So, after a truly terrible and agonising campaign that looked very likely to end in relegation, Everton finally managed to guarantee Premier League football at Goodison Park next season with that incredible 3-2 win over Crystal Palace last Thursday.
That dramatic and almost unbelievable result has given Everton supporters a chance to finally relax and enjoy their summer, even if the team signed off the season with their usual final day collapse!
But of course, for me and I’m sure for many, if not most Blues’ fans, the overiding emotion is of relief after what has been this club’s worst season in recent history.
The prospect of relegation this time round was an even more frightening one than on those two final day escapes in the 1990s because the stakes are so much higher now.
Had the Toffees’ fallen through the trap door this season I doubt the club would have ever recovered on or off the pitch, and it’s even remotely possible that the financial consequences could have led to adminstration.
Well, that nightmare scenario has been avoided, at least for another year.
And that is the point, because obviously unless major improvement is seen next season I fear we will be back in a similar position twelve months from now.
As I have previously written there was a real danger this football club could end up copying what had happened to Newcastle United a few years ago.
They, like Everton, were arguably a ‘big’ club with a fine tradition in the game, now owned by a wealthy individual who seemed to have little clear strategy or any real clue as to what he needed to do to bring success on the pitch.
And, it led to relegation for them several times, something that looked very possible again for the Magpies this season until the Saudi-backed takeover of that club.
The Blues’ themselves can’t afford to keep on flirting with the drop as they will eventually run out of luck and repeat Newcastle’s fate. And, as I mentioned above that would be very possibly terminal for Everton given all their financial problems.
The maanger will have seen plenty of evidence of how much work there is to do to improve this team. So, what should be the club’s and manager Frank Lampard’s main priorities for the summer to make sure of avoiding a repeat of this season?
The board has to be streamlined, agree on a clear strategy, communicate better and stop making ill-advised interventions in football matters.
While it seems a forlorn hope I’d like to see a more streamlined board with in particular both Bill Kenwright and Denise Barratt-Baxendale going.
Neither have I think the necessary football knowledge and you always get the impression with this club that there are too many cooks spoiling the broth and interferring.
Ideally too, I’d like to see Farhad Moshiri sell the club preferably to a new owner with more football nous, but that looks very unlikely.
Regardless of personel changes, there is a need for a clear strategy to come from the board for the next three to five years, especially as Everton are due to move to a new stadium in 2024.
What are the goals on the pitch? Is it just mid-table mediocrity (the average outcome over the last five seasons), winning a trophy by the time of that stadium move? Or is it qualifying for Europe by then or in three years or even getting into the Champions League? All this needs to be communicated much more effectively to fans as well.
One thing Moshiri can’t be criticised for is lacking the ambition to succeed since he took over and he and the board have backed their managerial picks in recent seasons – especially in the transfer market – and almost to a fault you might argue.
But there has been a chronic lack of focus and at critical moments in this and past campaigns though we have seen other interventions that have proved ham-fisted and destabilising and contributed to the lack of direction and ultimately the decline in results on the pitch.
One example from this season was in December when as the crisis at the club was developing and the team was in apparent free-fall with results going consistently badly, Kenwright called an emergency meeting.
This meeting seemed a slightly odd response and resulted not in manager Rafa Benitez going (as I and probably most people thought would happen) but instead it was the club’s Director of Football Marcel Brands, who left after he had been given a new three-year contract just a few months earlier.
It was a strange outcome and while there were many fans and pundits critical of Brands’ role in the team’s recent struggles, it looked like he was being made a scapegoat for the collective failures of the board and to appease fans who were becoming increasingly vocal in their criticisms.
It also significantly strengthened Benitez’s position, despite the obvious problems on the pitch, as he has not been known for working closely with Directors of Football and didn’t seem to be seeing eye-to-eye with Brands either.
After he left, the Dutchman intimated that he had been sometimes prevented from doing his job with interferance from others making it difficult for him to establish a consistent culture and football philosophy. If that is true then why sign a new contract is the obvious response?!
The departure of Brands hugely strengthened Benitez’s position and this had immediate consequences, particularly in terms of Lucas Digne’s developing acromony with the manager that eventually led to the Frenchman’s transfer out of the club as he moved to Aston Villa in January.
Many Blues’ fans were very unhappy at losing an experienced and talented international player in the middle of what was seeming more and more likely to become a relegation battle.
Digne’s issues with the Spaniard seemed to be symbolic of potential wider problems the players were having that centred on Benitez’s personality, style of management and tactics.
As results declined, Benietz dug his heals in continuing to go with those tactics and a mentality that was excessively defensive and negative.
I, along with many others, were calling for the club to take action quickly – as soon as the Brentford defeat away in November – and remove Rafa Benitez earlier in the season rather than keep waiting and waiting in the vain hope things would turn around.
As it was games came and went in November, December and into January and despite constant defeats with the team sliding down the table, nothing happened.
Supporters became increasingly angry while the club seemed to be coming apart at the seams and fracturing at the very moment when unity was most important.
It was obvious that change had to be made once the situation had become irreversably toxic rather than holding on until it was almost too late for his eventual and inevitable successor to turn things around. That’s what happened of course and it very nearly was too late.
