Sean Dyche is yet to learn his budget for this summer and acknowledged he may need to sell players to fund a squad rebuild.
The Blues boss responded to Everton’s final day Premier League survival effort in combative fashion - stressing huge change is needed to overhaul a major club that is chronically underperforming.
Now that his attention can turn to longer term ambitions, Dyche made clear fundamental principles still needed to be drilled into the club - suggesting that extended to those above him, as well as those alongside him at Finch Farm. Work also needs to be done to strengthen a paper-thin squad that has forced him to innovate in the crucial final weeks of the campaign.
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Speaking after Abdoulaye Doucoure’s stunning half-volley secured the win Everton required to clinch top flight football for a 70th consecutive year, Dyche said he did not know what resources would be made available to him this summer - only that it will not be the “war chest” given to previous managers during Farhad Moshiri’s reign as majority shareholder.
During that period Everton have splashed more than half a billion pounds in the transfer market. The result, as Dyche found to his disadvantage, is a patchwork squad pieced together by seven managers and three directors of football. Against Bournemouth, in perhaps the biggest game in Everton’s history, recruitment failures were compounded by injury to leave Dyche unable to pick a recognised first team full-back and bereft of a meaningful forward line.
Alluding to his selection difficulties, Dyche said: “You've seen the squad today and that's as stretched as I've ever seen it. And do you know what, if we didn't get it done today no-one would have cared. No-one would have said: ‘He's had nothing to work with.’ They would have just said: 'He didn't get it done.’ That's the life of a football manager, I understand that.”
Dyche said he was yet to learn what would be made available to him to strengthen the squad but that it was public knowledge the club was financially constrained. Everton has recorded losses of £430m across the past five years and is currently the subject of an investigation over an alleged breach of football finance regulations.
Asked whether he thought that would mean he would have to sell prized assets to fund a rebuild, he said: “There's a chance. I'll find out about that. There's not been any depth, there have been peripheral talks based on ifs, buts and maybes. But that will come over the coming weeks when we find out the truth of what we have got, what we can do, what we can't do.
"First things first but this was the main job. We had to get this sorted out, we've got it over the line. It was absolutely the key focus. Now it is time to immediately re-focus on the rest of it.”
While wider work can only begin now it is known which league Everton will be in next season, Dyche did however state he had been trying to build longer term foundations into the club from the moment he arrived in late January.
He said: “Work on next season started the day I got in here. Don't think I thought this was an easy fix because it is not, far from it. There is a massive amount of work to be done. The thing I've learned about Everton is the fans have been amazing, they want the club to be in the top end of the market but the club currently is not at the top end fo the market.
"It's a big club, make no mistake. Big history, big club but we are not performing like a big club. We have to find a way of changing that. This is two seasons now. I've played my little part in this but there is massive amount of change to build to a new dawn, a new future, a bigger future if you like. I think the Evertonians, as remarkable as they have been, have to remember that.
"This is a bigger project than just; ‘Oh well, it's all right now.’ It's not because there is a lot of work required as this has been going on for two years. I don't have magic dust, I can only make things happen I think are believable. There is massive amounts of work to be done, not just from me but from everyone at the club.”
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