Fan Comment

Rinse and Repeat

If, like me, you were at Goodison for the final home game of the 2017-18 season, you will recall that neither the football nor the atmosphere was very pretty on that occasion. The visitors that day were a Southampton side fighting for their top-flight lives, and they looked to be heading home with all three points until Tom Davies punctured those ambitions with what was virtually the last kick of the ball.

Davies’s equaliser caused rapturous scenes among the Goodison faithful, but the celebratory mood promptly evaporated as many in the crowd turned, not for the first time, on Everton manager, Sam Allardyce. Allardyce’s singular brand of anti-football had won few friends among Evertonians, although he had at least fulfilled his remit in steering us away from the wrong end of the table and into a fairly respectable 8th place.

Despite this, Allardyce was relieved of his position when he was just one-third of the way through his contract, and the club refocused its attentions on securing the services of the debonair-but-hapless Marco Silva. It may not have been a bad idea to let Allardyce work out the remaining year of his contract, and this time could have been used to seek out the perfect candidate to take us forward.

If you’d told me that Sam Allardyce’s tenure would represent an apex (of sorts) that would outstrip anything achieved by the next two managers, I probably wouldn’t have believed you, and I definitely wouldn’t have believed you if you’d said that this surreal pantomime would culminate in us appointing a manager who’d recently, proudly taken the helm of that team on the other side of Stanley Park. So it goes.

As it turned out, neither of Allardyce’s flashier, much-fancied successors managed to improve on 8th in the Premier League, and at times both of those managers served up football as stultifying as anything we’ve seen (or not, given the vagaries of Covid-19) from an Everton team in the Premier League era.

Sadly, Carlo Ancelotti’s recent departure underlined how we’ve made zero progress since that day when Allardyce was effectively booed out of Goodison. Although both of Ancelloti’s seasons in charge saw his side enter a terrifying late-season tailspin, one that made us all extremely thankful we’d accrued points at a much earlier stage in the campaign, many of us clung to the idea that this was a “project” – one from which, after a summer transfer window or three, a proper vision would emerge.

But Ancelotti’s exit brings a harsh reality: none of us can honestly say that he’s left things in a better state than how he found them when he replaced the intransigent Silva in late 2019. If foundations had been laid for someone else to come in and build something on, I think we’d all be feeling a bit more positive about things. Yet here we are again, back at the start.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room. As I write this, we’re just an hour or two on from the announcement that Rafael Benitez is our new manager. I feel strangely apathetic about this appointment and, in many ways, my apathy is due to the sense that those who appointed Benitez have no real clue about the fans (or, if they do, that makes it infinitely worse).

Was he really, truly the last turkey in the shop? At least some, if not all, of the Everton Board of Directors must have known the feelings much of our fanbase would have regarding any ex-Liverpool manager?

I say “our”, but I understand that some are done with Everton for the time being, and I don’t really blame them; I can fully appreciate how this latest move might be perceived as the final insult for a section of our long-suffering yet remarkable supporters.

On the other hand, I have no big problem with those who’ve announced that they’ll get behind Benitez as he tries to get a tune out of a group of underachieving players, some of whom will no doubt view him as merely another manager whose sacking they can engineer.

And the sack will certainly come for Rafa, who I feel is unlikely to get more than halfway through his bumper 3-year deal… although of course he, like so many others before him, will be paid handsomely once we dispense with his services. Indifferent results will give way to poor ones, and the inevitable circling of the plughole will see Benitez’s head on a spike; the hunt for yet another manager will commence shortly after.

So why can’t we just fast-forward through this dreary soap opera and get to the part where we make a solid appointment, one that might see us properly kick on, new stadium and all? But the fact that we have to play out this absurd scenario, only to come back around to the same spot in a year or 18 months, is what really rankles.

Has Benitez been installed simply to ensure our Premier League status until the new stadium is ready? This all smells of yet another holding operation, which really is the last thing we need. In realistic terms and on recent evidence, it's not much of a prospect to consider that we’re probably at least two managers away from the ribbon being cut on our new dockside residence.

To consider our new manager in a slightly more balanced way: he does know this league inside out, and at least has experience of clubs at both ends of the table, which may be an advantage while Everton figure out what part of the table they wish to belong in.

He’s won domestic silverware in Spain, England and Italy, and has two UEFA Cups and one Champions League to his name; while his trophy cabinet has a bit more space in it than Ancelotti’s, he has amassed a nice haul of managerial honours.

On the other hand, excepting Newcastle’s Championship title of 2017, there’s a fair bit of daylight between Benitez and his last real success; even in China – a poor league, yet one with plenty of money sloshing around – he failed to deliver in his 18 months in charge of Dalian Professional, a stint which marks his most recent foray into football management.

Benitez’s Chinese adventure smacked of one last big payday, and may well have been an indicator that he’d reached the end of the line… but then, as we now know, Everton came a-calling.

Given that Benitez will be afforded little or no slack from the fans, you do wonder what he will offer in footballing terms: he’s a notoriously negative manager, to the extent where some of his setups have made George Graham look like Rinus Michels. This percentage-based, attritional style is exactly what saw Allardyce hounded out (strangely, the board seemed to acknowledge the fans’ feelings on that one).

Conversely, his authoritarian approach is exactly what some of these players need, and I for one will welcome him raising his stick to any player who continues to cheat the club and its fans. Whatever you make of Rafael Benitez’s appointment, just remember that, no matter what happens, we’ll all still be here long after he’s left the club, and this applies to every other player and manager who’s lucky enough to walk through our doors. That said… there is a very strong chance that Dunc will see us all off.

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