Oh for the ‘good old’ days when the biggest problem for Everton managers over the festive season was facing flak from the fans for having some red decorations on their Christmas Tree. Back in 2016, Farhad Moshiri’s first Christmas as Everton owner, then Blues boss Ronald Koeman incurred the wrath of some Evertonians because of the hue of some of his baubles matched the colours of local rivals Liverpool.
Like many football managers when coming under fire, the Dutchman looked for someone else to deflect the blame upon and pointed the finger at his wife Bartina! To outsiders it seemed a trivial matter, but it was a detail that demonstrated that Koeman, for all his football knowledge, didn’t fully understand the Everton psyche and never made it his business to learn it.
Moshiri’s first managerial appointment, Koeman represented the kind of box office big name Everton’s owner craved to try and shine among the galaxy of stars (Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho at the time) that inhabited the touchlines of North West England, a region he subsequently dubbed as “The new Hollywood of football.” Although in an interview with Sky Sports this autumn, Koeman conveniently ‘misremembered’ where he finished in what proved to be his only full season in charge at Goodison Park (bumping himself up a place to sixth rather than the seventh spot they really occupied) and even suggested it was “maybe the best record in the last 15 years” (predecessor Roberto Martinez had come fifth in 2014), the lamentable truth is that nobody in charge of Everton has bettered him since.
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In this respect, the days of excess under Koeman, who would oversee a transfer window of record spending in the summer of 2017 when millions were largely squandered on misguided squad rebuilding represent ‘The Ghost of Christmas Past’ that is haunting Everton. Frank Lampard’s ‘Ghost of Christmas Present’ is the raw realisation that the team have yet another stomach-churning relegation battle ahead of them and it’s to be hoped that ‘The Ghost of Christmas Future’ does not include a grave inscribed with ‘Everton… top flight football 1954-2023.’
Long-suffering Evertonians are facing many more sleepless nights ahead through the spectre of relegation but unlike the fictional Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol , Moshiri has never been reluctant when it’s come to loosening the purse strings – he is after all the man who showed the ambition and foresight to turn the club’s new stadium dream into a reality – but cruelly for the Blues, seldom has a football club ever spent so much to become as bad and while their future home on the banks of the Mersey rises up before our eyes, the “best ground in the Championship” jibes continue. Last season was the joint lowest equivalent points total in Everton’s history and with one Premier League game left in 2022 – away to reigning champions Manchester City – they have taken just 34 points from 37 matches during the calendar year.
Lampard’s side have now lost their last four matches in a row in all competitions with Premier League defeats in this sequence against opponents who went into each game placed 18 th , 17 th and 20 th . Like Koeman, Lampard enjoyed a highly-successful career as an elite player but from the moment of his arrival on Merseyside, he has been free of the frosty aloofness that kept the Barcelona legend detached from Goodison Park’s patrons.
The Everton crowd sang Lampard’s name from his very first game in charge (a 4-1 FA Cup victory over Brentford) and in doing so he became only the second Moshiri appointment to be afforded such an honour after Carlo Ancelotti. In return, the Londoner has embraced the passion of the Blues fanbase, acknowledged their support and celebrated wildly on those all-too-rare moments of triumph.
With his famously high IQ though (150, placing him in the top 0.1% in the country), Lampard is an intelligent man and he knows that merely ‘getting’ Evertonians is not enough to succeed or even just survive in this job though otherwise there would be almost 40,000 genuine candidates for the role. In six years since Moshiri took control, Lampard is the owner's sixth managerial appointment among what has been a varied cast.
Some of the players within this group have ‘seen off’ more than one boss through their under-achievements – even the aforementioned master of coaching Ancelotti struggled to get a tune out of them before proving he wasn’t a busted flush back at Real Madrid by steering them to a La Liga title and the fourth Champions League success of his illustrious career on the touchline. To try and improve matters both in terms of ability and character, strong individuals such as James Tarkowski, Amadou Onana and Conor Coady have been added to the group but all three were unable to prevent the humiliation at Bournemouth that left the latter admitting the display was “shocking” and “nowhere near good enough” and the former two were both on the pitch against Wolves on Boxing Day.
The last thing Everton need is yet another change of manager and for the whole toxic cycle to repeat itself but by the same token, the team and staff all know the stark truth that they should be doing better with the talent that they have. Beleaguered Blues recognise that the current crop are not a vintage Everton team and do not have realistic expectations for them to be pushing for a place in Europe this term but if you look at the ability they do possess on the pitch then they should be doing considerably better than they are – again.
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