Should Everton bring Moyes back or look elsewhere…
After I vented my spleen yesterday over the crisis at Everton and Marco Silva’s future, the odds on his replacement are beginning to take shape with David Moyes now favourite to take his job.
So is Moyes the right man to take over, perhaps temporarily, if or surely when Everton bow to the mounting pressure and pull the trigger on Silva’s position?
I wrote last season, when Everton were enduring a torrid time before and just after Christmas and the New Year, that bringing Moyes back might be necessary to stabilise the situation.
My thinking was that the Toffees were listing badly, conceding soft goals and looking totally toothless up front, which sounds depressingly familiar!
It felt that the team needed to get back to basics, find some defensive solidity and cut out the kind of unforced mistakes that were proving so costly.
Moyes, given his past history with the club and his track record building a solid, defensively sound and hard-working team did that and had a team that punched above its weight.
So I thought that bringing Moyes back until the end of that season would give the club time to find the right long-term successor.
As it happened, briefly Silva seemed to turn things around and the Blues finished the season strongly. However as we know that was an illusion.
But now I don’t think that this is the right strategy given the situation that Everton are currently in.
It’s absolutely imperative that the Toffees get any decision to change manager right and now. There is a narrow window of opportunity for Everton to make a move to get into the top six or top four if the club make the right appointment and back that man.
Apart from Liverpool and Manchester City, much of the Premier League is full of frankly mediocre teams and crucially every other of the so-called ‘elite clubs’ in the Premier League are in a state of transition or possibly decline.
Manchester United are in an almost permanent transition, desperately trying to rediscover their dominance of the Ferguson era.
As for the London clubs, Tottenham look to be stagnating and in decline after several seasons trying to bridge the gap to the top two. Arsenal are flattering to deceive as they have for a number of years and Chelsea are coping with a transfer ban that has left them depending on a young team this season.
So there is a golden opportunity for clubs like Everton, Wolves and Leicester City to make a move for that rarefied top echelon of the league.
And while the two midlands clubs look as though they are equipped to try, the Blues look miles off it at the moment.
I honestly don’t know what the board are thinking clinging onto Silva despite all the evidence that he simply isn’t up to the job?
What is the point of giving him the West Ham and/or Watford game, (if that’s indeed the case), to ‘prove himself’ when they have nearly eighteen months evidence to look at!
Are they aware that having a brand new spanking stadium in a few year’s time won’t matter much if the Blues are playing in the Championship!!
Where is the ambition and desire for success that they are always talking about? Lets see it in the form of a manager with the credentials and calibre to take the Toffees back to a competitive position.
Bringing things back then to other possible coaches, one new candidate who has appeared on the radar is the Ajax boss Erik ten Hag.
The Dutchman has enjoyed plenty of success in Holland and his Ajax side had a great run in the Champions League last season and they were unlucky not to get to the final in the end.
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So he has shown he can coach an unfancied side to overachieve and is good working with young players. In addition of course Everton director of football Marcel Brands is a fellow countryman and presumably knows him well.
It seems likely that if he continues to do well he will almost certainly move to a bigger league in Europe. One problem is that he has just signed a new contract in June this year, so would also cost a lot to prise away.
But he is exactly the kind of young, highly regarded coach with a good track record at the top-level and one still slightly under the radar that I think Everton must be tracking.