New Everton manager Sean Dyche isn’t another Sam Allardyce and will see his move to Goodison Park as an opportunity to show he can produce a more expansive brand of football. That’s the verdict of Simon Evans of the AFP news agency ahead of Dyche taking the Blues across Stanley Park for his first Merseyside Derby on the back of a first win since October 22 over Premier League leaders Arsenal.
As their US sports correspondent, Evans is now based in Miami and he was in Phoenix for the Super Bowl when conducting this interview but even though he has worked across Europe – including eight seasons covering Serie A football from Milan – as a lifelong Burnley fan, his heart remains at Turf Moor and he believes Dyche deserves his big chance at Everton. He told the ECHO: “If you look at the kind of players he worked with at Burnley, a lot of them were coming out of the Championship and weren’t being chased after by Premier League clubs, his record is a pretty unbelievable achievement. I thought that he would have got an opportunity elsewhere, especially after the season (2017/18) in which he qualified for the Europa League.
“Maybe he was never going to be taken on by a ‘big six’ team but somebody else might have taken a look at him and I’m sure he’d have been interested as, especially towards the end, it was clear that there were some limits as to how far he could go at Burnley. He probably did stay there a bit too long but I’m glad he’s got this chance because during that long time he had in charge at Turf Moor he was absolutely committed to the job, was very serious about it and all of his staff had reputations for being people who worked really hard and were dedicated.”
