Will Everton get relegated: Why keeping Sean Dyche was a mistake

There are dozens of complexly interwoven concerns both financial and managerial that explain Everton’s unravelling but now they have sunk to the bottom of the Premier League, pointless and goalless, the most pressing concern is disarmingly simple: Everton cannot score goals and they cannot defend.

The journey to this point has been long and boring.

A succession of ill-advised appointments, from the worst-possible-option Rafael Benitez to the somehow-even-worse Frank Lampard, combined with desperately poor transfer decisions have created a club in crisis, facing the prospect of administration and Football League obscurity should they be relegated this season.

That context is important to consider before analysing the Sean Dyche era, not because Dyche should be relieved of responsibility for Everton’s disastrous start to 2023/24 but because his very presence in the dugout should be tied to the unique panic of the spring.

Dyche was always a fire-fighter manager, not a fresh beginning; a desperate lunge for survival, not a promise to change.

Keeping Dyche was a mistake

Of all the mistakes Everton have made, keeping Dyche beyond the summer might prove to be the biggest. Under his guidance they have won 21 points from 21 games. They have conceded 35 goals and scored just 19. They have won five matches, four of them by a 1-0 score line, the other (without which they would not have survived and nor would Dyche) a bizarre and anomalous 5-1 win at Brighton in which the hosts out-xG'ed them 3.2 - 2.3.

Dyche has been undermined by Everton’s severe financial problems, of course. They have been referred by the Premier League to an independent commission for an alleged breach of Financial Fair Play after posting a £44.7 million loss in 2021/22 and nine-figure losses in each of the two years before that.

The new stadium build has placed a heavy burden on the club and current debts stand at £142 million, hence their minimal investment in players this summer.

But that alone cannot account for how little impact he has had on a club that, one year ago, were not considered to be relegation candidates. Dyche was brought in to rescue Everton from a situation they ought not to have been in, yet eight months into his tenure they no longer seem out of place in the bottom three.

Burnley model doesn't work with Everton

Worse than that, they don’t even seem very Dychian. The 1-0 wins towards the end of last season and a lack of goals is in line with his time at Burnley, where over seven years in the top flight they averaged 36.9 goals per season, but Everton’s defence is far too porous for the Burnley model to work.

Michael Keane and James Tarkowski seem too slow as a partnership - with both players lacking the security they used to get from Ben Mee beside them - while Dyche’s options are limited after Yerry Mina and Conor Coady left the club. Their goals against record is only getting worse with time, and there is frankly nowhere in the Dyche playbook that allows for this.

He relies upon stolid 1-0 wins, as do Everton; they have won only one (the 5-1 at Brighton) of the last 25 league matches in which they have conceded.

But the larger and more notable absence of a Dyche influence is his consistent, and consistently ineffective, use of a 4-5-1 formation despite exclusively deploying a 4-4-2 at Burnley.

Two big strikers working in tandem to bring down the long balls or get on the end of crosses was, more than anything else, what defined Dyche as a Premier League manager: between 2017 and 2021, before their partnership was broken up, Chris Wood and Ashley Barnes scored 76 goals, or 48% of Burnley’s total.

Despite Everton’s goalscoring problems preceding his appointment Dyche hasn’t tried fielding two strikers together. Not once. Options have been limited, but even when Dominic Calvert-Lewin was unavailable Dyche would pick only one of Ellis Simms and Neal Maupay, leaving the other on the bench.

It would be wrong to suggest Everton’s goalscoring problems would be solved by throwing another striker onto the pitch, of course. Calvert-Lewin has scored seven goals in the last two years. Simms has only ever scored one Premier League goal. Maupay is without a goal in 29 matches and counting.

But what is important is that Dyche, never hired as a project manager but kept on regardless, has completely abandoned the one strategy that worked for him at Turf Moor (albeit with decreasing success: as they slid towards eventual relegation in 2021/22, Burnley scored just 34 and 33 league goals in their final two years).

Betting on Beto

Maybe that will change with the signing of powerful striker Beto, scorer of 10 Serie A goals for Udinese, who certainly has a profile more befitting of a Dyche forward than Maupay.

Perhaps Beto and Calvert-Lewin will form the strike partnership Everton so badly need, and perhaps new signings Jack Harrison and Arnaut Danjuma will provide the creativity and the crossing that is sorely needed for Burnley-esque football to emerge at Goodison Park.

Yet it feels more likely Everton are too mired, too downcast, to embrace the ugliness and the grind of Dyche’s football - and that’s assuming they will somehow start collecting clean sheets.

Indeed the beginning of the end for Dyche could come this weekend at Sheffield United, the other goalless and pointless Premier League side. Calvert-Lewin and Harrison remain sidelined. Everton have won just two of their last 22 Premier League away games.

Paul Heckingbottom’s 3-5-2 has a defensive stodginess that should shut down Everton’s one-dimensional attacking lines.

But there probably isn’t much need for analysis. Everton can’t score goals and they can’t defend. Unless something dramatic and unexpected changes, Dyche won’t be around for much longer.

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