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.”
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Dyche’s previous record has drawn comparisons with Allardyce who was hired by Everton as a relegation ‘firefighter’ back in the same aforementioned campaign he was steering the Clarets to their best top flight finish since 1974. Although the Blues were in the bottom three at the time of predecessor Ronald Koeman’s sacking in October 2017, in reality their position was far less perilous that their current situation but despite finishing his first week in charge in the top half, Allardyce was sacked the following May after an eighth place finish on the back of some attritional football that had them ranked bottom of the Premier League for shots, shots on target and chances created.
Evans believes Dyche’s reputation for a cautious approach comes out of necessity having worked in what was the top flight’s smallest market but this hiring now presents him with the chance to show he has more in his locker. He said: “I’ve thought about this quite a bit. I remember seeing on social media when Everton were first linked to him, some people were like ‘no way, it’s like another Sam Allardyce.’
“I think a lot of it is because in a lot of those games Burnley were forced in those games to often play in a very defensive way because about 80% of the time they were underdogs apart from the odd match against someone like Norwich City when they’d be expected to win. Dyche has explained on many occasions that he set his team up to deal with the situation they were in.
“He’ll probably do something similar to what he did against Arsenal when they go to Liverpool but that doesn’t mean that’s the only way he can set up a team. The problem was never a defensive one, when they had James Tarkowski and Ben Mee as centre-backs with two strong full-backs alongside them, they were a very hard team to break down.
“The issues were at the other end of the field and over the last season or two they just didn’t create enough chances. They had players like Ashley Barnes and Chris Wood who were hard-working centre-forwards who played in the system but they didn’t have that bit of magic to open teams up by themselves when there wasn’t enough creativity in the midfield.
“At Everton, he’s going to have players who can do a bit more now. He didn’t have a Demarai Gray or anyone like that at Burnley. There’s a quality in that Everton midfield that there wasn’t at Burnley but it might be a case of getting more out of the likes of Abdoulaye Doucoure.
“It’s not always a case of playing this so-called ‘Dycheball.’ It’s not like he always played long-ball football anyway, there were times when they played some quite good football, especially when they had Steven Defour in midfield.”
Evans added: “People talk about him and say he’s all defensive, low block and long balls but you could see immediately from that video he did with The Coaches’ Voice, there’s a lot more to it. Players who have worked for him will tell you that there is all the fitness stuff at the start of it but a lot of his methods are based around shape.
“The attractive football side is something that you add on top. Why wouldn’t you add that on, why wouldn’t you try and have Everton playing attractive football in the final third?
“Even the most eye-catching teams in the world want to have a solid foundation at the back. I think he has been typecast a little bit but this is his chance because if Everton do end up playing the same way as Burnley with similar results then he’ll never escape that stereotype.”
One more positive observation that has already been made about the 51-year-old is that he is perhaps better-suited for what the Blues need right now compared to some of his recent predecessors but after originally dreaming big under Farhad Moshiri, hoping that the billionaire’s financial muscle could help them reach the next level, Evans reckons just getting back to where the club were before the Monaco-based businessman’s arrival would represent significant progress.
He said: “It’s been such a mess at Everton for the past couple of seasons. I remember when Ronald Koeman came in, they were seriously talking about trying to get into the Champions League but that’s so far away now and the problems at the club are well-documented.
“They need a manager to get them back into a position of where they were under David Moyes. Maybe that’s not going to excite fans but if Dyche could get Everton regularly finishing in the top half, that’s a massive step forward from flirting with relegation but it’s not easy to do that.
“I think Dyche is a good fit for Everton but there’s the striker problem at the club. Unless Dominic Calvert-Lewin can keep fit, there’s not a lot there.
“He gets annoyed when he hears claims that other coaches are taking revolutionary approaches with stuff like diet and sports science because his teams did that and let’s be honest, most teams do that now. He’s not a dinosaur by any means.”
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