Everton manager Benitez to be sacked but no announcement until tomorrow

Reports late last night and this morning claim that Everton have effectively sacked Rafa Benitez but will not make an official announcement until Monday.

Various sources are saying that Everton have made their decision but won’t announce it until tomorrow some time. We’ll see if that’s the case.

I will say again that while I agree Benitez has to go, removing this manager won’t solve the club’s fundamental problems, I think every Blues fan knows that.

When he walked through the doors at Finch Farm last summer Benitez inherited a huge mess the result of years of profligate spending and constant upheaval that has revealed a lack of coherent strategy and foresight.

The problems at the club go deep. And, while I was very angry last night – in the immediate aftermath of the Toffees latest dreadful performance and result at Norwich – when I wrote the match report demanding mass resignations, I do still think that without radical change from the top down nothing is going to fundamentally improve at the club.

When Benitez took over I certainly had my reservations, primarily about his tactics and whether like his great rival from fifteen years ago, Jose Mourinho, the game had now passed him by.

But, I hoped against expectation that perhaps he would be able to evolve a more up-to-date approach and bring a bit of stability to the team at last. It was always going to be difficult though if things went badly because Benitez doesn’t have any good will in the bank with supporters due to his Liverpool past.

However, as results have declined his team selections and tactical decisions have though become increasingly eccentric and underline his stubborn refusal to change his approach and act on things that seem blindingly obvious to nearly everyone else.

Initially, when the season started and he had a full strength squad with his two new forward signings Andros Townsend and Demarai Gray both in excellent form, things went pretty well.

Everton won their first four Premier League matches and played some decent attacking football, sticking to the basics of counter-attacking, getting the ball forward quickly and putting lots of crosses into the box for Richarlison and Dominic Calvert-Lewin to get on the end of.

It’s true that the team were beating some very ordinary sides but results like Brighton away, when the Blues were outstanding, gave us what ultimately proved to be false hope for the future.

And, there were signs of the problems that would come to define the season again, even during that initial early success. In particular, defenders like Micheal Keane were making constantly unforced errors that were proving costly.

Then, just as happened last season injuries hit and the early momentum was halted in double quick time. Benitez can claim with some justification that he has been very unlucky with injuries as other previous managers were.

While that is true, he hasn’t helped his or Everton’s cause by making so many inexplicable and ultimately disasterous decisions and changes that have proved so deterimental like altering the defending from set-pieces.

For me the match at Brentford in November was a turning point.

Everton went to play the struggling Bees in desperate need of points and somehow contrived to lose 1-0 to the London side despite dominating large portions of the game.

Late on in the match after picking another excessively defensive team, instead of taking a few chances and putting some more attacking players onto the pitch as the Toffees pressed for goals, he sat on his hands and watched the game slip away.

After that came a humilating derby defeat and that was the moment when decisions should have been made and bring someone else in to look at the squad and prepare for the transfer window.

But, instead the owner backed him and removed his Director of Football having just awarded him a new three-year contract.

So Everton went into this months window with a manager who was effectively a dead duck making all the key decisions over transfers.

Then came the fiasco over Lucas Digne. Regardless of whether the Frenchman’s form and attitude have been good enough, the manner of his departure has been very unsatifactory.

So, now Benitez is on the brink and we wait for news as to whether he will go and who will be the man to replace him.