If a week is said to be a long time in politics, a year can seem a lifetime in football and 12 months on from Carlo Ancelotti’s unveiling at Real Madrid, Everton now find themselves in a very different position under Frank Lampard. Despite all the trials and tribulations over the intervening period, including the deeply misguided and almost disastrous appointment of Rafael Benitez that plunged the Blues into a relegation battle and brought months of sleepless nights for many, the club and its long-suffering supporters have – just about – come out the other side and while there are still plenty of challenges ahead, can still look towards the potential of a brighter future.
Forward thinking rather than reflecting on the past would seem to be the key for Everton. Too often it seems, owner Farhad Moshiri, for all his ambition and financial generosity, has reflected on days gone by when it came to his appointments.
Before the Monaco-based businessman took control of the Blues in 2016, a 51-year-old Howard Kendall in 1997, when embarking on his third stint in charge, was the oldest man to be appointed Everton manager (he was also the youngest at 35 when starting his first spell). Mr Moshiri broke that record straight away by bringing in Ronald Koeman, 53, but like US Presidents of late, the age of Blues bosses started to go up from that point with Sam Allardyce (63), Ancelotti (60) and Benitez (61) all eligible for their free bus pass at the time of their arrival.
As well as what seemed like something of an obsession with supposed star names – Mr Moshiri cited Koeman as being the kind of box office attraction to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp, Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and Manchester United’s Jose Mourinho as he dubbed England’s North West region “the new Hollywood of football”, many of the choices seemed retrograde in terms of when the candidate chosen might actually be deemed to be at the peak of his powers, as if Everton’s owner had turned to the pages of a European football yearbook from around 2007. While much of Koeman’s stellar reputation in truth comes from a glittering playing career rather than being something of a journeyman coach, Ancelotti, as he has shown again over the past season, remains top drawer.
A year on from his abrupt departure, revisionist history might now reflect in more flattering terms on his all-too-short tenure at Everton but even the man the Gwladys Street proclaimed as “Carlo Fantastico, Carlo Magnifico” could not be considered a success at the Blues. Unfortunately, the bulk of the Italian’s second stint in the Premier League ended up being played behind closed doors in the sterile and unnatural conditions of Project Restart after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Ancelotti had been the first Everton manager in over two decades to actually set up home on Merseyside but he admitted that lockdown restrictions minimised his interactions with fans and we can only speculate how big an influence a robbery at his Crosby house played in his decision to walk out just 18 months into a lucrative four-and-a-half year contract. While he had come into the job in difficult circumstances – predecessor Marco Silva, an exception to the rule when it came to Mr Moshiri’s appointments of older bosses and perhaps an example of once bitten, twice shy at the time, had been sacked the previous December with the team in the relegation zone – a 12 th place finish in the extended 2019/20 season represented the lowest placing of the his long career and was also the Blues worst for 16 years.
Ancelotti has retrospectively proclaimed coming 10 th with Everton in his one full season during 2020/21 as “a miracle” but given he was operating with a squad widely-reported as having the biggest wage bill in the division outside of the ‘Big Six’, in reality it was more like turning wine into water, especially given that they’d been in second spot as late as Boxing Day and they missed out on European qualification, their goal for the campaign, after an alarming end-of-term collapse. Again, playing largely without spectators provided some mitigating circumstances – the Blues of course had a much better away record than at Goodison – but Carlo’s Catenaccio wasn’t exactly easy on the eye either.
Perhaps Everton were just the victims of unfortunate timing when Real Madrid came calling to take Ancelotti after Zinedine Zidane’s exit as it was reported he wasn’t even first choice but compatriot Massimiliano Allegri turned them down to embark on his own second coming at Juventus. However, the long-term commitment, on paper at least, to the Blues – the veteran boss had even talked of penning a new deal to lead the team to their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock scheduled to open in the 2024/25 season – was at odds with his track record given that other than his time in charge of Milan, the club where he spent the bulk of his player career, he has never remained in any post for longer than two years.
