Does Conte’s collapsed move to Spurs open door for Everton
Well it isn’t just Everton then who seem to lurch from one crisis to another over managers as it’s been revealed talks between Tottenham and Antonio Conte have broken down.
Conte to Spurs seemed pretty much a done deal a day or so ago but now the news is that it’s stalled and the Italian probably is not now be heading to north London. So does this open the door for Everton to swoop?
Spurs are in a similar sort of position to the Toffees as they have been a traditionally successful club albiet much more a cup side historically, but they have been hugely overshadowed by their more successful neighbours and have been starved of success in the Premier League era.
They are a few years ahead of the Blues in terms of having built their new stadium already and got into the Champions League, reaching the final in 2019 of course. They’ve just had a big name manager in Jose Mourinho, one of Ancelotti’s contempories, who has gone with uncertainty over the future of star players and are back searching for a way forward.
Anyway, returning to Conte, there are a lot of Toffees fans who would in an ideal world, like the Italian at Goodison Park. His CV is certainly very impressive with title wins in England with Chelsea and in Italy where last season he brought Inter Milan their first Scuddetto in over a decade.
He’s a proven winner who gets hold of and molds very effective sides to gets results with a very determined, relentless style and approach. He wants to play attacking football with plenty of width but his sides are also solid defensively.
Conte also does well getting hold of struggling teams and has the character to deal with underachieving players, improving results quite quickly.
He turned things around with Juventus and won in Turin, then he went to a very different league, the Premier League and won that title and he’s gone to another Italian club that has been underachieving for a long time in Inter and he’s brought them long overdue success too.
One other dimension is that players would come to Goodison if a manager like Conte was sitting in the dugout, just as they did for Ancelotti. Apparently Romelu Lukaku wants to go anywhere Conte ends up at and it would be strange having him back in an Everton shirt!
It seems very much a long shot that he would consider a mid-table club like Everton in pretty much a permanent state of crisis, but then at first eighteen months ago it didn’t look as though Carlo Ancelotti was a realistic candidate to join the Blues either so who knows?
But Conte is a tough character and while he has worked with Directors of Football, would he be able to get along with Marcel Brands and would they share a vision?
The other issue is would he have the resources that he would demand to re-build the squad, if he were to come to Everton?
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This appears to have been a major issue that undid the discussions with Tottenham as they have been strapped for cash for a while now after their stadium move and then the Covid situation, which has obviously made it worse.
Everton themselves are skating on the edge of falling foul of the Financial Fair Play rules after some heavy spending and handing out some absurd wages to so many mediocre footballers.
But the club does have deeper pockets than Spurs and my view is basically forget FFP and just go out and spend what the new manager requires, within reason of course.
After all, as with Ancelotti, what’s the point of hiring a top coach and then not backing him in the transfer market? So I’d take the fine and just build the squad that is needed for the club to finally succeed on the pitch.
However, is any of this likely? I don’t know but probably not as the club top brass seem very divided again on the way forward. And having gone for one ‘hollywood’ coach and getting his fingers burnt, Farhad Moshiri might be usure whether to go down that road again.