Duncan Ferguson once remarked of Everton: “There is only one way after leaving this club, and that is down” – but such wisdom doesn’t seem to apply to former managers at least.
At the relatively advanced age of 51 – the same age as Howard Kendall in charge at Goodison Park third time around or older than Walter Smith when he came from Ibrox – Ferguson has had to drop to the basement of English football’s third tier to cut his managerial teeth with Forest Green Rovers. The Gloucestershire outfit remain rooted to the same bottom place in League One they occupied when the Gwladys Street idol took charge with eight defeats from 10 matches so far. But while Ferguson coveted the top job at his beloved Blues yet admitted he was too inexperienced despite two caretaker stints in charge, several of the bosses he served under have subsequently fallen on their feet since exiting Everton.
The latest in this not inconsiderable line of gleeful gaffers could be Frank Lampard with those in the know around the club claiming that he is being considered for a sensational managerial return to Stamford Bridge as a caretaker boss until the end of the season. It’s difficult to work out whether such a scheme says more about the tumultuous situation behind the scenes at Todd Boehly’s circus or Everton.
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Make no bones about it, regardless of the circumstances he was operating in, Everton were plunging headfirst towards the Championship and a first relegation in 72 years on Lampard’s watch with not one but two separate home defeats to bottom of the table sides after the World Cup break, interspersed by a shambolic 4-1 thrashing against Brighton & Hove Albion at Goodison Park in which the visitors netted three times in the space of just six chaotic second half minutes.
By the time owner Farhad Moshiri rocked up at the London Stadium for a sorry 2-0 defeat to West Ham United – the first game Everton’s owner had attended in 15 months – before putting Lampard out of his misery, many beleaguered Blues felt it was a long overdue decision.
Indeed, the progress subsequently made by Sean Dyche who got to three wins in seven matches – the same number of Premier League victories Lampard had recorded in 20 games this term – only reinforces how bad things had got under his predecessor. Yet, after failing in a job with a club battling to stay in the division, Lampard may – albeit on a temporary basis, although every managerial post is in essence just that – now be handed the reins of the Premier League’s biggest-spenders who has splashed out over half a billion pounds in the transfer market this season alone.
Despite their eye-watering outlay, Chelsea remain in the bottom half of the Premier League – they haven’t finished in so low a position since 1995/96 – and some 11 points off the pace for a Champions League place with nine games to go. After dismissing Graham Potter on Saturday – their second managerial sacking of the season after turfing out Champions League-winning boss Thomas Tuchel back on September 7 – they are sounding out a clutch of suitably high-profile candidates including Luis Enrique, Julian Nagelsmann and Mauricio Pochettino. But hiring a caretaker such as Lampard for the remainder of the campaign has not been ruled out with the 44-year-old described as being “a serious option.”
Such was the hiring and firing at the club under Roman Abramovich that Guus Hiddink (twice, including for the 2009 FA Cup final when they beat Everton); Rafael Benitez and Roberto Di Matteo all had stints as interim managers. Given that Lampard has already been sacked by Chelsea once, it might seem strange for him to go back but if bemused Evertonians might scratch their heads at the prospect, the Blues’ trip to Stamford Bridge last month provided them with a major clue to the psyche of Shed End patrons who belted out the “Super Frank” chants during the 2-2 draw with such homages to someone widely-considered to be their best-ever player still a regular occurrence.
Perhaps none of us should be surprised if Lampard did get to ‘mind the shop’ back at Chelsea though given the other recent former Everton managers who have gone on to land plum roles. Roberto Martinez was the first boss who Moshiri wielded the axe upon just three months after he became majority shareholder but despite the decision being made ahead of the club’s final game of the season at home to Norwich City so as not to risk a toxic atmosphere, the affable Catalan’s silver tongue enabled him to land the coaching job with Belgium who were top of FIFA’s world rankings.
Although he inherited a golden generation of footballing talent for a nation previously most-renowned for its fictional characters such as Hercule Poirot and Tintin, Martinez ultimately failed to deliver success in a major tournament… only to come out smelling of roses in being hired by Portugal despite the Belgians’ group stage exit from the World Cup finals in Qatar.
Loyal but long-suffering Evertonians might also be afforded a wry smile when they saw Ronald Koeman’s Barcelona go head-to-head with Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid in ‘El Clasico’, the biggest club game in world football. Like Lampard at Chelsea, Koeman’s stellar reputation at the Camp Nou was largely achieved through his feats on the pitch but after a stint with the Netherlands national team – a post he has since returned to – after being sacked as Blues boss when a 5-2 home defeat to Arsenal left them in the relegation zone, he was hired by the Catalan giants.
Whereas fans complained that Koeman, with his cool business-like approach and infamous red deccies on Christmas Tree, merely considered Everton as just another lucrative stopping off point, Barca represented a dream job for him. But if the Dutchman was only a brief footballing marriage of convenience before a quickie divorce, Ancelotti broke Blues hearts. Who wouldn’t be excited by the appointment of European football’s most-decorated coach and from his first match in charge, Goodison was rocking to the strains of “Carlo Fantastico, Carlo Magnifico.”
Regrettably, most of Ancelotti’s Everton tenure became a strange coronavirus-induced dream of matches behind closed doors – including every game star signing James Rodriguez played – but after hitting the dizzying heights of second place on Boxing Day 2020, the Blues slumped to 10th and missed out on Europe with the Italian defecting back to the Bernabeu little more than a week after his side finished the campaign with a 5-0 thrashing at champions Manchester City. Although the 63-year-old has since proven he’s no busted flush by steering Real Madrid to a La Liga/Champions League double last term having returned to his natural habitat of the more rarefied air of European football’s elite, it seems incredible to recall just how plodding many of Everton’s matches were in empty stadiums under Carlo’s Catenaccio and in truth it’s likely he’d have been under pressure after such a collapse if he’d been a man of lesser pedigree.
But then even the man he replaced, Marco Silva, who like Koeman, was given his P45 after a 5-2 defeat that left the Blues in the drop zone – in his case at Anfield of all places – has gone on to rebuild his reputation after struggling at Everton. Like Lampard after his recent exit, many feared the Portuguese manager wouldn’t land another high-profile post in English football after things turned sour at Goodison but his rehabilitation with Fulham saw him steer the Cottagers to top spot in the Championship last term – scoring 106 goals in the process – while they’ve been in the top half of the Premier League all season and have 39 points, a dozen more than Everton.
As hinted earlier, perhaps the subsequent upturn in fortunes of former Everton managers merely highlights what a poisoned chalice the post has become under the current regime with Moshiri himself admitting in his apology to fans last summer: “we have not always spent significant amounts of money wisely.” However, the choices of such individuals in the dugout with wildly differing backgrounds and philosophies on how the game should be played could also be a major factor in answering that big question and while a certain degree of football ‘snobbery’ has arguably prevented Dyche from getting the job until the Blues were at their lowest ebb, the current incumbent of Goodison’s home dugout already looks like being a much better fit for the club’s needs.
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