Easter Sunday arrived with Everton still searching for a first Premier League win since before Christmas and as Sean Dyche’s side’s wait for a resurrection continues, beleaguered Blues are left fretting whether there will ultimately be a happy ending to a season of unprecedented strife.
An on-the-pitch revival compared to the previous two campaigns – which let’s not forget were the two worst in the club’s entire history in terms of relative points gained – has been hampered by what was initially the most severe sporting sanction ever dished out in English top flight football. But while the emotional rollercoaster has seen 10 points reduced to six on appeal, Nottingham Forest being given a smaller punishment despite a larger breach (only to appeal themselves) and Everton now braced for the verdict on their second PSR charge this term and the implications that could bring, the upsurge that followed the sting of the original deduction has now long since evaporated.
Dyche refers to these numerous off-the-field distractions – including the additional factor of the protracted prospective takeover of the club – as the “noise” and as manager insists his focus remains on “controlling the controllables”. However, like all those in his profession, he is judged on his ability to produce a winning team.
By his own admission when first taking the job, the 52-year-old is a “Marmite” manager in the sense that his abrupt manner often strongly divides opinion but like the arbitrary handling of Everton’s cases though, such extremes have now manifested themselves in the team’s results. There’s no getting around the reality that 12 Premier League games without a win equals the club’s record from October 1994.
As always, mitigating factors can be highlighted to explain such a lengthy barren patch whether it’s not getting the rub of the green from match officials, key moments going against you or in this case particularly, not putting the ball in the back of the net when you really should do but in the end, none of these excuses can be included as an asterisk after the league table. It’s a testament to the points accrued by Dyche earlier this season that Everton still have their heads above water now – just about.
However, while this correspondent would challenge suggestions that anyone else could have seriously done better in such trying conditions, whatever the reasons behind it are, the worst run in almost 30 years has to be a major concern for everyone at the club. The manager is now feeling the heat from significant sections of the fanbase given the length of time since the team last picked up three points and while those who deplore the churn that has seen eight incumbents in the home dugout at Goodison Park in as many years under Farhad Moshiri will be sickened by the prospect of extending such a toxic cycle, results since Dyche triumphed 2-0 against Burnley on his Turf Moor return back on December 16 have not been good enough.
The mood music to the current run is rather different than the ‘end of days’ feel that saw Dyche’s predecessor Frank Lampard and before him, Rafael Benitez, after what Everton’s late chairman Bill Kenwright described as “unacceptably disappointing.” Under Dyche the team are regularly competitive in games and don’t often get turned over in comprehensive fashion but whatever the circumstances, this winless run is longer than anything under that short-lived pair of bosses who both failed to make it to their first anniversary in charge or any of his other predecessors for almost three decades.
The players themselves have to shoulder their share of culpability here too. The personnel might change from season to season but recent incarnations of the Everton squad have shown no deference when it comes to the prospect of damaging reputations.
Even the great Carlo Ancelotti saw his Blues team plummet from being second on Boxing Day to 10th and missing out on Europe entirely (although that now seems like a dizzying height) in the 2020/21 campaign. The irony would have been that the most-successful manager in Champions League history would have been under the cosh for such a slump were it not for his stellar CV and the fact that he immediately jumped ship back to Real Madrid.Dyche himself has bemoaned the team’s failure to get the details right in both boxes. He can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink and he’s not the one who has spurned numerous golden opportunities to put the ball in the net or caused a breakdown in communications that has resulted in the captain chesting a Bournemouth cross into his own goal at the Vitality Stadium.
The manager has always insisted that the only league table that matters is the final one and sees it as his job to keep things on the level while those around him, whether internally and externally, react with more emotion to fluctuating fortunes over the course of a season but like with Everton’s finances, the context of trends can be crucial and in terms of tangible rewards in matches, his team have now been on a lengthy downwards spiral after their four consecutive wins in December. You can only get so far with living off past glories in football, especially those in Dyche’s well-paid but precarious profession and you’re only seen as being as good as your last match so the longer the run continues, the higher the stakes become in what is another genuine relegation battle.
Easter Eggs won’t taste so good for loyal but long-suffering Evertonians when their team hasn’t tasted victory in the Premier League since before they tucked into their Christmas dinners and appetites could be further lost by the prospect of what’s to come in terms of more money-related misery on the horizon. Like a chocolate egg that’s been left out in the sun for too long though, Dyche and his team are now fighting to avoid what looked like a solid structure from melting away.
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