Everton please get rid of Silva now!
As the dust settles on the latest debacle of a performance from Everton after defeat at Burnley, the board at Goodison Park have some serious thinking to do. So who could they look to if they decide to make a change in manager?
Looking through the various Everton Vlogs and Youtube videos over the weekend it seems pretty clear that most Blues fans have now well and truly had enough of Marco Silva. It’s time for a change – now!!
The loss at Turf Moor was perhaps the final straw and confirmed the suspicion many of us had from the beginning of his reign or at least not long afterwards, that he isn’t up to the job of leading this great club of ours.
The most telling thread running through so much of this content was that Silva seems totally unwilling or unable to recognise when his system, formation and tactics are not working and make the necessary changes.
Every manager finds that sometimes how he’s set his side up isn’t quite right, and that he needs to change things around to get an edge that can be the difference between getting a result and not.
But Silva seems stubbornly resistant to looking in any depth at why his supposedly talented team is so unable to win football matches.
Week after week he puts out the side playing in the same predictable formation and with no apparent improvement in how they do any of the basics that are proving so costly.
When the Blues fall behind in a game, often after a set-piece, he almost absent-mindidly throws another forward on and hopes for the best. Then after another defeat he wonders how his side lost again! And Everton have never won from a losing position under him, a staggering statistic.
He seems totally unwilling to make changes to personnel to help effect an improvement in fortunes, for example leaving Djibril Sidibe out week after week even though it’s obvious Seamus Coleman is struggling.
So on Saturday, Coleman and Morgan Schneiderlin’s names appeared on the team sheet once more despite their indifferent form. And again they produced predictably frustrating and underwhelming performances.
With those two in the side, Everton played with a lack of tempo, variety and attacking initiative that almost defied belief at times. The team is so utterly predictable it’s embarrassing.
The poverty of the Toffees attacking play is dreadful and this is despite them having spent another £50 odd million on new forward talent in the summer.
Frankly it’s hard to see the Blues wining another game at the moment. And after Newcastle’s win over Manchester United, Everton sit in the bottom three in the Premier League – how is that possible!?
Silva claimed he always wanted to play his favoured 4-3-3 formation, a set-up I think the Toffees have needed to adopt for a long time. So why haven’t we ever seen it?
There are some quality international footballers in this Everton team such as Lucas Digne, Yerry Mina, Andre Gomes, Bernard, Richarlison and Alex Iwobi. They are all, on paper anyway, better than a bottom three side, and all were brought in under Silva.
Yet almost all are playing well below par. In truth some of the criticism for Everton’s woeful performances should be directed at these footballers, all of whom are getting paid a fortune to represent the Blues. Too often they seem to lack the work rate and commitment that is the minimum fans demand.
But the modern manager has the job of finding the right structure, tactics and approach to bring out the best in his players.
For example Richarlison is not an orthodox winger. He should be playing more centrally in an interchangeable front three combination alongside say Bernard and possibly Iwobi or Moise Kean, just as he tends to for Brazil.
Despite the loss of Idrissa Gueye and his replacement Jean-Philippe Gbamin to injury, which is very unlucky, moving to a 4-3-3 would also allow the Toffees to try to overcome two big problems they have.
One is the lack of a proven goal scoring centre-forward. Despite the best will in the world and repeated chances, Dominic Calvert-Lewin doesn’t look good enough to be that player in the Premier League.
Going with a fluid, interchangeable attacking three allows you to try to cover that deficiency and would I feel better suit our existing options up front.
The other issue is that without Gana’s energy and workrate, the Toffees are often overrun in midfield when they continue to play a slow, measured, predictable possession game.
Everton would be more effective in the middle by playing three there too, so giving greater protection to the defence and allowing them to better control the ball and vary the pace and tempo of the game.
Well given all that and the almost universal bad reaction from fans to Saturday’s loss, it’s hard to see how Silva can stay in his job for much longer, even if the powers that be at Goodison want him to.
This two-week window for the international break, does allow an opportune time for a decision to be made, although I still think it’s unlikely the Blues will pull the trigger immediately. Whatever they decide it’s very difficult to see clearly how the Toffees move forward.
Although I’m sure many Everton supporters would like to see a top-draw coach like Diego Simeone take over, such a figure is highly unlikely to ever consider the Toffees job, especially at the moment.
There has been talk of Jose Mourinho being a viable option given his experience in England, past success and he’s out of a coaching job.
might be possible, although I’m still not convinced he would see Everton as ‘big enough’ and I for one I’m not sure I would relish the soap opera that comes with his over inflated ego.
The other big name manager is Rafa Benitez. There is the possibility that he would be tempted by the chance to return to Merseyside where he has strong roots and his family does still live.
Obviously his history with Liverpool is an issue and in particular his notorious comments about Everton being ‘a small club’ when he was at Anfield.
But leaving all that aside his coaching credentials are not in question. In particular his gravity-defying work keeping Newcastle in the Premier League for two seasons in a row before he left Tyneside this summer.
Tactically he’s very astute, especially when it comes to winning one-off games, as he showed repeatedly at Liverpool. And he would certainly bring organisation, discipline and purpose to the Blues football.
In my view, given the lack of other obvious options, Benitez would be an excellent choice, albeit he’s not a young up and coming coach and it would cost an awful lot to prise him away from his current contract in China. Would the club be prepared to pay that amount of money?
If you want a coach with the know how to get top six let alone Champions League football, then surely the answer would have to be yes.
Crucially whoever does succeed Silva, (assuming he goes!), simply has to be the right man, as this merry-go-round of managers must come to an end if the club is to progress.
It could be that Marcel Brands already has a few possibilities up his sleeve. I was never convinced Silva was his first choice when he became Director of Football, the Portuguese was obviously always Farhad Moshiri’s man.
As an aside to all this, any decision to change manager will be an important test for the Dutchman’s reputation. He now sits on the board and will presumably be the key figure in finding a replacement.
I think it fair to say a little of the shine has come off the Brands brand, so to speak. Several of his transfer dealings have come under close scrutiny with Moise Kean having had a faltering start to his career and the failure to sign another centre-back before the transfer window closed, proving costly.
Looking further afield than the English game, there are very promising young coaches plying their trade abroad of course.
One such prospect is the RB Leipzig manager Julian Naglesmann. The young German has carved out quite a reputation for himself in the Budesliga.
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He has been called ‘baby Mourinho’ and has built an impressive resume in German top flight football first with Hoffenhiem and then RB.
Again, it would though be highly unlikely that Everton could persuade him to leave Germany for the Premier League without putting a serious amount of cash on the table. Even then it would be a very tall ask, especially as he has recently joined Leipzig just this summer.
And anyway would a Naglesmann be another gamble or the sort of up and coming young coach that the Toffees hierarchy need to be considering if a name like Mourinho or Benitez proves not to be a viable option..?