Did Ancelotti lose some Everton players?

As the speculation goes on and we seem no nearer yet knowing who the next Everton manager will be, did Carlo Ancelotti lose the support or confidence of some of the players and could that have been a reason why he left?

This is just speculation of course but the abrupt and almost overnight way in which Ancelotti quit the Everton manager’s job was a bolt out of the blue, so to speak.

Ancelotti was making lots of noises about who he wanted to sign in this summer’s transfer window just a week or so ago and seemed to still be committed to the contract he had signed eighteen months ago.

Now obviously this is modern football and players, as well as managers, don’t have much loyalty to any club. And of course, they often make all sorts of noises about how much they love it at the club currently playing their salaries before then jumping ship somewhere else, so what has happened is hardly unique to the Blues is it?

Let’s be honest you can’t really blame these footballers or even the coaches as the majority of them are from overseas now and so obviously don’t have the same sense of roots or loyalty to one English club or another. That’s not surprising and in fact, it’s also true of many British players as well. The days of teams with two, three or four local players at least and those one-club footballers seem gone forever.

Did Ancelotti lose his Everton players?

But in Ancelotti’s case, I wonder if his relationship with some of his players had become problematic and that this was a factor in his decision to bale out as soon as possible.

The reason I’m thinking this might have been possible is first of all because there were so many dreadful performances last season especially at home and during some of those games at times Ancelotti was waving his arms about and screaming to the players to do something and they just weren’t responding.

Now obviously that’s happened to other Everton managers too, particularly Marco Silva who had a similar lack of response from this near identical set of players. Of course, the absence of fans played a significant part, but we’re talking about Carlo Ancelotti who’s one of the most consistently successful managers in the history of the game.

Many of us felt when he arrived that surely if anyone could get something approaching a consistent tune out of these players it was him.

And his combination of huge experience, winning mentality and experience handling the egos of multi-millionaire star footballers such as Ronaldo and James Rodriguez, would ensure that those players with genuine ability and ambition in this Toffees team, would respond.

But that didn’t really happen. Take a player like Alex Iwobi. He signed for a huge sum and does have talent but still he didn’t manage to find any consistent form under Ancelotti apart from a brief spell around the turn of the year.

He was in and out of the team – something that happened to a number of players – and the fomer Arsenal man just couldn’t find any form seems just as much an enigma now as he ever was.

There were others like Gylfi Sigurdsson (who always seemed a favourite of the Italian’s) and Andre Gomes who have been fitful at best. And in Gomes case, he has declined significantly in the last eighteen months, although his injury against Spurs, just before Ancelotti arrived, could have had quite a lot to do with that.

Even several of the best players in the team have been more than a bit underwhelming. Lucas Digne was solid enough last season but sometimes lacked the flair and energy that characterised his first year or so at Goodison Park and in the second half of the campaign he seemed to be coasting at times.

And star striker Richarlison certainly went backwards during this last campaign. In the two seasons before, the Brazilian scored thirteen Premier League goals each term, while this season his total is effectively only half that tally.

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His form has been very erratic over the past year or so and after a slow start to last season he got himself sent off against Liverpool.

Then despite a temporary revival when he returned to the team, he was too often exhibiting the sort of petulant and frustratingly selfish performances that had sometimes characterised his play when he first joined Everton.

The South American had apparently had a discussion during the season with his then-manager about his position in the side and why he wasn’t finding the back of the net. Anyway, it didn’t really work as his form never got much better and he seemed at times a fish-out-of-water in this team.

To be fair on the other hand there have been a few notable improvements in certain players.

In particular, Jordan Pickford has had a much better campaign and after a few early-season wobbles settled into much more consistent form and in fact was the team’s best player in the final third of the season.

And Ben Godfrey’s emergence was perhaps the one real genuine positive to take out of the last season with the summer signing impressing consistently in various positions.

Well after all this is said and done, I doubt we’ll ever know what were the exact combination of reasons why Ancelotti left Everton so abruptly. Maybe it was simply the lure of Real Madrid and the Spanish sun. Now it’s time for the Blues to move on and try to start again.