I think that Benitez is a good manager, but he needs to be at the right club, like most of them. Everton was never going to be that club.
Everton suffer from RMCS too (repetitive managerial change syndrome). A collection of individuals picked by different managers, with different ideas, who just don't fit together as a team.
Big time, their squad is full of players signed by their last 4-5 managers and it shows. No balance, overloaded in some areas and no depth or quality in others. Their approach seems to be just buy enough players and hope they come good
The biggest issue is that, as soon as Moshiri arrived, their transfer strategy immediately went out the window and it became both scattergun in its approach and also appeared to be prioritising paying larger transfer fees over everything else I went over this a few months ago, and in the five seasons before Moshiri bought into the club their transfer success rate was 50/50, but self-sufficient as those that succeeded more than paid off the cost of those that failed - but in the five years afterwards the success rate has plummeted alarmingly to the point that it's 1 in 3 (and possibly 1 in 4)
They’ve wasted a serious amount of money on a lot of players that have actually delivered very little. I’m not convinced by Lampard as a manager at all, even if they stay up (personally hope they go down as I don’t like Lampard) I think it will take a big rebuild to get them even in the top 10 again.
Their remaining fixtures don't look to clever - but it's only on paper and every game is tough at this stage. Burnley & Watford away look crucial. Their run in (with some fixtures still TBC) looks horrendous
A lot of their rebuild could depend on what happens with their dubious ownership. They've attempted to cut all ties to Usmanov in the last few days, but we'll see how well that's gone.
Fat Frank tried to save face by saying how we allowed Everton to control possession Did he miss the fact we beat them 5-0?
Passmap time please log in to view this image Obviously a little skewed because Reguilon doesn't exist and that messes up the data (and also explains why Romero's so deep, as we were setting the trap deeper in the first half than the second), but look at the sequences between defence and midfield: it was like a cat playing with a mouse, waiting for Everton to overcommit and then murdering them down their left flank And when you look at Everton's, you see they graciously obliged every single time please log in to view this image Seriously, what is that? It's like they're scared of attacking down our right flank so their team is retreating into the centre
I think Everton's is a 4-3-3 with a right-back playing on the left and ****ing the balance completely. They'd have been far better off starting Mykolenko, pushing van de Beek further forward and playing a 4-2-3-1. That's without considering any other subs or changes.
It does look remarkably like their left flank is terrified of Romero Hence it also looks like Richarlison is trying to run away...