Of course, the reason for this mess in the first place was Moshiri’s determination to ignore all the problems with appointing the former Liverpool manager in the summer.
To be fair, neither he or anyone else had expected Carlo Ancelotti to walk away so suddenly at the beginning of July last year leaving Everton without a coach yet again.
I think this was a particularly bitter pill for the owner to swallow as Ancelotti was the man he had always really wanted as manager. And it came after the club had just spent heavily again to back him in the transfer market, further compounding all the emerging financial issues.
So, the Toffees’ were looking for their sixth manager in five years since Moshiri had taken control.
However, once again the owner seemed to be seduced by an established big name coach rather than looking for the right fit who would potentially work well with people like Brands (about to be given that new contract of course) and suit a clearly defined footballing strategy, which the club clearly didn’t have!
Despite the obvious dislike some Evertonians haboured for Benitez because of his Liverpool past and the questions about whether his tactical approach and defensive philosphy suited modern football, he became the club’s only choice once it seemed clear Moshiri had decided on him.
I was prepared to try and give him a chance as with any Everton manager, although it was obvious that absolutely everything had to go right for him straight away and keep going right or else things would turn sour very, very quickly because of all that past baggage.
At first it did seem to but then once the inevitable injury curse struck and the form of other players dipped, it quickly unraveled.
Like his manager, Moshiri seemed stubbornly determined to continue on the course he had charted regardless of the situation and mounting evidence it was going badly wrong.
And, as I’ve said having got rid of Brands in December and effectively given the manager a renewed vote of confidence, he almost had no choice but to carry on with Benitez in charge.
So, all this is evidence of a lack of football knowledge and strategy and also a tone-deaf inability to appreciate the importance of keeping at least the majority of supporters onside at a club which has much greater dependency on those fans than some others – as the last few weeks have again underlined.
One other smaller and less critical example of this sort of almost eccentric meddling was Moshiri’s decision to push for the loan signing of Anwar El Ghazi in January.
No one seemed to want to bring in the Villa winger (apart from Moshiri and the players agent!) and it took up a precious loan signing slot meaning new manager Frank Lampard couldn’t add another player he might have wanted to.
And to underline the waste and stupidity of the whole situation, he’s hardly played a single minute of football since joining Everton and will presumably be returning to Villa asap.
Moving onto the future the Blues’ have a young manager in Lampard who they will presumably continue with as I can’t see the club getting rid of him or finding a better replacement.
The ex-Chelsea and England legend certainly seems to get the club’s culture and has established a strong rapport with the majority of supporters.
There are still questions about his tactics etc, which will be addresed in more detail in these articles, but he would seem very safe in the job especially having just led to the team in a successful battle to avoid relegation.
In addition, the Toffees’ have a new Director of Football in Kevin Thelwell so the board need to give both men time, space and resources to try and turn this sinking ship around.
Is all this a forlorn hope on my part? We will see.
Frank Lampard needs to define his football strategy and tactics and seek to bring in players who will fully fit that style of play.
This sounds pretty obvious of course and I’m sure that the Everton boss is doing just that as he looks forward to re-shaping the squad in the summer.
Understandably, Lampard has been entirely focused since taking over on saving the Blues’ from relegation and so everything else has taken a backseat including developing a coherent strategy for the future.
There have been promising indications that the manager wants to move this Toffees’ team in a more modern and competitive direction in terms of style of play and tactics.
He has instituted a more aggresive, pressing approach and his sides have been more willing to try and play on the front foot. It’s not always worked, partly because he doesn’t have the right set of players overall to do so.
However, perhaps not suprisingly given the pressure he was under, Lampard has resorted to a more defensive posture in the last few games to try and stem the goals being conceded and Everton have lapsed back into a negative mindset at times.
I’ve stated more times than I can remember that I think to make real progress the team do need to play a much more aggresive, front-foot type of football and to learn to press high consistently well. Again, I also think a 4-3-3 is the basic formation to go with and make this work.
Looking at the current group of players Lampard has some of the sort of footballers he will need. In particular, he has two young full-backs who can provide the natural width and attacking outlets on the flanks.
This is especially true of Nathan Patterson. The former Rangers youngster and Scotland international hasn’t had much chance to show what he can do since signing in January and injury has also impeded him as well.
Hopefully, he can put those issues behind him and if he is able to realise his obvious talent then Everton will have a quality right-back to combine with his opposite number Vitalii Mykolenko who has emerged recently as a key player in this team.
Up front Lampard has two forwards who can allow him to play that higher tempo pressing game. Both Richarlison and Anthony Gordon are naturally well-suited to this style of play.
Keeping the Brazil international this summer is going to be difficult, as I’ve previously mentioned, but if Lampard is able to persuade him to stay at Goodison Park, then he can build his more modern attack around them.
If the manager is prepared to move in this direction he needs to focus on trying to bring in those sorts of players in to ensure he can quickly adopt a new style and strategtic approach and hopefully ensure the team hits the ground running next season. Financial constraints will of course make that even harder.
In addition, he has to find a way to move on those who indivdiduals who can’t adjust to what I presume will be a new system, tactics and football style.
That’s a big problem given how poor some of those players have been and for so long too. While some will be natural wastage as their contracts are ending, he and Thelwell will have to find buyers for the others. All in all, a huge task.