It’s probably fair to say that Sean Dyche will have a full in-tray when he first arrives at the desk in his office at Finch Farm, and here are four matters that the incoming Everton manager has to address immediately.
Striker light
It’s understood that Everton always intended on bringing in two additional attacking options in the January transfer window but with the deadline looming on Tuesday, they still haven’t signed anyone. Speaking in his recent interview with Jazz Bal, the club’s Fan Advisory Board chair, Everton owner Farhad Moshiri said: “We need a striker… we’ll get one.”
However, this was before Tottenham Hotspur hijacked the Blues’ deal to land Arnaut Danjuma on loan from Villarreal. That need remains pertinent but unlike last January when Everton had a couple of new signings in early in the month (Vitalii Mykolenko and Nathan Patterson) with the former brought in as a replacement for Lucas Digne who had fallen out with Rafael Benitez only for the Spaniard to be sacked as manager less than a week later, the Blues have played – and lost – their four fixtures this month without the help of any fresh faces.
Dyche must now decide whether he’s happy to go along with prioritising this area or whether other positions should be bolstered. The clock is ticking.
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One of their own?
After spending the best part of the past four weeks trying to work on loan moves, director of football Kevin Thelwell’s transfer plans for the final days of the winter window could be shaped by a possible substantial fee coming in from the sale of Anthony Gordon. He was missing from training for three consecutive days this week with only his no-show on Tuesday being accounted for as a planned absence.
With Newcastle United understood to be closing in on a deal in the region of £45million for the forward, there are fears that the Kirkdale-born player could, following Frank Lampard’s sacking, have been deploying an ill-advised policy akin to not turning up for lessons at school because there’s a supply teacher in, to force his way out of the club he’s been at since the age of 11. You suspect a no-nonsense customer like Dyche wouldn’t put up with such antics but even if Gordon is sold to the Magpies and Everton suddenly have a lot more cash at their disposal, would the new manager even have enough time to spend it, so it’s a huge call for the former Burnley gaffer to make.
Talking tactics
In the satirical 2001 mockumentary film Mike Bassett: England Manager, Scouse actor Ricky Tomlinson, playing the title role, proclaims that his team “will be playing four, four, f****** two.” Over two decades on, the formation that for a long time was de rigueur in British football has largely gone out of style in the Premier League, but it remained the bread and butter of Dyche’s Burnley sides.
If deployed effectively with the right players and a squad who know their roles within that system, it can still be an effective approach and it would be unnecessarily ostentatious to brand a formation that almost everyone in the game used for so long as outdated or in some way not as sophisticated as more recent tactical trends. Leicester City and Atletico Madrid have both overcome rivals with greater resources to secure domestic titles in recent seasons playing that way and now Dyche must decide whether it’s the way he wants to go with Everton, who have largely switched between 3-4-3, 4-3-3 and 5-3-2 so far this term.
Stopping the rot
Everton lost eight of their last nine games under Lampard, a sequence that was only punctuated by an unlikely 1-1 draw at reigning Premier League champions Manchester City on New Year’s Eve. With the team stuck in the relegation zone and on course for the lowest equivalent points total in the club’s history, Dyche knows that he needs to turn the tide quickly.
He’s hardly been given the easiest of starts though with the visit of leaders Arsenal at Goodison Park up first before a Merseyside Derby at Anfield. After that, the rest of February brings a couple of huge home matches against Leeds United and Aston Villa.
Back in 2012, when first in charge of Burnley, Dyche started with a brace of victories at Turf Moor, 2-0 against Wolverhampton Wanderers and then 1-0 against Leeds United. As the then-Clarets boss himself said last April though when his side came back from 2-1 down to beat Everton 3-2, these Blues players “don’t know how to win” and that’s arguably the biggest issue he has to address first.
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