|
|
Post by rugbytoffee on Jan 17, 2022 14:53:31 GMT
Everton spends like a top club and might think it's a top club, but it doesn't produce like one. The Rafa Benítez experience is just the latest evidence of its incoherence. n retrospect, Rafa Benítez was probably never going to work as manager of Everton. Certainly by the end, as he was sacked on Sunday after 200 days in charge, following a run of just one win in the club’s last 13 Premier League games, there was a feeling of inevitability about his departure. When you have been a successful manager of Liverpool, when you have been so closely identified with that half of the city, when you have made comments about Everton perceived as disparaging, the window for error is extremely small. And there was plenty of error. Everton has not been relegated in 71 years, but it stands just six points above the drop zone. It should not go down this season, but given how poorly Everton has been playing, how bad the defense has been, there were no guarantees. And this is a club with the seventh-highest wage bill in the top flight. It shouldn’t even be in the conversation about the drop. Yet it all started so well. Everton had 14 points from seven games. It had won at Brighton and got a point at Manchester United. But then the injuries began to bite. First Dominic Calvert-Lewin and then Yerry Mina and Abdoulaye Doucouré. Calvert-Lewin and Mina are just returning, while Doucouré hasn’t been the same since his foot injury. Benítez, not entirely unreasonably, can blame the loss of the spine of his team for a general loss of form and confidence. Perhaps under another manager, one for whom fans had more sympathy, one who could have inspired with talk of a bold new project, it might have been different. But Benítez is who he is. And that is a subtler problem of impression than simply the fact he won a Champions League with Liverpool. Benitez is a survivor from the Premier League of 15 years ago, from the era before widespread pressing and the emphasis on the front foot. He is a manager who wants to control games, whose instinct is to defend and strike on the break. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but he is no longer in the tactical vanguard and that means he no longer feels like a very top-level manager. To appoint Benítez is to accept you are a mid-level club—and as David Moyes has demonstrated at West Ham, if things go well, those sides can qualify for the Europa League, and even challenge for Champions League qualification. That, though, cuts against Everton’s self-perception—and that astonishing fact about the rank of its wage bill. In the mid-1980s, Everton was twice champion. It was the power that challenged the might of Liverpool. No side has spent more seasons in the top flight than Everton. It is moving—belatedly—into a fine new stadium. It has won nine league titles, making it the fourth-most successful team in English history. Make any criticism of Everton, and those facts will be hammered back at you. But Everton has nothing like the wealth of Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United or even Liverpool. It is not a super club. And yet it continues to try to act like one. A mid-table Premier League side has only one way to thrive, which is to recruit young and cheap and sell at a profit when a player reaches his late 20s. That’s not to say there aren’t older bargains to be had, but too many Everton signings have been of players already on the way down. That is an issue of philosophy and structure, and neither Steve Walsh nor Marcel Brands has seemed comfortable in the role of sporting director. But then no manager has ever seemed entirely comfortable either. Fans never took to Ronald Koeman, Sam Allardyce, Marco Silva or Benítez. Carlo Ancelotti, with his three Champions Leagues, was afforded more patience, but after only six home wins last season, there was some grumbling against him—even if it was less obvious because of the absence of fans. And he, anyway, left as soon as Real Madrid came calling. There is talk of Roberto Martinez returning, but it was only six years ago that fans staged a sit-down protest to call for his dismissal. One former manager has acknowledged privately that the owner who has now gone through six managers in six years, Farhad Moshiri, is too responsive to public opinion and has no vision of his own. He has spent money—a net $270 million on transfers—but he has spent it badly. Why have so many club figures left this season, from Brands to the director of medical services Danny Donachie to Lucas Digne, apparently because of differences with Benítez, only for Benítez then to be dismissed? It all speaks of chaos and a lack of coherent thinking. And the result is a club that now has no clear sense of its place in the world, that looks essentially unmanageable. www.si.com/soccer |
|
|
|
Post by empresstouch on Jan 17, 2022 21:30:14 GMT
Not so much this article's author or web editor-in-chief,
but there are all-too-many 'pundits' out there who use the word "identity".
An identity, like many things in life, is something that defines who you are - not what is perceived of you.
This said, so long as we're all honest with reality at all stages of past, present and future, then evolution - NOT revolution - can yet be achieved, despite this horrible mess that's having to be explained to outsiders who don't value the value of history.
