Everton – from top four hopefuls to relegation candidates

Welcome to Everton FC” (CC BY 2.0) by Ben Sutherland

What a difference four months can make. Back in August, as the 2017/18 Premier League campaign was about to get underway, Everton were being touted by respected pundits as potential top four candidates. Meanwhile, fans of the Liverpool-based team were dreaming of challenging their more successful city rivals and looking forward to moving into to a new riverside stadium.

At the time, the club had just forked out nearly £150m on new players and had full confidence that Ronald Koeman was the right man to lead them into a new and successful era. And despite selling and then failing to replace their star player and main goalscorer Romelu Lukaku to Manchester United for £76m, few predicted that they would struggle so badly. But with just 13 games played, the Merseyside team are fourth from bottom in the table and 25/4 to be relegated with bitcoin bookie Sportsbet. So where did it all go wrong for the Toffees?

The first and most obvious point is that the club’s hierarchy dropped the ball big time in regards to the sale of Lukaku. The striker should never have been allowed to leave until a replacement had been lined up and in that respect, Ronald Koeman would have had reason to feel aggrieved. To compete for the top four, you need a top level striker and Everton found themselves turning to a player who had been an outcast the season before and a 32-year-old who despite his obvious talent, is well past his best. And while both Omar Niasse and Wayne Rooney have played their part in providing nine goals between them this term, the club no longer have the lethal cutting edge that Lukaku once provided.

Had they managed to bag one of their summer targets such as Olivier Giroud or Diego Costa, it could have been a different story. However, after missing out on those ambitious targets, they seemed to lack any further plan and finished the summer £50m worse off and with no replacement for the departed Belgian.

The signing of goalkeeper Jordan Pickford was hailed a coup but the 23-year-old is already looking less confident between the sticks following his £25m move from Sunderland. Michael Keane has yet to show the kind of form that prompted the club to offer Burnley nearly £30m for his services and £45m purchase Gylfi Sigurdsson looks a shadow of the player who Swansea picked up for just £9m three years ago.

Anyone who has watched Everton this season will also have noticed how slow they have looked. Whether in possession or chasing the game, they always look a yard or two short and that is a big issue, not just in the Premier League but also in the Europa League where they have been thoroughly embarrassed this term. And while director of football Steve Walsh spent the summer signing talented youngsters with one eye on the future, the immediate issues of goals and lack of pace were not being addressed.

By Egghead06 – CC BY-SA 4.0

With the club in such a predicament, a firefighter is required, so it is no surprise that they have announced Sam Allardyce as their new boss. While fans were screaming for Carlo Ancelotti or Diego Simeone, the reality of their situation seems to have finally set in. Everton are not yet at a level where they can attract that kind of name. That’s why they failed to land their top targets in the summer and why they now find themselves turning to a manager without a major honour to his name.

With money in the bank and enough points of the board to give the incoming boss a platform to work on, Everton should be capable of remaining in the top flight. But they should never have got themselves in this position in the first place. If they had been a bit smarter and slightly more realistic in their search for a striker and concentrated on consolidating their position as top seven side, they might have found themselves in a position where they could eventually have attracted a better class of player and moved up a level. But from the outside, it seems like they made a desperate attempt to run before they could walk and when it all went wrong, Koeman shouldered the blame.

Everton – from top four hopefuls to relegation candidates

Comments 0 Comments
 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.