Despite starting his Premier League reign at Tottenham Hotspur in last season’s corresponding fixture at Goodison Park, Antonio Conte was never going to make it back was he?
If a week is a long time in politics, the 16-day gap following his rant at St Mary’s seemed like a relative epoch in football terms for the 53-year-old to still be in charge of Spurs when they faced an away fixture against Everton on Monday April 3 and so it proved. However, his seemingly inevitable departure would appear to reinforce the belief that the most-important employee at any football club is still the manager.
Conte’s remarkable verbal volley after his side surrendered a 3-1 lead to draw 3-3 with Southampton after James Ward-Prowse’s stoppage time penalty for the Premier League’s bottom club saw him hit out at both his players, who he called “selfish”, and the club’s owners. While the passionate Italian has always had plenty of fire in his belly, there appeared to be a degree of calculation in the tone and language he took as if he was deliberately taking himself to the precipice in his position from which there was no turning back and only the slightest of pushes from his employers was now required to finish things off.
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After winning both the Premier League and FA Cup with Chelsea during his previous spell in England, Conte’s second coming in the Premier League was often tempestuous from early on. Rejecting Tottenham’s advances in the summer of 2021 when the post was briefly given to Nuno Espirito Santo, the former Juventus midfielder finally said yes later in the year and was ushered into the role on November 2, following the sacking of the ex-Wolverhampton Wanderers gaffer the previous day.
There were plenty of occasions where it clicked for Spurs under Conte including of course the master class they carried out at home to Everton last term when they raced into a 5-0 lead within 55 minutes before being able to ‘declare’ and, mercifully for Frank Lampard’s hapless side at the time, take their foot off the pedal for the majority of the second half. Champions League qualification was secured too at the expense of bitter north London rivals Arsenal but still the marriage somehow felt like an unhappy one with many of the Tottenham faithful now relieved that a quick divorce has now taken place rather than prolonging the dysfunctional rows.
In days gone by, if you’d have asked this correspondent who was the bigger club out of Everton and Tottenham Hotspur, the answer would have been delivered swiftly and unequivocally in the Blues’ favour. They’d won nine League Championships to Spurs’ two – a figure that places the boys from White Hart Lane behind the likes of Huddersfield Town among others – and there was a prevailing feeling that, similar to West Ham United, what seemed to be a grossly-inflated sense of self-importance from them emanated from merely being in the capital while a similar outfit from the provinces would not be talked up in such a manner (unless they were Newcastle United perhaps!)
Saying one club is ‘bigger’ than another remains that most-divisive of football subjects. In many ways it is also one of the most intangible too other than sheer trophy counts.
It seems the further back you go, the less those honours seem to matter too, especially in the eyes of the young (which importantly includes the current players) with the last of Sunderland’s five titles coming in 1936 and six of Aston Villa’s seven bagged by 1910. For all Everton’s glorious past, given that it’s now 36 years since Kevin Ratcliffe held the trophy aloft at Goodison Park to celebrate their last League Championship, nobody the Blues could be targeting to sign could remember that so it’s unlikely to hold much, if any, sway.
Tottenham Hotspur now boast arguably the best stadium in Europe and they’re currently fourth, a position that would put them back in the Champions League again. In many ways they appear to be in a place that Everton would like to be as a club but for all their advantages, including taking Gwladys Street idol Richarlison last summer and being able to hijack the Blues’ proposed January move for Arnaut Danjuma, all is not well.
Chairman Daniel Levy is well-known for being one of football’s shrewdest negotiators but regardless for the acumen – or potential lack of it – from those at the top, a question that continues to dog Everton with pre-match fan protests against Farhad Moshiri and the board of directors in the streets outside Goodison Park before the last four home games, the manager is the individual by which a club succeeds or fails. Look how the legendary Brian Clough brought previously unprecedented success to Derby County and then Nottingham Forest; how Joe Royle was able to turn around an under-achieving Everton side that only stayed up on the last day of the previous season to win the FA Cup in 1995, which remains the club’s last major honour or even how current Blues boss Sean Dyche was able to secure as many wins in his first seven Premier League matches as Lampard picked up in the previous 20.
Moshiri spoke up the importance of directors of football in the modern game but it remains a model that has so far proven unsuccessful at Everton and while Kevin Thelwell might be working diligently behind the scenes with his 120-point plan to overhaul the club, merely reaching 40 points this season remains the immediate challenge. If the Blues are to avoid what would be their first relegation in 72 years, it will be Dyche who saves them, not him.
Yes managers are ephemeral, most even more so than the players, and it is the fans of course who make a club but the man in the dugout remains by far the most-crucial hiring of any football institution. Even before Moshiri arrived, chairman Bill Kenwright – who significant sections of the disgruntled factions within Everton’s fanbase continue to link to the club’s decline in status – was often able to escape the kind of criticism he has faced lately because of the backing he provided to the long-serving David Moyes who got more things right than wrong in over 11 years in charge.
Loyal but long-suffering Evertonians might understandably scoff at the ‘problems’ that their Spurs counterparts have been facing but it seemed obvious for a long time that Conte was far from being a perfect fit. Dyche, in contrast, is exactly what the beleaguered Blues need right now to try and dig themselves out of a hole and the miracles he performed at Burnley also suggest he has the potential to develop the team far beyond their current status if given time.
Having already faced Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea away though, the ex-Clarets manager has asked if there’s anyone Everton actually have a good record against. Maybe we should keep quiet again about just one win in the last 20 against Tottenham in the Premier League but the best way to deal with that would be to pick up three points against Spurs next week, whoever is in charge of the visitors.
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