Ahead of Sean Dyche's return to Everton with Nottingham Forest, Joe Thomas reflects on the role he played in nearly two years at the club
Sean Dyche, while in charge at Everton, looks on during the Premier League match with Manchester City FC at Etihad Stadium. Photo by James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images
Sean Dyche, while in charge at Everton, looks on during the Premier League match with Manchester City FC at Etihad Stadium. Photo by James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images
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Reflecting on Sean Dyche’s tenure as Everton boss is a difficult exercise. But deciding whether he deserves credit for his role on Merseyside is not.
There was very little enjoyable about the near-two years he spent as Blues boss. Yes, there were highs - the Merseyside derby win at Goodison Park undoubtedly the peak. Almost every other ‘great’ moment - the huge leaps towards salvation at Brighton & Hove Albion and at home to Bournemouth, for instance - was tinged with relief alongside frustration at the position the club was in.
Most of that was down to the circumstances Dyche had to fight his way through, though. Everton needed a strong character and a pragmatist during the nadir of the club’s history and he took on that role. Had he not, perhaps the Blues would not be a Premier League club earning memorable wins at Old Trafford and playing under the lights of a wonderful new stadium.
Dyche arrived at a club in crisis in January 2023. Off-the-pitch, there was justified disillusionment with the club’s hierarchy. On-the-pitch, a team that had escaped relegation on the penultimate game of the previous season under Frank Lampard was winless since October.
While that included a lengthy break for the winter World Cup, there is an argument the wheels started to fall off with the home defeat to Leicester City on Bonfire Night. It felt like an innocuous loss to a side blessed with the talent of James Maddison, Youri Tielemans and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who had his toe broken in a tackle with future team-mate Idrissa Gueye in L4 that night.
But it was followed by the horrendous league and Carabao Cup double-defeat in Bournemouth and Everton left for a winter competition in Australia on the back of the miserable scene of players and supporters having exchanged frustrated words in the away end of the Vitality Stadium. As it would happen, the same venue would be the scene of Dyche’s downfall.
That came just over two years later, though, and when he took over from Lampard he inherited a team that appeared destined for a second consecutive relegation battle at a club that, for all the grand claims of wanting to do business in that window, actually had to sell one of its best players, Anthony Gordon, having already sold another star in Richarlison six months earlier. Both sales undermined a squad already in trouble despite their presence and neither proved capable of bringing the club within the league’s spending parameters. More on that later.
The months that followed were not pretty. There were times when it looked like Dyche had wrested control of the situation - the early home wins over Arsenal and Leeds United among them. There were also more abject showings - performances and results that led to supporters understandably fearing the worst.
I have to admit that, when Newcastle United hammered Everton at Goodison Park late in the April, I went home that night braced for the worst. And yet barely a fortnight later that shock 5-1 win at Brighton lifted Everton from trouble. The goals that day were shared by Dwight McNeil and Abdoulaye Doucoure, who were rejuvenated by Dyche.
McNeil was bereft of confidence under Lampard while Doucoure was frozen out. Alongside Jordan Pickford they later did more than anyone to pull the Blues safe - Doucoure, of course, getting the goal that clinched survival on the final day against Bournemouth.
That run to safety was achieved despite injuries haunting Dyche, some feat given the talent of the aforementioned Leicester side that somehow dropped to the Championship instead.
I remember the press conference that followed that win. Twelve months earlier, survival was greeted with elation, it felt as though the club had pulled together to reach safety amid a maelstrom of flare-smeared coach welcomes and Lampard positivity. There was none of that this time as Dyche left the press room at Goodison after delivering a terse message that appeared directed at a club that, behind-the-scenes, was a mess.
This was, of course, before the failings responsible for the two points deductions came to light across the next season. Navigating that was Dyche’s biggest success.
A poor start - a theme of his reign and one he has to take responsibility for - had given way to a genuine sense of progress as Everton started to deliver wins away from home, at Brentford, at West Ham United, at Crystal Palace. Some of those results were achieved with the introduction of Jarrad Branthwaite into the first team which Dyche oversaw (it is noteworthy that despite a reluctance to explore his squad - the lack of minutes given to Arnaut Danjuma just one peculiar side story - he did also bring another star from the academy to the first team in Harrison Armstrong).
And then came the first deduction, the biggest ever dished out in the top flight, a shock to the world of football and one that turned Everton into a seething animal that Dyche, left to face the public, press and supporters alone, had to somehow galvanise. He did that.
And maybe only he knows how, though there was no doubt significant influence from the likes of club captain Seamus Coleman through one of the most challenging periods faced by a club in the modern era. There were so many questions and Dyche, who bore no responsibility for the trouble he had to speak for, was a lone voice at the club, even if there was little he could say.
The response was emphatic. Wins at Nottingham Forest and Burnley and at home to Chelsea provided an immediate retort to those who had given up on the Blues' hopes of avoiding relegation for a third time.
Then the fatigue set in. As lawyers fought through appeals, challenges and then a second deduction, Everton fell apart on the pitch. They did not crumble completely, but through four months without a league win the creeping fear of the drop grew and grew.
There is little doubt that had that run come at any other time, Dyche would not have survived it. It came at a time when the club could not afford to part ways, however, and the week that salvaged the season - three home wins in quick succession against Forest, Liverpool and Brentford - was a heady one that will not be forgotten.
Dyche benefitted from the hopelessness of the three teams that were relegated that season but to amass the points that would have taken Everton to 13th, in those circumstances, was a stunning achievement.
Where Dyche’s reign fell was on his ability to move the club beyond survival. A canny transfer window that saw Iliman Ndiaye and Jake O’Brien join the Blues should have led to better than what was mustered at the start of last season. The turgid resilience crucial to the grind of previous seasons was no longer a necessity and, alongside that stylistic struggle, it felt as though he failed to truly appreciate the desire to give Goodison Park a decent send-off.
Nobody, despite his perplexing claim, seriously believed Everton should have challenged for Europe last year.
But supporters deserved more than the limp performances at the Grand Old Lady at the start of the season - defeats to Brighton, Bournemouth and Southampton and lucky draws against Fulham, Newcastle and 10-men Brentford.
Had Dyche acknowledged the desire for better was reasonable it might have been more palatable, but last season supporters wanted the club to push on and to at least see that ambition being reflected in the dugout.
Had former owner Farhad Moshiri not been engaged in the latest throes of his efforts to both sell the club and keep the lights on, Dyche may well have lost his job after a poor defeat to Southampton.
The Saints were winless in the league at that stage but after that grim night at St Mary’s Russell Martin could lay claim to two wins over Dyche’s Everton, having knocked them out of the Carabao Cup.
The final games of Dyche’s reign were tortuous and summed up the worst of his tenure - drab, defensive defeats at home to Forest, when it took 81 minutes for a shot on target and then at Bournemouth, where the opposition keeper was not tested at all and Dyche even appeared to point a public finger at Branthwaite over David Brooks’ late goal.
It did not have to end like that - The Friedkin Group had just taken over - and were keen to back Dyche for the sake of stability, the club had just received the keys to Hill Dickinson Stadium and the squad had the experience and talent to push-on.
David Moyes’ immediate impact and the results he achieved with a squad that, for most of the opening months of his reign was without Orel Mangala, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, McNeil and Ndiaye, showed what could be achieved if the talent and motivation lying dormant in the side was unlocked.
To only focus on the end would be a disservice to Dyche, however.
Everton were able to reach a point where style and ambition could become genuine talking points because, after two relegation battles, two points deductions and a drawn-out takeover search, they avoided what would have been a catastrophic drop.
Dyche’s influence was key to that achievement.