After hiring and firing an ex-Liverpool manager, you’d have thought that Farhad Moshiri’s task was clear in identifying a replacement for Everton – find someone who the supporters can get behind.
A browbeaten fanbase had to swallow a big dollop of bad-tasting ‘medicine’ (and their pride) with the most-controversial appointment in the history of England’s most-passionate football city in the shape of former Kop Idol, Rafael Benitez.
They were told that this was necessary to cure their under-achieving team of their numerous ills, that – despite his glory days now being long in the past – the 61-year-old was still the best man for the job and with lectures from their neighbours across Stanley Park, they were somehow fortunate that a great manager like ‘Rafa the gaffer’ had lowered himself to take charge of an outfit he’d once petulantly dubbed a “small club.”
Just half a season into Benitez’s ill-fated reign, his previous Anfield connections had become a mere trifle when it came to concerns over his suitability for the job and the man who three months before had confidently declared that finishing in eighth place “means nothing to me” was sacked after winning just one of his last 13 Premier League matches, a wretched run that concluded with a 2-1 reversal to bottom club Norwich City who had lost their previous six games and hadn’t scored in the competition since November.
When it came to finding the next Blues boss, identifying and acquiring a suitable candidate might have been a tricky process but you’d have thought that after Benitez, the club’s hierarchy would have been hard pressed to find someone anywhere near as divisive.
However, if reports are to be believed then they’ve had a damn good go at attempting to pull off this seemingly impossible trick.
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Long-suffering Evertonians had a brief window of about two hours after the dismissal of Benitez had been confirmed to breathe out and take stock before being hit by the bombshell that the club were supposedly exploring the possibility of bringing back Roberto Martinez.
That’s the same man of course who Farhad Moshiri sacked just weeks after taking control of the club after fan protests over the Catalan’s position at the helm, a decision that would cost Everton around £10million in compensation.
So it beggars belief that as Mr Moshiri now searches for his seventh manager in less than six years, he could somehow come full circle and consider a failed Blues boss appointed by Bill Kenwright back in 2013.
After Duncan Ferguson’s second coming as caretaker manager got off to a flat start with the Scot admitting he was emotionally “on the floor” after another laboured display in the 1-0 home defeat to Aston Villa, it was understood that Everton’s owner was eager to make a swift appointment.
Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard and Vitor Pereira had all been discussed but club chiefs were yet to be fully convinced by any man’s individual merits.
This correspondent had said on the Royal Blue podcast after Benitez’s sacking that Mr Moshiri needed to “listen to the fans.”
From what supporters, the heart and soul of the club who were here before Mr Moshiri and the current squad of players and will remain long after they’re gone, are saying, it’s difficult to claim which of those names would carry their popular support.
Some feel that after the Benitez debacle, lifelong Evertonian Rooney who has earned his managerial spurs the hard way by getting his hands dirty in the hugely-testing environment of working at crisis club Derby County who are in administration, is the kind of fighter the Blues need for what’s now, let’s not kid ourselves, a potential relegation scrap.
There is also a, perhaps surprisingly, considerable groundswell of support for Lampard, a candidate who was also out of work in the summer when Carlo Ancelotti walked out on the club, but seemed to have been overlooked back then.
If there’s one thing that unites the fanbase though, it’s that nobody appears to want Pereira, except perhaps Mr Moshiri himself.
Is it not curious and indeed concerning enough that the 53-year-old Portuguese coach with no experience in English football is not appearing on any other Premier League clubs’ managerial shortlists but somehow emerges every time Everton have – lamentably frequently – a vacancy in the dugout?
The Blues desperately need someone who can build for the long-haul and lead them into their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock in 2024.
Yet here is a journeyman coach who has never lasted more than two years at any European club and like Benitez, he was fired just halfway through the current campaign in what was his second spell at Fenerbahce.
Indeed, Pereira’s most-lengthy tenure (and only post he’s lasted more than 100 games) was when he was one of Benitez’s rivals on the Chinese gravy train at Shanghai SIPG.
There was also another lucrative pit stop at Saudi outfit Al-Ahli in 2013/14 but rather than just picking jobs that will severely boost his bank balance, Evertonians will fear the eerily-similar circumstances to his short but disastrous tenure at 1860 Munich in 2017.
As already pointed out earlier this week, this was Pereira’s only stint to date in one of Europe’s big five football nations and it wasn’t even in the top flight but the second division of the Bundesliga.
1860 were the senior club in one of their country’s biggest provincial cities, founder members of the league and an early champion but were eventually eclipsed by their neighbours, Bayern, who went on to dominate on both the domestic and European stage.
Pereira, a mid-season appointment in January, was only in charge of them for 20 games but managed to get them relegated.
And this is the man we’re now being told Mr Moshiri could be placing his faith in to ensure an Everton side that look like they can’t buy a win right now, avoid the drop for the first time since 1951?
Caretaker boss Ferguson, who suggested he was too inexperienced himself to be considered for the role on a permanent basis in his pre-match press conference last Friday, offered his thoughts on the Everton supporters who staged a stay-behind demonstration after the Aston Villa defeat.
He said: “The fans can protest and say what they want, because it’s their club.”
He’s right, it is THEIR club and despite all the money that Mr Moshiri has put in, much of which has unfortunately been squandered, he is only the custodian.
The problem is, Evertonian voices appear to be falling on deaf ears when it comes to the Monaco-based businessman who is making the big decisions that shape their destiny.
Perhaps if he turned up to matches on Merseyside more often or still held the AGMs with shareholders, he might be more inclined to listen?
This isn’t an expensive train set, or as ECHO columnist and former Everton player Michael Ball pointed out, a computer game of Football manager.
This is Everton Football Club, founder members of the Football League in 1888 before any of the so-called ‘big six’ were in the top flight.
Given that Everton enjoyed the largest average attendances for the first decade of the Football League they could claim to be the longest-established major fanbase around.
For many years, their honours list compared to the best in the land but while those days are now sadly sliding well into the past, despite Mr Kenwright’s “good times” claim, the one proud boast they can still retain is having spent more seasons in the top flight than any other club and an unbroken tenure going back to 1954.
They deserve better. So much better.