While Ancelotti was at Everton, outsiders were constantly telling them how lucky they were to have him but as already explained, he didn’t pull up many trees and ironically had Los Blancos not poached him a year ago, someone without the benefit of his glittering CV would have been coming under serious scrutiny for the way the Blues’ season had unravelled. Any notion that a coach who turns 63 next week is a busted flush though have been emphatically dispelled by what happened during 2021/22 at both the Bernabeu and Goodison Park.
Ancelotti might not be at the cutting edge of tactical innovations within football but back in his natural habitat of massaging Galacticos’ gargantuan egos rather than necessarily having to plenty of coaching like with Everton’s under-achieving squad, he produced a landmark season, steering Real Madrid to the Spanish title, ensuring he has now won championships in Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues while becoming the first man to manage four European Cup/Champions League-winning sides. Given that the latter denied old foes Liverpool the biggest prize in club football, there was a modicum of consolation for Evertonians with Ancelotti still claiming to be one himself.
It was the least Blues fans deserved given that Ancelotti’s defection plunged them into what proved to be the incapable hands of Benitez, whose sorry half-season stint left the fact that he was the most-controversial appointment in the history of the most-passionate city in English football a mere side note to the form that meant he had to go in January which chairman Bill Kenwright would subsequently describe as “unacceptably disappointing.” After Mr Moshiri decided to go it alone and hire the Spaniard who had been in charge across Stanley Park between 2004-10 and once branded Everton as being “a small club,” Blues were again told by outsiders to suck it up and accept they had been given supposedly the best man for the job, particularly through a series of hectoring lectures from many associated with their neighbours but unlike Ancelotti, Benitez’s best days really were well and truly behind him.
A brace of La Liga titles with Valencia in the early noughties showed Benitez once had something about him but a couple of trophies in his first two seasons at Liverpool – both, like this season’s triumphs, achieved through penalty shoot-outs – seemed to rely more on super-human displays from talisman Steven Gerrard than tactical acumen from the manager. More recently, the Spaniard had failed to save Newcastle United from relegation in 2016 despite only being a point from safety with a game in hand on their rivals and having 10 matches left at the time of his appointment.
Although he got the Magpies back in the top flight at the first time of asking – Benitez remains a popular figure on Tyneside – his Premier League points returns were no better than Steve Bruce’s and perhaps more should have been made of the losing record at Dalian Pro, where he had gone to join the Chinese gravy train in his previous post to Everton. While in the Far East, Benitez endured a win rate of just 31.6%, which proved eerily similar to the 31.8% he’d subsequently finish on at the Blues although he taste victory just once in his last 13 Premier League matches in charge.
The thoughts of those who say Lampard did not pull off any great achievement at Everton during the second half of the 2021/22 campaign given that they were 16 th when he arrived and 16 th at the end of the season can be dismissed immediately because they’re obviously totally ignorant to the realities of the situation he faced at Goodison Park. The Blues were plummeting towards a first relegation in 71 years – remember that this Diamond Jubilee weekend – before he came in but through his unifying of a fractured fanbase (whose incredible support during the run-in dragged the team over the line) and intelligence in adopting a more pragmatic approach that deviated from his own football philosophy, he kept them up and readers don’t need this correspondent to remind them just what a close run thing that was.
Seldom has a football club spent so much to become so bad as Everton and the fortune largely squandered on squad-building under Mr Moshiri but with the other half-a-billion pound project backed the owner on the banks of the Mersey at least taking shape and remaining on track, there remains plenty to look forward to. Managing the Blues has traditionally been more a younger man’s game and Lampard falls into what seems to be more the natural age bracket.
Indeed Everton’s first nine bosses were all younger than Lampard when they first took charge and it wasn’t until Kendall’s second stint in 1990 that they selected a manager older than 43-year-old Lampard was at the time of his appointment. The former Chelsea midfielder’s energetic approach can prove a refreshing change though and now he needs to add young, hungry and dynamic players who can respond to his methods.
Blues chiefs know they must tread carefully this summer when it comes to balancing the books to meet Financial Fair Play regulations but they have been in close consultation with the Premier League over all their deals for some time now and a clutch of high earners’ contracts expiring should provide Lampard and new director of football Kevin Thelwell with a degree of wriggle room. Reckless spending in recent years, coupled with a revolving door in the dugout, has failed for Everton so now must be the time for a more longer-term, joined-up strategy from everyone at the club.
