Sean Dyche chance is clear as Jose Mourinho question lurks for Everton

Sean Dyche has said that he wants to be the manager who leads Everton into their new stadium but following Dan Friedkin's takeover deal being announced, Jose Mourinho, is among the names who have been linked with the job
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Just what should an Everton manager be? Almost 40,000 fans inside Goodison Park might give you almost 40,000 different opinions but after eight Blues bosses in as many years under Farhad Moshiri, each with their own wildly eclectic personalities and football philosophies, do any of us truly know anymore?

With the Friedkin Group having been agreed a takeover deal and Everton now playing their historic final season at Goodison Park before the move to the new stadium, many have been having their say on the matter in recent times. Those actively taking part in the conversation have even including current incumbent Sean Dyche.

Speaking for the first time since the sale of the club was announced, in his pre-match press conference for the visit of Crystal Palace, Dyche – whose current contract expires at the end of this season – was asked whether he’d like to be the manager to lead Everton into their new stadium.

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The 53-year-old, who was in his previous position at Burnley for almost a decade, replied: “Of course. What, to dig this out for 20-whatever-it-would-be-by-then months and them to go ‘cheers, thanks for looking after us, off you pop?’

“Of course I would, but there is no divine right to just go ‘oh well, you are definitely the person to do that’. And if not, then that is the way it goes.”

Before the Friedkin Group came back in and John Textor looked to be in pole position to acquire Moshiri’s 94.1% stake, the Crystal Palace part-owner, who also has controlling stakes in Olympique Lyonnais of France, RWD Molenbeek of Belgium and Botafogo of Brazil, denied reports that he was lining up Brazilian champions Palmeiras’ Portuguese coach Abel Ferreira to replace Dyche if he took control at Everton.

However, the Missouri-born digital media and entertainment mogul, nicknamed Hollywood’s Virtual Reality Guru is seldom short of an opinion and swiftly found himself getting a rap on the knuckles from current Goodison Park chiefs for an interview in which he questioned whether Dyche would have an appetite for coaching South American players.

Ever since the Friedkin Group’s deal was struck though, rumours have abounded and the early report linking the Blues with the chain-smoking Maurizio Sarri, who possesses a pretty rudimentary grasp of English and has held 19 different coaching positions throughout his career but has only spent a single season outside Italy in 2018/19, seemed ridiculous.

While Dyche might not lose much sleep over the potential spectre of the veteran fag-ash Neapolitan, links to Jose Mourinho in recent days might feel more uncomfortable. A coach who has already been hired, and indeed fired, by Dan Friedkin at Roma, despite delivering their first European trophy in 61 years, the self-styled ‘Special One’ has collected the game’s glittering prizes over a stellar career.

However, while the continent’s most-decorated gaffer and fellow sexagenarian Carlo Ancelotti has slotted seamlessly back into massaging Galacticos’ egos and adding to Real Madrid’s incredible Champions League haul, after his spell at Everton that was played out mostly behind closed doors and now feels like a coronavirus-induced fever dream, with Mourinho currently working in Turkey at Fenerbahce, his best days now appear to be long behind him.

Indeed, as former Blues captain Alan Stubbs said: “If Everton were going to appoint the Mourinho of old, the young Mourinho who was so successful and charismatic, then I would say yes bring him into the football club.”

We’ve already had Moshiri seemingly thumbing through his old Panini albums from the noughties to hire the aforementioned Ancelotti, Rafael Benitez and Sam Allardyce though, so as Stubbs then cautioned: “If Everton were going to move for him now, I don’t think it would be a good move to be honest. His last few spells in management haven’t really worked out for him.

“He still provides that bit of sparkle on occasion, but it’s rare. I think he has got a little bit bitter and dour over the last decade.”

Ironically, for all the varied choices that he made in the dugout, Mourinho feels like the one that got away for the Monaco-based wantaway majority shareholder who proclaimed when making Ronald Koeman his first appointment, that he wanted a box office name given that England’s North West region was now “the new Hollywood of football.”

Dyche, now the longest-serving boss of Moshiri’s tenure, of course remains in the box seat to be the manager who ultimately leads Everton into their new stadium. After taking over at the end of January last year when the team were joint bottom of the table, he would keep them up on the final day of the season as they avoided a first relegation in 72 years by a single goal.

Despite a brace of sporting sanctions against the club last term, culminating with eight deducted points, Dyche, steered the team to Premier League survival before the final month of the campaign for the first time since 2021 as they finished with five consecutive home wins, including a first Merseyside Derby victory at Goodison Park for 13-and-a-half years, and without their punishments the Blues would have finished level on points with 11th placed Brighton & Hove Albion.

Such impressive groundwork in the most trying of circumstances is highly commendable and many highly respected figures within the game recognise the strength of these achievements.

The man from Kettering doesn’t seem to possess an appetite for putting on charm offensives to curry favour but being the darling of the Gwladys Street is not the be all and end all when it comes to succeeding in the job. Ancelotti and Dyche’s predecessor Frank Lampard are the only Everton managers under Moshiri to have had their names sang by the crowd and neither of them succeeded in the manner they would have liked.

Unlike Bill Shankly, his extrovert opposite number from across Stanley Park, Harry Catterick, shunned the limelight, both for himself and his team. He once got roughed up by the Blues’ own fans in the car park outside Blackpool’s ground for picking a 16-year-old Joe Royle at centre-forward ahead of terrace idol Alex Young while Alan Ball once claimed ‘The Catt’ ruled by fear, yet in an era of legendary managers including Shankly, Matt Busby, Don Revie, Bill Nicholson and that great Evertonian, Joe Mercer, he accumulated more First Division points than any of his rivals throughout the 1960s.

For all his proven pedigree in the Premier League, several issues still need addressing for Dyche. The Blues finally came from behind to win a Premier League game for the first time under him against Crystal Palace on September 28 but that remains their only victory in the competition so far in the current campaign.

Returning to that post-Easter form is a must if the power of Goodison Park is to be truly harnessed to make the most of her historic final season while away from home, Everton are still searching for a first win on their travels for 10 months since they defeated Dyche’s previous employers Burnley on his Turf Moor return on December 16 last year.

Although the Blues boss doesn’t like making changes merely for the sake of it, with his squad options hopefully improving, is he also needs to show he is capable of making dynamic alterations for rapidly-moving in-game scenarios like so many of his peers now we are in the five-substitute era.

Providing that Dyche, who was right to insist in an interview this weekend that this is still very much a job of managing rather than merely a "head coach," possesses a capacity to keep evolving, the chance to make a compelling case to any sensible owner is there for him.

Given that he is unlikely to ever manage a bigger club than Everton, this is a huge career opportunity for him if he wishes to grasp it, in a manner that Allardyce was unable to.

‘Fireman’ Sam arrived during 2017/18 to fan the flames of the Blues’ supposed relegation fight but by the end of his first week in charge in December, the team were already in the top half of the table. With the threat of the drop quickly being extinguished, there was scope for him to develop a more expansive style but despite finishing eighth he was sacked at the end of the campaign as an attritional approach – the team were bottom of the Premier League for shots; shots on target and chances created – failed to endear him to the fans.

Dyche, who steered Burnley to their best-ever Premier League placing of seventh that season, a highest position since they came sixth in 1974 and leading them into Europe for the first time since 1966/67, doesn’t enjoy such luxuries this term. Surely nobody would be questioning his credentials if he guided this Everton team to a top half finish.