Opinion
The last time Everton won a Premier League match, Lionel Messi and Argentina were two months off achieving ultimate glory.
The last time Everton won a Premier League match, Liz Truss was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Since then, the Merseyside club have collected two points from eight games, a fate only slightly better than the fallen British Prime Minister.
Following this torrid run of form, Frank Lampard was sacked for the second time in his fledgling career. For many, it was rightly so.
A manager unable to inspire his side out of a relegation dog fight should depart. For others, the Premier League’s most prolific midfielder was not the whole problem, just part of it.
A fish, as they say, rots from the head, and the head of Everton Football Club has stunk for nearly a decade.
Frank Lampard. (Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
It is why the club have signed and lost nine permanent or caretaker managers since Ronald Koeman walked through the Finch Farm doors in the summer of 2016.
It is why one of this century’s finest managers, Carlo Ancelotti, only just cracked the table’s top half. It’s why the club haven’t competed in Europe since 2014/15 when Romelu Lukaku led the line and Seamus Coleman and Leighton Baines were the best fullback pair in England.
This is all despite being outspent by just six Premier League clubs.
Farhad Moshiri and the club’s hierarchy’s ideal replacement for Frank Lampard is the antithesis of proper, classic British survival football. The bread and butter of Tony Pulis, Sam Allardyce, and Sean Dyche among other purveyors of the conservative arts.
A 4-4-2 setup, compact defence, get it long, second balls, no messing about. Just proper, English football flown in from the 1970s, designed to restrict opponents and scrape as many points as possible from the bottom of the Premier League barrel.
Marcelo Bielsa has arrived in England to undergo talks with Everton in a move which surprises many, perhaps even the Argentine himself. It wasn’t too long ago he was sacked by Leeds United as his brash, open style of football led the club closer and closer to an unwanted departure from topflight football.
Last season Leeds conceded 7 against Manchester City, 6 against Liverpool, 5 against Manchester United and 4 against United and Spurs on their way to conceding more goals than anyone else by the time the Argentine was booted out the Elland Road door.
On face value, it’s not a safety-seeking appointment. Bielsa is anything but safe. He is one of the game’s great thinkers, heralded as the best in the world by Pep Guardiola and cited as a managerial influence by former players like Mauricio Pochettino.
His heavy-handed, high-octane attacking style is electrifying. When he guided the Yorkshire club to 9th in their first season back on English football’s summit, they outscored fourth place Chelsea. They also conceded more than relegated Fulham.
Demarai Gray of Everton (Photo by Richard Sellers/Getty Images)
That is Bielsa’s duality. The trade-off made for hiring one of the most innovative and attacking coaches in football history is entertaining football is played in caution’s absence. The honeymoon period is fun. Love hangs strongly in the air. But once that is over and the infatuation fog dissipates, arguments begin and cracks appear.
Over the next six months the appointment, should it go ahead, may prove disastrous. Bielsa’s magic may not be enough to whisk Everton from relegation. It is impossible to see such a demanding and unyielding figure shifting to conservatism in the aim of survival, even if the squad he possesses barely resembles one capable of playing the Bielsa way.
Yet, over the long-term, it could prove a masterstroke for exactly that reason. He is uncompromising, he is set in his own ways, and he understands the profile of player he wants to sign.
All these are good for a rebuilding Everton. Possessing a strong managerial personality without a ballooned ego, who has already spent a stint in the Championship and understands the nuances of one of football’s hardest divisions and how to escape it could alter the club’s five-year course.
The Argentine’s previous body of work at Leeds indicates his ability to rebuild a richly historic club from its lowest position and return it to the Premier League with a healthy squad and a healthy outlook. In Yorkshire he developed a side of decent Championship footballers into adept Premier League footballers.
Kalvin Phillips became an England international. Patrick Bamford lit the Premier League up. Jack Harrison’s named was whispered in England camps for a time. Raphinha impressed Barcelona.
From a commercial point of view, a club up for sale is far more desirable with a long-term plan and legendary manager with previous promotional and successful history at the helm. Fans are more likely to buy into the project when they know their manager has, and are more likely to turn up weekly, even in the second division, for thrilling football.
If Everton are serious about digging themselves out of their current hole and laying foundations for long-term success and stability that categorised the club in the mid-to-late 2000’s, hand Bielsa the shovel and back the concrete truck in.
It is likely they will go down this season. That won’t be the Argentine’s fault. He has walked onto the already sinking Titanic and been tasked with mending its split hull.
His arrival should not be viewed from a lens of immediacy. The gaze of both club and fanbase should be firmly planted on the near distant future and the possibilities potentially born of his rebuild.
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