Everton boss pushes back against critisism of his substitutions

Sean Dyche has been talking about his approach to in-game substitutions as Everton prepare to take on Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park tomorrow afternoon.

One of the major critisms of Dyche’s rein at Goodison Park has been his apparent unwillingness to make many changes during a game.

This is surely partly because of the fact he has a very small first-team squad at Everton. But Dyche’s own decisions have also come under severe scrutiny.

In most matches it does seem that the manager is relectant to move quickly and early to change things, even when the Toffees are struggling.

This was seen most recently against Brighton last weekend when the Blues were battling to hold onto a slender one goal lead under continuing pressure from the visitors.

As the minutes ticked by Dyche seemed reticent to make changes and in the end of course the Seagulls pressure eventually told as they scored a fluke own-goal through Ashley Young’s deflection.

It was only very late in the game that Dyche moved to put fresh legs onto the pitch and you can’t help feeling that this was too little too late.

In his remarks the Everton boss claims that he won’t be influenced to make changes for the sake of it, which makes sense.

However, there are times when although bringing on substitutes won’t always work, sometimes there must be a willingness to mix things up to make something happen.

As I said before, Dyche is hamstrung by having such a small squad and therefore fewer options to turn to when or if he wants to change his team.

The reasons for this are obviously complicated gong back to the huge spending that has gone on for years and particularly the circumstances several previous managers over the last two or three years faced.

The need for major pruning of the club’s group of players was inevitable given how bloated Everton’s squad had become after so much waste under Farhad Moshiri’s ownership.

That cutting of the cloth to reduce a huge wage bill reached a conclusion last summer when a whole host of first-team and youth players left the club.

So Dyche now only has twenty players available to him, which is clearly a very small squad to pick from in a Premier League that is relentlessly challenging. 

Having said that I still think he has to be more creative in his use of those resources and perhaps take more calculated risks at times.