“Good times!” Like the proclamation in Chic’s disco classic, these two words came to define Everton chairman Bill Kenwright’s response to frustrated fans when they confronted him in the street in the shadow of Goodison Park’s Main Stand back in January. Unlike in a pre-pandemic world, Duncan Ferguson’s second coming as caretaker manager had failed to produce the shot in the arm needed to revive a flagging season for the Blues.
There was no tub-thumping victory on this occasion like the 3-1 success over Frank Lampard’s Chelsea in December 2019 but rather an uninspiring 1-0 reversal to Steven Gerrard’s Aston Villa, deploying the sort of direct approach that wouldn’t have been considered sophisticated in the Scot’s early days on Merseyside as a centre-forward back in the 1990s, let alone 2022.
Everton were in desperate need of inspiration and some kind of reclamation of their identity after enduring the real life football hell of a nightmare run under former Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez, a figure still revered by many at Anfield after delivering a Champions League and FA Cup for the Reds. In the end though, it was what Kenwright would later describe as “an unacceptably disappointing run of results” under the Spaniard that ensured his reign would be the shortest of any permanent manager in the club’s history rather than the sideshow of his past employment across Stanley Park.
