Perhaps in some parallel universe, Wayne Rooney is preparing his squad for his first pre-season fixture as Everton manager in the USA but in reality while Goodison Park’s Prodigal Son is on the verge of another return as DC United head coach, it’s Frank Lampard who the spotlight turns on to revive the Blues’ fortunes. Everton flew out to the USA on Monday ahead of matches against fellow Premier League side Arsenal and Major League Soccer outfit Minnesota United, who are managed by Blues legend Adrian Heath.
It’s the club’s second straight summer stateside after taking on Colombians Millonarios and UNAM of Mexico in the Florida Cup last year, a tournament that both Arsenal and reigning Serie A champions at the time Internazionale both withdrew from due to Covid-19 concerns. While significant numbers of US-based fans were still able to see Everton in action at Orlando’s Camping World Stadium, with coronavirus restrictions now largely lifted, this should be a very different experience as American supporters will be able to mingle with their travelling counterparts from the UK.
Former Blues home-grown hero Rooney crossed the Atlantic 24 hours before the Everton party though as he boarded a flight to Washington DC to discuss a potential coaching return to DC United, the club where he spent two seasons as a player after leaving Goodison for a second time in 2018. Despite his relative inexperience in the dugout, the 36-year-old was understood to be one of the candidates considered for the Everton managerial vacancy in January following the sacking of Rafael Benitez, but he chose to remain at Derby County who were fighting for their lives in the Championship at the time.
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Ultimately, a 21-point deduction would cost the Rams’ their status in the second tier – they’d have been 18 points clear of the drop without the penalties for entering administration and financial irregularities – and Rooney quit the club on June 24, declaring: “I feel the club now needs to be led by someone with fresh energy and not affected by the events that have happened over the last eighteen months.” Perhaps a managerial stint in the USA will enable him to develop his skillset away in a less pressured environment as he prepares to take his coaching badges and while no spectre of relegation exists to haunt teams in American sport, DC United look in need of a significant overhaul given that they’re currently joint bottom of the table and suffered a 7-0 mauling in Philadelphia on Saturday.
Baltimore, where Everton face Arsenal this weekend, is a similar distance to Washington DC as Goodison Park is to Old Trafford and Rooney’s former England team-mate Lampard is the man charged with turning things around at the Blues which in many ways looks an equally arduous task. Although he’s the first Londoner to ever manage them (the club’s 1933 FA Cup-winning wing-half Cliff Britton from Bristol was the only other southerner to take charge and he oversaw their last relegation in 1951 and subsequent promotion in 1954), Lampard got the Goodison faithful onside from the start.
The 4-1 FA Cup victory over Brentford in his first game at the helm saw Lampard become only the second managerial appointment of Farhad Moshiri’s tenure to have his name sang (positively) by Everton supporters, after his former Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti, and as a unifying force for what had previously been a fracture fanbase, he embraced the stellar efforts that those in the stands were making throughout the run-in as they attempted to drag their team over the line and avoid going down for the first time in 71 years. Whether it was the stirring pre-match welcomes on the streets outside of Goodison, the jubilant scenes in the stands following the first Premier League away win since August at Leicester City or the tumultuous send-offs from Finch Farm for that aforementioned fixture at the King Power Stadium and then their midweek trip to Watford, Lampard fed off the energy of those who are the beating heart of the club. While staying up with the joint-lowest equivalent points total in Everton’s 134-year Football League/Premier League history was nothing to celebrate, the Blues boss shared the relief of supporters after they finally beat the drop with a dramatic 3-2 comeback win over Crystal Palace in their final home game but although Lampard who was such a relentless winner through much of his playing career avoided the stain on his CV that relegation would have brought, in reality the real hard work starts now.
Seldom has any football team spent so much to become so bad as Everton under Mr Moshiri. Despite the ambitious owner pumping in around half a billion pounds into squad investment since becoming majority shareholder in 2016, much of it has been squandered with the club signing a host of expensive flops and the culmination of such a muddled recruitment policy appeared to be last season’s near-miss despite having a squad of players widely reported as having the biggest wage bill in the Premier League outside of the ‘Big Six.’
The task for Lampard and the Blues now though is to ensure that the traumas of 2021/22 really are the nadir and not a foretaste of a descent into a steeper decline going forward. Along with new director of football Kevin Thelwell, the manager has to reshape what has been a chronically under-achieving group but major question marks remain over just how much money they have to play with.
Richarlison has been sold to Tottenham Hotspur in a deal that could be worth up to £60million while high-earners such as club record signing Gylfi Sigurdsson, Cenk Tosun and Fabian Delph, who made just a dozen Premier League appearances between them last season, have all been released after their contracts expired. However, with Everton having now jetted off to the USA to play their first two friendlies of the summer, James Tarkowski, a ‘Bosman’ free transfer signing after his contract at relegated Burnley expired, is the only new addition.
As prudent as the acquisition of the teak tough centre-back who has played at least 35 Premier League matches over the past four seasons – in sharp contrast to Yerry Mina who has featured in a mere 79 out of 152 over the same period – the Blues are going to bring in several more additions before they can be considered as having a stronger squad than last term. In the meantime, Lampard has got to work out a suitable style of play for his team given that he pragmatically strayed from his own football principles during the recent relegation dogfight.
This isn’t just a crucial season for Everton – don’t we say that every year? – but for their manager too. Unlike Lampard’s aforementioned glittering career as the Premier League’s all-time leading scorer among non-strikers, it’s difficult to gauge just how good a manager he is from his previous posts.
During his solitary season in charge of Derby County he finished sixth in the Championship which was the same as their position from the previous year but then lost the play-off final to Aston Villa and was denied a place in the Premier League. At Chelsea he finished fourth in his only full season in charge and again was beaten at Wembley, 2-1 by Arsenal in the only ever behind closed doors FA Cup final.
Such results from pretty short samples seem rather ‘par for the course’ when it comes to respective expectations but Lampard, who was interviewed for the Norwich City vacancy last season before taking the reins at Everton, knows that it’s highly-unlikely that he’ll ever land another job of this ilk again in the near future if he was to fail with the Blues. While it might seem harsh to potentially write off someone’s managerial career at just 44 – although he’s still older than Rishi Sunak, the bookmakers’ favourite to be next Prime Minister who at 42 would be the youngest politician to hold the office since Robert Jenkinson, the Earl of Liverpool replaced the assassinated Spencer Perceval back in 1812 – the coming months would appear to represent a potential crossroads on Lampard’s career path.
Unlike the mythical story of a young George Washington who supposedly told his father “I cannot tell a lie”, Rooney probably doesn’t need to pull up many trees during his stint in the US capital named after the country’s first president in order to be considered for a high-profile position back home when he next fancies one in a couple of years’ time or so. Lampard in contrast, now finds himself in a position in which significant improvements are required and while his rapport with Everton’s supporters will buy him some time and the last thing that a club who has had seven managers in six years needs is yet another change in the dugout next season, the Blues boss – surely one of the few football managers to possess an A grade GCSE in Latin – knows that at the grand old team whose proud motto reads: “Nil Satis Nisi Optimum”, another relegation battle will certainly not be good enough.
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