicester City and inevitable defeat to Liverpool is a sign of great promise.

And they have a favourable run. Leicester away, tricky. Watford away, practically a guaranteed three points these days. Winnable games against Brentford and Crystal Palace at home, then Arsenal away on the final day, by which time it’s safe to say Lampard and his bosses will want to have Premier League safety secured.

In the next three weeks if they can find a way out of this dark hole at the bottom of the table they will emerge into a bright future.

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