So, after yet another crazy and stressful few days for Everton Football Club it looks as though Sean Dyche is about to be named as the club’s new manager.
Reports this morning claim it’s all but a done deal with the ex-Burnley boss set to take over at Everton, maybe by the end of the day.
No one will be surprised at this appointment as Dyche was always a strong contender given his background and experience at Turf Moor.
He is an obvious choice in a lot of ways because of that past at Burnley, keeping them in the Premier League and largely successfully battling to avoid the dreaded drop.
But, he has also done more than just survive and at one point got the Clarets into Europe, something the Blues’ haven’t achieved since Ronald Koeman was manager in 2017.
Given all the chaos and upheaval the Toffees’ have been through recently, Koeman’s tenure feels like a lifetime ago. And, it’s another statistic which tells you just what a terrible few years it’s been at Goodison Park.
A club which has spent the better part of £500 million on playing talent since Farhad Moshiri took control, has failed to even secure European football let alone win a trophy for five years, and now sits second from bottom of the Premier League.
That is the scale of the task facing the new man.
Dyche has plenty of qualities to bring to the job. He is a manager with a good reputation for successfully coaching and improving players and he turned a number of overlooked footballers into internationals, including Everton’s much-maligned centre-back Michael Keane.
Could he manage to revive Keane’s flagging career? Also he must find a way to get more out of Dwight McNeil, a player who has signally failed to ignite since his summer move to Merseyside.
He also of course knows James Tarkowski very well and Tarkowski is another key individual who’s form has dipped worrying lately.
At any rate he has to find a way to bring more out of a number of the Blues’ squad, otherwise this team is not staying up.
Players like Amadou Onana, Demarai Gray, Anthony Gordon (if he stays) and Dominic Calvert-Lewin are just a few others from whom Dyche and the Blues’ need much more from in the second half of the season.
There are also other examples of how he might impact the team he is inheriting. Dyche is tactically consistent favouring a 4-4-2 formation and this is something that had become a problem under Frank Lampard as he never seemed to know what formation he wanted to use.
Dyche is also renowed as a very effective motivator of indivdual players, again something that is most certainly needed of this group of players.
His first task though is going to be trying to find and bring in at least two or three new faces, and forwards too.
Dyche won’t have much time to do it but he will surely have a number of targets in mind and has presumably discussed them during his interviews with Everton.
This transfer window shopping has to be very successful because there is (as everyone including Dyche himself knows) a chronic lack of attacking flair and goals in this side.
Although I am quite attracted to the idea of thinking differently about a new manager than the obvious group of candidates, of course I wish Dyche all the very best, if he does indeed become the Toffees’ new manager.
Assuming that is the case and he is the new Blues’ boss, then Evertonians have to try and get behind him. We need to be united and again help drive this dysfunctional team over the line.
Obviously, I really hope he can ultimately turn this sinking ship around. If he does it will arguably be his greatest achievement in management.