A Safe Pair of Hands

In a more ideal world, Sean Dyche would have guided Everton to safety this season and left the Club with our thanks for a job well-enough done. The Blues’ new owners, The Friedkin Group, would be able to use the time in between to put together a strategic succession plan for the manager and look to hire a more dynamic, forward-thinking head coach to lead their new era heading into Bramley-Moore Dock.

Nothing about the footballing circumstances at Everton is ideal though or even close to it and it appears from the more in-depth reporting that has followed the termination of Dyche’s contract that in admitting he had reached the end of his personal road where the struggle to win games was concerned, the gruff 53-year-old left TFG little choice but to accelerate his departure.

When it comes to who could conceivably replace him — quickly, painlessly and cheaply to avoid the protracted searches for a new boss that followed the sacking of Rafael Benitez and Frank Lampard — when you consider the Club’s threadbare squad, declining fortunes in front of goal this season and increasingly perilous position in the table, the hierarchy have opted, quite sensibly, for what will hopefully be the steadying influence of David Moyes.

Now is not the time to be experimenting with a young, up-and-coming coach or a patient builder like Graham Potter, and maybe not even one of the options from abroad who may have experience but are unproven in the Premier League.

Evertonians know all too well that Moyes is not the most exciting of figureheads for your team. That lack of dynamism was reflected at times in the performances during his tenure, and it was one of the key reasons why West Ham elected not to extend his contract at the end of last season. That despite him having delivered to them their first trophy of the Premier League era.

The length of contract that the Glaswegian has been given has deflated some of the optimism that some fans have felt, first in the wake of Dyche’s exit and, secondly, at the prospect of welcoming back a man who knows the demands of the job at Goodison and is intimately familiar with the Club… even if much has changed in the 12 years since he left.

There again, though, TFG had little choice. Moyes was unlikely to accept another short-term deal like the one he initially signed at West Ham in 2017 and you have to consider the message it would send to Everton’s players to install someone at the helm who might well be out the door again in six months’ time.

While the new American owners have wiped away the financial crisis that has gripped the Club for the past couple of years and will be looking to usher in clear leadership and direction off the pitch, when it comes to footballing matters Everton desperately need stability. Moyes, with his wealth of experience can bring just that. Though he had expressed a reluctance to take on another fight against relegation, he is a veteran of such situations, having saved the Toffees once and West Ham twice, while there is debate as to whether he could have kept Sunderland up in 2016-17.

Their Europa Conference League triumph aside, the Hammers may have been largely uninspiring at times under Moyes but there was a familiar blend of silk and steel about the side he oversaw at the London Stadium, with the likes of Mohammed Kudus, Lucas Paquetà and Jarrod Bowen complimented by Tomas Soucek, Edson Alvarez and the bustling Michail Antonio.

And in four of the last five seasons, including, it should be noted, Carlo Ancelotti’s full season at Goodison, Moyes’s West Ham finished above Everton. It wasn’t as consistent as his decade-plus at Goodison — perhaps it couldn’t have been given how competitive the Premier League has become — but once he had established himself at the London Stadium there was never any danger of them going down.

A big part of the legacy he left at Everton was the defensive solidity that Roberto Martinez inherited and benefited from in his oh-so-nearly first season on charge. Obviously, if there was an element of the Dyche regime you’d want to preserve, it was the emphasis on keeping things tight and trying to nick one, a mantra that became synonymous with Moyes at Everton during that determined push towards fourth place in 2005.

The key in his second spell will be finding ways to turn a shot-shy, confidence-shredded attacking unit into something capable of creating chances and scoring goals. Dyche ultimately proved incapable of doing so but, as the better all-round coach, there’s more confidence that Moyes can, especially if he and Kevin Thelwell are able to bring in a couple of targeted, effective signings before the transfer deadline.

It’s unlikely Moyes would have been anyone’s first choice to lead Everton into the new stadium and a potentially bright new future on the banks of the Mersey but there is no question that he, more than almost anyone the Club could have hired, will appreciate the enormity of that move to Evertonians.

Whether he has what it takes to lead this beaten-down institution back to greatness might be open to question but, for now, when safety is paramount, he should be the safe pair of hands we need.

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