Following a seventh-place finish in the Premier League last season, Europa League qualification and the promise of significant investment in the playing squad during the summer, Everton looked set for a successful 2017/18 campaign where they could potentially start to challenge the very best clubs in the English top flight.
Majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri’s self-proclaimed mission is to get the Merseyside outfit challenging at the top end of the league table, and the fans would have believed that Ronald Koeman was the man to get them there after an impressive debut campaign in charge.
The excitement continued to build in the off-seaon and, on paper, the Toffees looked to have arguably enjoyed the best summer transfer window of any Premier League team in terms of incomings, with the likes of Wayne Rooney, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Jordan Pickford, Davy Klaassen, Michael Keane and Sandro Ramirez all arriving at Goodison Park.
However, Moshiri and director of football Steve Walsh did make their mistakes, too.
Rooney, Sigurdsson and Klaassen would all prefer to play in the No. 10 role, yet of course in Koeman’s preferred 4-2-3-1 formation only one of those could play and the trio were often all shoe-horned into the side in unfamiliar wide positions early on in the campaign.
Considering the latter duo cost around £70m between them and the former was expecting to be playing regularly at his boyhood club, the Dutch manager was instantly under pressure to include the big-money buys in his starting XI.
Everton also sold Romelu Lukaku to Manchester United on July 10th, and the Merseyside outfit and Koeman should surely have known then that they simply had to replace the Belgium international, who scored 25 of their 62 Premier League goals last season.
It left the Toffees with more than seven weeks to find a suitable replacement for the striker, but August 31st came and went without them getting a new centre-forward in despite being linked with names such as Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud and Chelsea’s Diego Costa, with no Plan B on the table.
Koeman evidently wasn’t happy with the failure to bring a top class Lukaku successor in, but it can’t be used as the sole excuse for the failings that have followed since the closure of the transfer window.
They lost five of their opening nine Premier League matches this season, and that record combined with losing all three of their opening Europa League group games saw Koeman finally get the boot following a 5-2 defeat at home to Arsenal on October 23.
At that point and with David Unsworth placed in caretaker charge having only managed at U23 level before, Everton supporters would have been hoping that the club at least had a few desirable options lined up to replace the Dutchman, and relatively quickly.
However, that didn’t happen and like the poor decision to bring three No. 10s to the club during the summer and failing to find a replacement for Lukaku, Moshiri’s lack of forward planning and realistic expectations cost Everton once again with the uncertainty clearly affecting the players on the pitch.
Links with the likes of out-of-work duo Carlo Ancelotti and Thomas Tuchel quickly circulated in the media, but considering they were in a relegation battle and already out of Europe, it was certainly naïve to expect managers of that calibre to take over at Goodison midway through the season, no matter what financial package they may have been offered.
When Moshiri realised he wasn’t able to get a top-class name like the aforementioned duo, he held talks with Sam Allardyce over the possibility of the former England boss taking charge until the end of the season, but no deal was agreed with the 63-year-old wanting a contract that extended beyond the summer of 2018.
Everton then switched their attentions to Watford’s Marco Silva, and even though they were politely informed that the Hornets weren’t willing to let him go or accept any compensation fee – the Portuguese boss has no release clause in his contract – they didn’t appear to give up at that point, seemingly believing they would eventually get their own way.
Moshiri did then understand a move for the 40-year-old wasn’t achievable, and it was revealed soon afterwards that Allardyce, Republic of Ireland manager Martin O’Neill and Shakhtar Donetsk’s Paulo Fonseca were on a final three-man shortlist, more than a month after Koeman was sacked.
With performances and results largely getting worse during this period, successive humiliating 5-1 and 4-1 defeats against Atalanta and Southampton forced Moshiri to act to try and stop a team bereft of confidence slipping into the relegation zone.
Despite both parties seemingly ruling out an agreement in November, Everton and Allardyce both did a u-turn and a deal was signed until 2019 on Wednesday, with The Sun reporting that the former Three Lions manager will earn a mouth-watering £100,000 per week across the 18 months – more than Unai Emery at Paris Saint-Germain and Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid.
The whole appointment smacks of desperation from Moshiri, who looks to have panicked when the going was getting really tough on the pitch with a decision that should have been made weeks ago.
If a 4-0 win against West Ham United at Goodison Park is followed up by another home success against Huddersfield Town this weekend, the Toffees will be in mid-table and Moshiri may already regret his decision to bring in a manager that is already fighting a losing battle with the club’s supporters.
If the Merseyside outfit are going to achieve their majority shareholder’s dream of competing at the top of the Premier League, they are going to need to be less arrogant, more realistic, patient and, most of all, need to start planning better for the future and have solutions for all possible outcomes – that includes Walsh on the recruitment side, too.
Moshiri’s time at the helm so far certainly suggests he isn’t the man to deliver that success for Everton Football Club.
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