After another confusing day in the search for a new manager, Everton have confirmed that Duncan Ferguson has been appointed in a temporary role to do the job for the immediate future.
So, what exactly that means no one is quite sure, but Ferguson will be Everton boss for the next Premier League match against Aston Villa on Saturday then comes an international break before the FA Cup game against Brentford two weeks later.
At the moment it’s unclear whether Ferguson will still be in charge when that match kicks off, but let’s hope in the meantime he can generate the kind of immediate response he achieved when he took over briefly in December 2019.
Presumably, if the club can agree on a permanent candidate and get a deal done during that break, that individual will come in and take over as soon as possible.
If not, then Big Duncan will continue for the rest of the season, either until the club can get the situation sorted or until the end of the season if they can’t and/or the Scot is doing well.
It does make sense to give Ferguson the job for the next few weeks at least, and from any practical point of view it’s the obvious thing to do for now.
As for whether he would be the right man long-term that’s still difficult to know. If he can do a great job from now to the end of the campaign, if that what ends up happening, then why not?
However, I’m not certain the big man is the right choice going forward. I think that he is perhaps still best suited to being that rock of a number two.
Perhaps if the opportunity is there to bring in Wayne Rooney and partner him with Ferguson, that just feels more and more like it might be the right way forward.
Maybe, it could be a new version of another duo of former players, the Howard Kendall/Colin Harvey coaching axis, that brought so much success to the Toffees in the eighties. That’s unlikely I know, but we can hope, it’s all we have as Evertonians!
It would certainly be a risk to give the job to a man with no Premier League managerial experience but then to be honest I don’t think there are any candidates who are guaranteed to be a success in the Everton job.
Even a coach the calibre of say Pep Guardiola would struggle to get a great tune out of this squad and to overcome the team’s endless injury problems.
The club could wait until the summer and reassess things then, there is something to be said for doing that.
However, there may not be much greater choice of candidates in the early summer and the Blues will have to move quickly then to secure who they want. There will be almost certainly be more competition as others will likely be looking for new managers then.