Everton chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale has been outlining the ‘strategic football review’ that Everton have begun recently.
This comes in the wake of the decision by the Everton board to remove Marcel Brands from his post back in early December.
Acknowledging results have not been acceptable recently (you can say that again!) apparently, the club have followed-up that unexpected move by beginning a full-scale strategic review of the whole structure of football operations. This includes reviewing every aspect of the club’s work.
It will be interesting to see what exactly comes out of this review and Barrett-Baxendale said the club would be communicating the results when they are ready.
One of the biggest critisms of recent Blues’ regimes is the lack of clear strategic direction, something that has repeatedly undermined the ability of the Toffees’ to progress.
This is in large part the consequence of the constant turnover in managers since Farhad Moshiri took over the club in 2016.
With Rafa Benitez we are now on the sixth coach since Moshiri became majority shareholder almost six years ago and that degreee of instability makes drawing up and implimenting a strategic plan very difficult to say the least.
Benitez can’t be held accountable for previous regimes and the mistakes made by them and as we all know he had next to nothing to spend in the summer on bolstering his squad. Then came all the injuries which have crippled the team.
However, the current run of Premier League form is amongst the worse that long-suffering Evertonians have seen in a long while with just a solitary win in the last ten matches and eight defeats.
So, a thorough review of all aspects of the club’s football seems not just well-timed but also absolutely necessary.
It doesn’t seem very clear who exactly is in charge of this review, hopefully it’s going to involve the manager himself because, whether you want him to stay in post or not, it does seem as though he’s in for the long haul.
If that’s the case and he is to stay then Benitez needs to have a pivital say in what reforms come out of the review being conducted.
We have to hope that this review is going to result in some much-needed reforms to how this club is run, at least from a football point-of-view.
After all the upheaval and instability of the past, Everton need to get this right and set a course that can result in genuine and sustained improvement.