Everton legend Neville Southall believes the club should either hand the reins to Duncan Ferguson or bring in a world-class manager but he admits he’d be “devastated” if they brought back Roberto Martinez.
Widely-considered the best goalkeeper in the world during his time at Goodison Park, Southall made a record 751 appearances for Everton and won more trophies (two League Championships, two FA Cups and the European Cup-Winners’ Cup) with the club than any other player.
Speaking courtesy of freebets.com, he told the ECHO: “Duncan Ferguson is the only one I’d look at for the manager’s job.
“There are two reasons. One, he knows the club inside out and he knows what’s going on in there and he’ll have seen that.
“He worked under a few Champions League winners now so something must have rubbed off on him from them.
“Duncan will be sat in his house thinking ‘I do a good job every time but they never give me a chance’ so if they turn him down this time I think there are questions for Duncan to ask himself in terms of whether he’s actually wanted at the club and whether he’s always going to be the bridesmaid, never the bride.
“I’d give it him until the end of the season and if he does well then keep him there.”
Ferguson has been has been named Everton's caretaker manager as the search for Rafa Benitez's replacement goes on.
Big Dunc will be in charge for Saturday's home game with Aston Villa as the Blues look for a sixth new permanent boss since 2016.
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Southall added: “He could have gone off to another team but he’s shown loyalty to Everton and it’s about time they showed him loyalty by giving him the job.
“Get some good people around him like Leighton Baines and to be fair I think Seamus Coleman could be in that category as well.
“Let’s see how much passion and pride he can get in there because it worked last time and see how things go.
“You either give it to Duncan or go spend £15million on someone who is an unbelievable manager but there aren’t many of those about.
“Are we going to have the same old merry-go-round of nearly-beens or has-beens?”
Southall is also open to the idea of bringing in Wayne Rooney who has been named as one of the front-runners after working well in difficult circumstances at Championship crisis club Derby County but despite the turmoil, he’s unsure whether the former Everton striker would quit Pride Park right now.
He said: “I think there will be a clamour for Wayne Rooney. There’s no reason you couldn’t have him alongside Duncan.
“Would Wayne want to jump now? He might do, especially if Mike Ashley comes in (at Derby County) or would he rather stay and finish the job because he’s done remarkably well there.
“Nobody has ever asked Wayne if he wants the job. He’d like to be back at Everton at some stage wouldn’t he?
“He’s closer to the players than anybody outside of the club but maybe he’s not as daft as he seems and he’ll be staying at Derby!”
One man Southall doesn’t want to see take the job is Belgium national team coach Roberto Martinez who was sacked by Farhad Moshiri shortly after the Iranian-born businessman took control of Everton back in 2016.
He said: “I’d be devastated in Roberto Martinez came back. What did he do for us?
“Did he win us the league? Did he win us the cup? Did he win us anything? No.
“He played good football until the lads had enough of it then they jacked it in.”
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Southall believes that it was the magnitude of the Everton manager’s job, not his previous employment at Anfield that proved too much for Rafa Benitez who was sacked after the 2-1 defeat to bottom-of-the-table Norwich City left him with just one win from his last 13 Premier League matches.
He said: “I played under Mike Walker and we had a horrendous time. None of us ever didn’t try, everyone gave it their best but he just didn’t have a clue what he was doing.
“Rafa knew what he was doing and what he wanted. So there are only two things that could have happened. Either they didn’t want to do it, which doesn’t make sense because they did at the start of the season, or once they started losing, they lost faith in his ability to turn it around. I think it’s the latter and confidence drained away.
“Any manager would be under pressure with those results but the Liverpool connections made it worse for him.
“I think he was an incredibly brave man to walk into that situation but I also think he didn’t realise how big a job it is.
“I don’t think everything at the top is rosy and if that’s the case then it filters down.
“I was thinking, Sharpy has only been there 10 minutes and he’s got rid of a manager already!”
Southall believes that after the nadir of Carrow Road, Everton would have picked up in the second half of the season anyway regardless of whether Benitez was still in charge.
He said: “I’m a bit confused really if I’m honest they’ve let him buy players but then to me it looks to me like they’ve sacked him because people have shouted that they want him out.
“We’ve gone through so many managers, it looks like there’s something at that club that’s not quite right player-wise so when do you actually see the job through?
“Now we’re back to square one, the new fella that comes in might not like those players, he might get rid of them and bring his own in and then we’re back to spending money.
“At some stage we’ve got to say, let’s get someone through that door who is going to stay there and build.
“Even if you take away his Liverpool baggage, it was a bad run that we were on, whoever was in charge but there has to be a rock bottom and I thought we reached that at Norwich on Saturday.
“He was getting players back, they were getting fit, and he’d signed a couple with a bit more pace and we should have picked up anyway.
“People say we’re in a relegation battle. I’m not saying we’re too good to go down but we’ve got enough in there to pull themselves out of it but we’re thin on the ground again in terms of real quality.
“It looks to me like Rafa, after a while, went ‘if we do attack, we might let four in, if we defend, we might only let one or two in.’
“You can see how he changed his mentality but at Norwich City he went like-for-like with them, with two forwards and we still didn’t look dangerous.
“To turn it around, how many times has Jordan Pickford been man of the match this season? Not many, so we’re doing something right. If we cut out the mistakes, we’ll be alright.”
