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da esoccer bet： The virtual blank cheque handed to Ronald Koeman in the summer was served to him in a poisoned chalice. The £142million spend was an unprecedented outlay for the Goodison outfit, albeit largely offset by £97million in departures, but that inevitably comes with a new kind of pressure Koeman didn’t have to cope with last season.In theory, this is now his team, designed at club-record cost around his ideals, that he alone must bear ultimate responsibility for. There are no longer failed predecessors or dressing room agitators to use as lightning rods for blame.Thus, amid a start to the season in which Everton have picked up a paltry eight points from eight games in the Premier League, leaving them just two points and two places above the relegation zone, and failed to win their two encounters in the Europa League proper, accusative fingers on Merseyside are inevitably pointing in only one direction – Koeman’s door. Even the Mayor of Liverpool’s weighed in after the disappointing draw with newly-promoted Brighton on Sunday.
Clearly, the gaffer has made costly mistakes this season, starting with the summer transfer window. A few months ago, we were lauding Everton for making early moves in the market, the kind of moves that would settle an unfamiliar squad as soon as possible amid a summer of significant and expensive change. But the ultimate error was making the marquee signing in mid-August, after the Premier League season had already started.
Gylfi Sigurdsson was a club-record addition and on paper at least remains Everton’s most talented asset, but the Toffees’ interest in the Iceland international was first documented at the end of last season.
Perhaps fearing they wouldn’t convince Swansea to sell – they eventually held out for a whopping £45million – Everton eagerly signed two like-minded attacking midfielders in Wayne Rooney and Davy Klaassen in the meantime, accompanied by a big contract and a big transfer fee respectively, and ran out of time to sign a centre-forward potentially because their attentions were so focused on the Sigurdsson deal.
The consequence is a vastly imbalanced squad, one that lacks dynamism in dangerous areas. There’s no pace or power out wide or up front and thus, Everton have been forced to play this season within the confines of the territory they’ve already won, rather than breaking into new ground on the counter.
It’s telling Everton rank eighth in the Premier League for possession this season, but 11th for shots per game and only higher than Crystal Palace and Bournemouth, the current bottom two, for goals.
The eventual complexion of the squad at the end of the summer is the instrumental mistake on Koeman’s part, although Steve Walsh must accept some blame as well. But unfortunately for those demanding the end to Koeman’s tenure, it’s not a mistake any replacement can fix until the transfer window reopens in January.
Everton simply don’t have the physical attacking players to compliment the more technical yet more static talents acquired during the summer. The Toffees’ best options in that regard are youngsters Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Ademola Lookman, and Oumar Niasse – a striker Koeman once famously told to leave Everton ‘if he likes to play football’.
No manager in the world, whether it’s Peter Reid or Pep Guardiola, will be able to fix what is a fundamental flaw in personnel until January 1st at the earliest. They can’t magic a speedy striker, explosive winger or towering target man from thin air and even if their appointment brought the habitual early honeymoon period, they’d eventually find themselves unstuck by the same problem that has derailed progress under Koeman.
Yet, the lack of impact a replacement would make isn’t necessarily justification alone for keeping Koeman. Short-termism remains an unwelcome characteristic of the modern game and sacking Koeman just eight games after overseeing the biggest transfer budget in Everton’s history would certainly constitute short-term, especially for a club that until 2013 had the same manager in the dugout for over a decade.
But it must be said Koeman has clearly struggled with the pressure this season, not to mention the challenge of forging a squad with perhaps the fewest spending restrictions of his managerial career, and the mistakes certainly didn’t stop when the summer transfer window closed.
“I will have a meeting with the players – the experienced ones must stand up. The defeat was a wake-up call. I saw the team with a lot of doubts. I don’t want to make it individual because it’s a team performance, but we need to be more aggressive.
“I wasn’t worried after Chelsea [2-0 defeat]. The reaction should have started in the second half against Tottenham [3-0 loss]. But that and the first half against Atalanta is enough reason to be worried.”
Perhaps the biggest was publicly criticising his players after that shock 3-0 defeat to Atalanta. Yes, it was a disappointing result considering the unspectacular quality of the opposition, but it was also a weakened Everton side playing away from home after a horrific run of fixtures at the start of the season. It should have been the moment Koeman drew a line under a schedule that inevitably lead to poor results, declaring that the campaign truly starts here. Instead, the Dutchman further corroded the confidence of his squad – in the next match, they were ripped apart by Manchester United.
The failure to rebuild that confidence in the period since is perhaps the most worrying aspect of Koeman’s rule at this moment in time. Everton just about limped to a win over Bournemouth, couldn’t finish off Apollon and looked scared of their own shadows as they were played off the park by Burnley.
It doesn’t so much appear the players aren’t playing for their gaffer, more that they’ve lost belief in their own abilities – an incredibly concerning state of affairs in mid-October. He certainly wouldn’t be the first Dutch manager accused of being too autocratic, too critical and too restrictive of his players.
In some ways, though, that puts Everton in a decent position. If only the transfer window can fix the instrumental flaws of a poorly configured squad and if Koeman has already proved he’s not the man to take the club forward, Everton have until January to mull over potential replacements. After all, we already know Everton probably won’t exceed last term’s seventh place finish, while a relegation battle – even from this point – seems almost unimaginable considering the quality of players Everton have.
If 2017/18 is already shaping up to be a nothing season then, there’s no need to rush into changing managers as a reaction to poor results. The Toffees have at least a few months for the right man to come along, whoever that may be.