For example, there's nothing wrong with a clearance of distance
that is targeted towards a team-mate with both sufficient strength to hold his/her position -
AND the speed, fitness & balance to ensure that with one touch, the ball stays in our team's possession - together with sufficient options for the recipient to force the opposition to stay 'on the back foot'.
Pep may be an innovator in how the 'education of science' we pioneered in England for so long can be applied as a silently-ruthless method of game control - to the intensity of 21st century athleticism.
But much of the groundwork for this innovation to succeed in England had been laid decades before Guardiola's arrival in the Premier League, by one Arsene Wenger.
If I were to then mention the name of Aaron Ramsey and that injury, among many in a list of horrors, you'd probably guess the context of the first part of this post. But the point made is that Pep's private consultations with The F.A. over ridiculously soft refereeing after Oil City's 4-0 Goodison hiding in early 2017 did not only meet with approval of several Premier League managers; the breed of savvy, yet absence of class
journalists (no names) have wanted to wield their sharp blades on our club's right to exist in footballing credibility.
All this context stated,
I am a man of vision and solutions and the value of evolution in long-term, even when the going gets tough.
To how great an extent was Rafael Benitez the only credible option considered,
how much the idea of Champions' League winner like-for-like swap an 'on paper' decision
and how much dicing with danger? Many have their explanations and those in the sporting media who rarely as much mention our club in a positive light suddenly have a target to lash at - in the light of day, with ferocious conviction. And it's not just our biggest rival who's loving every minute of it.
My view is of evolution - not revolution - is that IF Moshiri knew what he was doing in hiring Ancelotti, it was because he knew that UEFA's 2011 curtain call on unrestricted transfer spending to the hilt, FFP, would handcuff us for as long as it existed in its' current legal text.
This may change sooner, than later, and as far as I'm concerned, not a moment too soon.
But hanging on to our own key players 'til 2024-25's unveiling of the 52k new stadium is now the goal.
'Big club'.
"Top club".
Read: club of progressive thinkers.
Not spending beyond our means, because we don't have the commercial European standing to fend off the allegations Oil City & Chelski have been dealt, then mostly removed, is partly our fault, yes.
But when the looking at League positions in contentless b&w text less
and evaluate just how well everyone involved at the club has managed to hire managers, players, footballing directors and medical pros with such little room for manoeuvre or error, in comparison to the global competition we've never previously faced in such tough times before throughout our 144 years of existence...
...there's no need to be seeking anyone to blame - ourselves or anyone else.
Instead, beyond the headline writers, we have many talented and willing players - if some that do need to be relieved of their duties if they don't accept that pastures new is in everyone's best interests.
FFP making our transfer spending budget the stingiest in the Prem;
it doesn't just narrow down the players in the market for our own consideration,
if managers don't believe the money's there to splash, they're only going to have negative thoughts too.
So hiring a manager who's now lifting Real Madrid back from the canvas themselves should be something we can be proud of - regardless of paper and ink suggesting he's far from truly what I proclaimed last February, in the eyes of Liverpool, Chelski, Spurs and Manchester United fans we had outstanding results against - against the odds.
And indeed, some of these results were replicated early on with Rafa.
Things haven't progressed since then, the way we wanted it to. That's life.
But whether or not we're the butt of everyone else's jokes,
Duncan Ferguson knows how to motivate players and will get us to 10th,
before standing aside when the next right man has been found.
We'll be back.
And "relegation"?
Since when has Everton been relegated..?
They do teach history. They simply don't pay attention to the detail...
|
|
|
|
Post by Avinalaff on Jan 18, 2022 15:21:33 GMT
If we're realistic and honest, our identity is that of a mid table club, and has been since the end of the 80's, and many times before that. The reason there's so much expectancy from fans is that the club have constantly used our history as PR, but the cold hard facts are that despite our honours, we've been hit and miss throughout. Even before the surge of the 80's, there was a low spell. The 60's was a good period, as we were the rich club, but the title win in 1970 was followed by 14th, 15th, and 16th and the 70's were pretty grim. The 50's despite a title win was horrid, and we even suffered relegation. If we are brutally honest, we're an average club that have fallen so far behind that it's only able to compete for European scraps at best, yet our fans think we are somehow elite historically, but we're far from it. 9 titles in 144 years speaks for itself. The 2 world wars came at a bad time, but we're really clutching at straws if we're going back that far. If we set our sights on emulating the Moyes period, where we started to be half decent, it would be a good start, but even then fans were frustrated - why? Because they have been brainwashed by PR in to thinking the club is bigger than it is. Look here to see I'm telling the story as it is, not how we all want it to be. |
|
