So if it's a choice between Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard and Vitor Pereira to be new Everton manager, who are you backing?
All of course come with risks, especially given the team's alarming slide down the Premier League table and desperate struggle to pick up points.
However, with the Blues understood to be considering Rooney for their managerial vacancy the scenario has echoes of how their greatest boss of all, Howard Kendall, returned to Goodison Park.
Farhad Moshiri’s string of veteran managers have used Everton as a lucrative pit stop to boost their pension funds in recent years without bringing much improvement on the pitch.
Ronald Koeman at 53 was the Blues’ oldest ever boss at the time of his appointment when hired in 2016 but has subsequently been blown out of the water on that score with Sam Allardyce, Carlo Ancelotti and Rafa Benitez all in their 60s.
If these old boys bumbling through have resembled ‘Dad’s Army’ on the touchline then perhaps Marco Silva was Private Pike?
In contrast, Kendall would go on to deliver the FA Cup, League Championship and European Cup-Winners’ Cup all before his 39 th birthday, adding a second title when still just 40.
When it comes to management, like playing, if you’re good enough, you’re old enough and Kendall and Rooney have both proven that, even if the latter did suffer a painful 2-1 defeat to Derby County's bitter East Midlands rivals Nottingham Forest at the same time that Duncan Ferguson's side were losing 1-0 at home to Aston Villa.
At the start of their respective careers, both were teenage sensations.
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Kendall was the youngest ever footballer to play in a Wembley final when he turned out for Preston North End in their 3-2 defeat to West Ham United in the 1964 FA Cup final aged 17 years and 345 days.
Rooney was Everton’s second youngest player at the time when making his debut at home to Tottenham Hotspur in August 2002 and goals two months later against Wrexham and then Arsenal made him their youngest ever scorer and then the Premier League’s youngest ever scorer respectively.
Just as both came early to the man’s game, they each transferred to the dugout while relatively youthful, initially starting off as player-managers.
Despite getting two years of managerial experience at Blackburn Rovers under his belt first, Kendall still hadn’t hung up his boots by the time he returned to Everton as boss over seven years after being sold to Birmingham City and he made six first team appearances for the Blues during 1981/82, his first season in charge.
Kendall’s playing ability while combining his role of picking the team was noted by another managerial great Brian Clough when Blackburn Rovers were thrashed 6-1 by his European champions Nottingham Forest in a League Cup tie at the City Ground.
Recalling their post-match conversation in his autobiography Love Affairs & Marriage: My life in football , Kendall said: “Afterwards I had my first proper encounter with Brian Clough, who I would come face to face with often over the next 15 years.
“I’d just come out of the shower and into the corridor outside the changing rooms, and there was the great man walking towards me.
“I told him, ‘Congratulations Mr Clough, I thought your team were magnificent tonight.’
“Clough paid no attention to my platitudes. ‘I saw you play a ball tonight, thirty yards without looking right to left,’ he said. ‘How old are you?’
“I was 33 at the time and told him. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Too old, just too old,’ and walked off shaking his head without saying another word.”
Given that he’s eight months younger than his former Manchester United team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo who is now back playing at Old Trafford, Rooney could probably still do a job on the pitch for Derby County but the demands of modern day football management have seen the once common phenomenon of the player-boss now largely disappear.
Like Kendall, who also explained Blackburn’s money woes in the pre-Jack Walker era in his autobiography, citing an old director Arthur Fry and suggesting they used second class stamps on club mail and buy less milk after spotting two bottles from the previous day in an Ewood Park corridor, Rooney has had to operate under hugely-restrictive financial limitations at Pride Park.
Rooney was understood to be furious earlier this month when he was unable to keep the evergreen former Everton captain Phil Jagielka, now 39, beyond his short-term deal.
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Despite Jagielka initially being offered a new 18-month contract, he was unable to re-sign after the Football League put Derby under a transfer embargo and the player has subsequently joined Midlands rivals Stoke City, after starting 20 of the Rams’ first 25 matches this term.
Rooney could also lose a number of his key men this month after Derby players were told to speak to their administrators if they want to leave in January.
Any departures will come as a major blow to Rooney in his bid to avoid relegation to League One, with his side eight points adrift of safety following their 21-point deduction.
The cash-strapped side are desperate to raise funds this month to avoid liquidation, which is a serious possibility given their £29million debt to HMRC.
That would be a crying shame given that Derby County are, like Everton, one of the founders members of the Football League from 1888, before any of the so-called ‘big six’ even entered the top flight of English football and they’re one of 10 clubs to have played in the Premier League/Football League for every season since.
Rather than have come too early in Rooney’s managerial career as some fear, the Everton job might in reality have arrived at just the right time.
Unlike the other ‘Evertonian’ candidate, Ferguson, whose second stint as caretaker manager fell flat from the start this time, Rooney, despite his relatively tender years, has already proven himself in the job over a sustained period.
If given the chance, history could be about to repeat itself with Kendall and Rooney.
Surely that's a narrative far more of the fanbase would be willing to get behind than going out on a limb with Pereira, who unlike all of Everton's previous overseas bosses, has no experience whatsoever in English football.
Despite enormous promise, his two playing spells at Goodison Park proved truncated so ironically perhaps the ultimate destiny of the Blues’ greatest home-grown talent might actually be to serve the club he’s supported all his life as a manager and guide them towards a brighter future in their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock?
