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As it’s my first time writing for these hallowed pages, I think it’s important I come clean straight away. You know, for clarity’s sake. After all, great relationships are built on honesty. So, here it is: I hold three beliefs to be true about Sean Dyche at Everton:
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Sean Dyche is not my dream Everton manager.
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I can’t think of any manager (one who Everton could realistically attract) who could have done a better job at Everton in these conditions.
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Despite that, I don’t think Dyche is perfect and I think we’re entitled to criticise some of his decisions and defeats as much as we celebrate his wins.
Okay, so now I’ve established that I’m no Dyche apologist, I’m going to apologise for Dyche…
Stops, starts and streaks
The start to this season has been terrible. As was the start to last season. And last season’s record 13-game winless streak. However, anyone expecting anything different hasn’t been following Dyche’s career closely enough. While Dyche has long been labelled as an overachiever, his career as a manager has always been marked by periods of sustained success followed by significant and prolonged downturns. He is, in football parlance, a streaky manager.
Even when he led Burnley to Europa League qualification in 2017-18, they went 11 games without a win between December and March that season. In fact, Burnley were somewhat renowned for enduring tough starts to each season, hovering near the relegation zone for much of the campaign, before incredible late surges to secure their safety.
For example, in the 2018-19 season, Burnley won just three of their first 19 games, placing them in serious relegation danger for most of the season, before an eight-game unbeaten streak helped them climb to a final finishing position of 15th, 6 points clear of relegation.
Last season, Everton won 13 games over the course of a 40 week season. However, 9 of those wins came in a 2-week spell between 2 and 16 December and a 4-week spell from 6 April to 11 May. Essentially, Everton might as well have not turned up (and many would argue we didn’t) for the other 34 weeks of the season!
And while the popular narrative is that Everton’s run of good form in the middle of last season was a reaction to the points reduction, the evidence suggests that a good run was on the cards and had little to do with the PSR punishment.
So, while it may be going a bit far to say that Dyche is streaky by design, you can certainly say it’s baked into his management. It’s not an aberration but actually the norm.
Wild fluctuations in performance levels explain why opinions of Dyche fluctuate equally wildly. In April this year, many were calling for his time in the Everton dugout to be brought to an end, while he was being mentioned as an overlooked Manager of the Season candidate less than a month later. In recent months, his name has even been linked with the England vacancy.
Dyche himself is aware of the streakines inherent in his management, which is precisely why – win, lose or draw – he likes to present a level head and preach balance. He knows that, under his management, whether things are going well or badly on the pitch, it’s likely to dramatically change before too long.
Why so streaky, Sean?
Now we know that following a Sean Dyche team is almost guaranteed to be a rollercoaster, glorious feast or abject famine, rather than scrappily picking up points consistently throughout the season. If you haven’t already, accept that as our truth and it may save you a few sleepless nights over the next few months.
The big question then is why? And that’s much harder to answer.
At the core of my theory is that Dyche is a percentages manager. That’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, usually with negative implications, but what exactly is a percentages manager?
Let’s swap sports for a moment. Roger Federer, the greatest tennis player ever, once told an audience at Dartmouth College in the US: “In tennis, perfection is impossible. In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches. Now, I have a question for all of you: what percentage of the points do you think I won in those matches? Only 54%. In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play. When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.”
On average, over the past few seasons, roughly 9 wins and 9 draws (for a total of 36 points) will keep you in the Premier League. That’s not actually many positive results, and Dyche knows that. When you can lose or draw three out of four games and stay in the league, you tend not to focus on every loss.
Dycheball is built on a focus on the parts of the game that are fairly easy to implement and highly repeatable but provide a slight percentage increase of gaining a result. Things like balls down the channel, winning second balls, protecting the V, running further than your opponent and, it turns out, even Pickford lumping deep free kicks into the area, they’re all percentage calls. Do these things consistently over the course of a season, even with a limited talent pool, and you’ll eventually fall on the right side of the line. Not every game, but enough times over the course of the season to pick up those 9 wins and 9 draws.
We can argue all day about whether that’s the type of football Everton should be playing and if our players aren’t capable of more, but that argument is moot while Dyche is at the helm.
Dyche is famously old school when it comes to fitness as well as tactics. No other club has the notorious Gaffer’s Day, which is not so much a fitness exercise as a calling card. It’s Dyche making it explicit what he values most in his players.
Therefore, I’d argue that it’s no mere coincidence that Everton, and Burnley before them, have picked up a lot of points during times when games come thick and fast over the Christmas period and at the end of the season. All teams tend to struggle with injuries and fatigue at these times of year, which is when simplicity of tactics and superior fitness tip the scales in Dyche’s teams’ favour and help them put together a run of results to catapult them up the table.
Of course, there are other factors that could play into Everton and Dyche’s streakiness. Dominic Calvert-Lewin is Everton’s best striker but is, and always has been, a streaky goal scorer. Runs of home games with the Goodison crowd behind the team can also wrestle momentum into the team’s favour and it’s undeniable the power that momentum plays in helping teams maintain good runs.
But anyone expecting Everton to go on a prolonged run of results, or even to accumulate points evenly and steadily throughout this season, is going to be disappointed. Dycheball isn’t pretty. Dycheball isn’t consistent in its outcomes. Dycheball can go from the woeful to the wonderful in the space of a few weeks. But Dycheball does get you over the line eventually. Just make sure you strap in before this rollercoaster picks up speed.