Let me start by saying I despise Sean Dyche as a manager. I said it before he arrived — he isn’t good enough for this club and he has achieved nothing to suggest he deserves to manage Everton. He has no credit in any bank with me.
I have a little more respect for David Moyes for what he achieved in his early years with us, but I have no real love for him or hankering to have him back (although I never thought I’d say it but I’d have him back tomorrow for the rest of the season).
The problem I have is the very public “we can’t win this” attitude.
Knives to a gunfight might be a great soundbite, but it’s also telling the players you manage that you don’t think they are good enough.
Dyche is similar. “Not my fault”, we have issues behind the scenes, players didn’t take their chances, ref was wrong. Yawn.
The one I hate most is “we only have 12 fit first-team players” — well that’s because you never blood any new ones. Again, this sends a negative message to all those players. “You aren’t good enough to be a first-team player”. It’s also a preemptive excuse as to why we inevitably lose. “Wasn’t my fault, I told you we had too many injuries and had to play Uncle Albert in defence!”
Right now, I want a Roberto Martinez. Now many derided the nonsense he spoke, sometimes appearing to miss the obvious, but there can be no doubt that his first season was our most successful of the Premier League era.
I believe he benefited from the organisation of Moyes’s team he inherited. But what he did was tell those same knife-carrying players that it was okay to win. They were capable of going to Old Trafford and winning where previously they had been told they were beaten before they got off the coach.
Yes, Martinez has his limitations — and I’m not suggesting we go for him by the way. I’m simply saying a manager who talks his players up will always feel better to me.
At his best Jose Mourinho made his players think they would win because he was invincible, the Special One. It’s a different spin on the same tactic: “You can win because”.
Sir Alec Ferguson didn’t accept his players would lose, the same players that won the title, Moyes managed to do just that with them — lose. It’s a mindset.
So I just hope Dyche goes. Soon, somehow. I can’t watch him, I can’t enjoy the team I have supported for 45 years. Playing Roman Dixon… he plays well and is then told he’s not good enough (maybe not verbally but through his actions). Sums Dyche up.
I’d sooner have Rafael Benitez back and I bloody hate him too!