It is not easy to be an Evertonian. As it too often the case we are witnessing boring football and very few goals. We don’t have single player who is exciting to watch.
But…
After halting the rot with a run of three draws, Sean Dyche has managed to win enough points for us to sit in joint 11th place and only two points behind huge spending Chelsea. In a typical season, we need only another 8 points or so to stay up.
Of course, a corrupt Premier League trying to pretend its house is in order had docked us 10 of our 29 points. There’s not a great deal Sean Dyche can do about that. With the present playing staff, he’s done a remarkable job in the time he’s been here – and though it won’t be pretty, he certainly gives us a very good chance of staying up despite the wildly disproportionate points deduction.
Based on comments on various threads / the live forum etc, I am not sure that fans quite appreciate just what an extraordinary job Dyche has been doing. I think many fans are under the impression that, because “we are Everton” we surely must have better players than traditionally smaller clubs. Unfortunately, that is just not the case.
Make no mistake, based on levels of investment and quality of squad, we should have been relegated last season (and possibly the season before). Southampton, Leeds and most certainly Leicester had better squads. That is because we have been dismantling a very badly assembled squad over the past 3.5 years.
In June 2020 it became clear the money had run out and a mid-table / bottom half squad then began selling what it could and reinvesting very little into the playing staff.
- 2023/24 season: -£40m net spend (lost regular first teamers of Iwobi, Gray and to some extent Mina and Townsend)
- 2022/23 season: -£25m net spend (lost regular first teamers Richarlison, Gordon, Allan and Sigurdsson)
- 2021/22 season: -£5m net spend (lost regular first teamers Digne, Rodriguez, Bernard and Walcott)
That represents negative investment of around £70m in the past three years and a total of 12 players sold who were first team regulars. And that masks the actual outlay on players like Chermiti (actually £1.8m) and Beto (£0m) in year one due to our inability to spend (no money and premier league financial rules).
That is how teams are forced to behave after they have been relegated. We are not competing financially as a top-flight club and haven’t been for some time. It is extraordinary that we remain in the Premier League. It is even more extraordinary that a club in this scenario can have 10 points deducted and still retain a very good chance of staying up.
What has happened to us since June 2020 would have absolutely broken any other club.
Let’s look at others over the same 3 year period.
- Leicester: net spend -£20m in player sales despite being relegated.
- Palace: net spend £180m. Lost just one first teamer of note (Zaha) and added the likes of Henderson, Guehi, Anderson, Richards, Wharton, Olise, Edouard and Doucoure. They have a better squad than us.
- Bournemouth: net spend £200m despite being in the Championship for one of those seasons. Not really sold anyone of note and added Zabarnyi, Kerkez, Aarons, Adams, Scott, Traore, Tavernier, Ouattara, Sinisterra, Kluivert and Semenyo. Again, they have a better squad than us.
- Forest: net spend £240m despite being in the Championship for one of those seasons. I won’t list all the players they’ve bought because it is a ridiculous number but in Gibbs-White, Awoyinyi, Montiel, Sangare, Danilo and Murillo there’s plenty of quality as well as numbers. Transfermarkt considers their squad to be worth £40m more than ours but a 10 point deduction (that they plainly deserve if we do) would absolutely ruin them.
- Burnley: net spend £185m despite being in the Championship for one of those seasons. This shows just how much they’ve invested post-Dyche. In fairness they’ve lost Collins, Cornet, McNeil, Pope, Wood and Tarkowski too. But even this January they have added genuine quality in Esteve, Assignon and Fofana. Okay, these are not household names, but they are two of the biggest young defensive talents from France and one of the most promising u21 strikers in world football. I think they’ve accepted relegation as part of a longer-term plan to develop these players under Kompany.
I won’t even bother going into the situation somewhere like Villa because sadly they are different gravy given the investment in the playing squad. Emery is lucky enough to be at a club which added four Champions League quality players (Pau Torres, Diaby, Tielemans and Lenglet) to an already talented squad last summer.
And if you are struggling to think what a difference even £100m makes, then visualise our team now with Olise (£7m), Gibbs-White (£25m), Kudus (£40m) and Joao Pedro (£28m) instead of Harrison, Dele Alli, Danjuma and Dobbin.
It is plainly obvious that outside of the richest clubs, there are 5 managers doing extremely good jobs. They are (annoyingly) Rob Edwards at Luton, Sean Dyche at Everton, Francesco DeZerbi at Brighton, Gary O’Neill at Wolves and Thomas Frank at Brentford.
Indeed, if Dyche were doing anything less than an exceptional job, we’d be doomed already.
Personally, I hope we stick with Dyche and give him time to build a squad and a dynasty at Everton. Once the financials are resolved and we can start to sign fast, talented players in forward positions then the football and goal count will improve markedly. And for those still holding their nose at his appointment, at least consider the context in which the guy is operating. If you want to blame someone for the bad football then blame Kenwright and Moshiri for destroying everything good about the club through utter stupidity.