ON THE VOLLEY: Sean Dyche is the Perfect Everton Manager

By Charlie DeMatteo

After Frank Lampard’s sacking last week, Everton appointed former Burnley and Watford manager Sean Dyche to keep the side in the Premier League this season as they sit perilously close to rock bottom of the table.

Lampard leaves the job after a year in charge, where he successfully kept them up last year but failed to continue any sort of positive momentum into this season. The club is tied at the bottom of the league at the time of his departure.

Dyche, Lampard’s replacement, is a well-respected English manager who, despite his 12-year managerial career, has only managed two teams. Most notably, Dyche spent the best part of a decade at Burnley. There, Dyche got them promoted to the Premier league in 2016 and kept them in the league for five seasons on a shoestring budget before he was sacked with just games to go at the end of last season. After Burnley sacked Dyche, they went down and currently sit atop the EFL Championship, England’s second tier of professional football.

So why is Dyche, a manager who has never managed a club even remotely close to the size of Everton, the right fit? The answer can be found in the DNA of Everton, and the DNA of Dyche. Since David Moyes’ brilliant years at Everton, the Merseyside club has struggled to rekindle the harmonious relationship between fans and manager. Countless names have come in and not been up to the task, but finally, I think Everton have found their man in Dyche.

Dyche is best known for playing a traditional 4-4-2 formation, full of players who will run forever and work tirelessly to help the team win. While Dyche has his critics for being a bit too direct in the way his teams play, you can’t argue with the system’s effectiveness as he managed to keep a glorified Championship team in the top flight for half a decade, even securing a top-7 finish at one point.

As for the DNA of Everton, they are very much a working-class club. A historic team that is the lifeblood of half of Liverpool, Everton and their home, Goodison Park, have been a staple of the English game. While success in the 20th century was abundant, recent years have not been kind. 

Everton has tried to adapt to the modern game and the ridiculous spending required to succeed in it under owner Farhad Moshiri, but due to poor recruitment strategy, little success has followed. 

However, with Dyche at the helm, I think Everton can finally return to their roots of being a difficult team to play against, and not one that requires lavish spending and players to succeed. Dyche’s ethos is based on unity, hard work and understanding; three characteristics that have been amiss at Everton for years now. 

While Dyche has a way of doing things tactically, he has been open about his true desire to understand the strengths of the players he has at his disposal and to gel them together to make a cohesive team. One of Everton’s major issues in recent years has been the failure to correctly profile and manage players. When players aren’t comfortable in a system or at the club, they tend to underperform. What Dyche wants to focus on is getting to understand what makes each player tick, and devising a tactical plan from there.

The next demand Dyche has for any of his teams is hard work. While you may think all managers require their teams to work hard, Dyche wants his teams to take pride in how hard they work. By out-running teams and being physical, Dyche’s teams have historically out-performed teams with more talented players.

Everton has always been known as a hard-working club, whether that be the fans or the players. Under Dyche, things will return to how they once were and Everton can start to be feared again; not necessarily for their dazzling play, but for their work ethic and determination to win. 

Finally, Dyche’s team must have a strong team spirit, no egos. Everton in recent memory has struggled mightily with buying “mercenaries,” if you will; players who have come to the club solely for money and haven’t cared about how their teammates or the fans view them. Players like this will simply not be accepted under Dyche at Everton.

Dyche’s tactics require total communication and trust between all 11 players on the field. Without a harmonious team spirit where everyone knows what their role is, Dyche’s tactics will fail and the team will fail with it. 

If you want a sign of just how bright things could get for Everton under Dyche, just take a look at this weekend’s past game against Arsenal. Everton, winless in their last 10, took the game to their opponents, who hadn’t lost since September and are top of the league.

From minute one, it was clear there was a newfound spirit amongst the Everton players. Some of that is down to the so-called “new manager bounce,” but some is plainly down to the tactics of Dyche.

Everton were combative against Arsenal, constantly closing down space and running all over the field to not give Arsenal an inch. The breakthrough for the blues came in the 60th minute when James Tarkowski headed home a Dwight McNeil corner to give the hosts the lead. Tarkowski and McNeil, two players who thrived at Burnley under Dyche, combined to make the difference.

Arsenal hardly threatened Jordan Pickford in goal, and Dyche picked up a huge three points in his opening game, but the work is far from done. Dyche himself admitted in his press conference that this is only the start of Everton’s relegation fight, but what a start it was. 

Everton and Goodison Park are meant to be feared, a team and a place you don’t look forward to. For far too long now, Everton have been soft at the core and a pushover. Dyche has all the tools and experience behind him to restore Everton to being the proper club that they have been for years, and the signs are already positive that he is up to the job.