Everton in danger of becoming like Newcastle
I have to admit to becoming a little tired of writing constant pieces about the continuing managerial saga at Everton, but I feel there is a wider related issue that is pertinent as this situation rumbles on.
That is I think the real danger, Everton are fast becoming a club that resembles the football soap opera that is Newcastle United.
The Magpies have become a byword in the Premier League for under achievement. A big club with a huge, loyal fan base desperate for success but struggling with constant instability, endless managerial upheavals and an abject failure to build any consistent foundations for success.
There was also a perpetual sense that the club lacked any identity, direction or strategy; is any of this beginning to sound a little too familiar?
Like Everton, Newcastle have a wealthy individual owner who has in the past made promises of bringing back the glory days but who seemed to have no idea how to achieve it. Directors of Football, managers and players came and went as the team bounced around in the Premier League basement, flirting with relegation and occasionally experiencing it too.
Magpies owner Mike Ashley appears to have used the football club as part of a wider PR exercise, trying to position him and his business dealings in a better way. Is Farhad Moshiri doing something similar given his developing property portfolio in Liverpool?
Despite all this, the Newcastle fans remained loyal, perhaps almost too loyal, and kept hoping that eventually things on the pitch would finally improve.
Then after a number of managers had come and gone without bringing success to Tyneside, came the appointment of Rafa Benitez in March 2016. The Spaniard arrived with Newcastle staring down the barrel of another relegation to the Championship.
Although he ultimately couldn’t prevent that from happening, he did immediately take the Magpies back to the Premier League, winning the Championship title in the process.
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And despite a chronic lack of investment in the team, Benitez defied the odds and kept Newcastle up for the next two seasons. However in the end he walked away from St James Park after just over three years, citing a ‘lack of trust’ between him and the club as the reason.
This is where it brings us back to the current crisis at Goodison Park.
Although David Moyes remains favourite, as I’ve said before, for me, Benitez seems to be the best bet out of all the most likely candidates to take over at Everton, when Marco Silva goes.
He has shown he can motivate and organise a side and cope with limited transfer funds, something a future Blues boss might have to deal with.
But he may also feel that there are too many similarities with the situation at Newcastle and that might be a deciding factor in whether he is prepared to return to Merseyside.