IAN HERBERT: Delusions of grandeur have taken Everton to the BRINK. After splashing £500m on players with no sense or strategy, this relegation battle is a result of years of mismanagement on and off the pitch
- Farhad Moshiri has spent £500million on players with no clear sense or strategy
- Since his arrival, ailing Everton have been consumed by delusions of grandeur
- The present squad is a ‘Frankenstein composite’ and stuck in a relegation battle
- Frank Lampard is shaping up to be anything but a saviour after his dismal start
The timing of a new Dominic Calvert-Lewin fashion photoshoot for GQ magazine is unfortunate, to say the least.
The Everton striker ‘is bringing fashion back to football’, states a headline above a piece in which he declares himself a ‘standard-bearer for new flamboyance’. He hasn’t scored a goal since August.
There’s been a delusion of grandeur about the club for the six years since Farhad Moshiri arrived and started splashing £500million on players in a way which has lacked sense or strategy.
There has been a delusion of grandeur about Everton in the years since Farhad Moshiri arrived
The present squad is, as a recent When Saturday Comes analysis of their predicament put it, ‘a Frankenstein composite of eight managers and two directors of football’.
A list of some of the players signed for more than £20m since 2016 says everything about the state Everton are in: Davy Klaassen, Cenk Tosun, Theo Walcott, Yannick Bolasie, Morgan Schneiderlin, Alex Iwobi, Andre Gomes, Jean-Philippe Gbamin and Moise Kean.
On Wednesday, Everton will feel the consequences of that gross mismanagement like never before. They run out at Burnley in a game on which their Premier League survival could depend.
The present squad has been described as a ‘Frankenstein composite of eight managers’
They have secured fewer points away from home than any other team in the division this season, last won on the road in August and seven of their subsequent nine games are against top-half teams, including Liverpool and Chelsea.
It would help if Frank Lampard were shaping up to be a saviour. He seems anything but. Some of his players are understood to feel there is no consistent game plan and an absence of clear communication. Some of his former senior players at Chelsea felt precisely the same.
The shifting shapes of his team formation have not helped. There’s been a strange fixation with a 3-4-3 system, which has left their defence extremely vulnerable, and odd team selections. Iwobi was dropped for the disastrous 4-0 FA Cup defeat at Crystal Palace after one of his best performances in an Everton shirt at home to Newcastle, when they won 1-0.
But the buying Lampard sanctioned in January was the biggest surprise to many.
Frank Lampard is shaping up to be anything but a saviour, with no consistent tactics evident
Everton plainly needed a better centre back and central midfielder, yet instead committed wages on two supposed flair players, Dele Alli and Donny van de Beek. Neither have made a difference.
Lampard is understood to have spoken personally to Alli and felt he could get through to him, star to star. The two share the same agent. The player’s arrival at the club in his Rolls-Royce revealed much about his own delusions.
Meanwhile, Everton lack improvements in the places that scream out for them. They frequently concede down the right, where Seamus Coleman, 33, lacks his old running power. Nathan Patterson, the 20-year-old right back the club paid Rangers £12m for in January, has not started a league game and will have surgery on his ankle.
In central defence, where Yerry Mina cannot be relied on and Mason Holgate has not been the player he once was for some time, Everton have been unable to defend set-pieces.
The timing of a new Dominic Calvert-Lewin fashion photoshoot (above) for GQ is unfortunate
Proper guidance would have told Moshiri to bring back David Moyes, who was convinced he had the job before Carlo Ancelotti was hired at further vast expense. Steve Hitchen, Tottenham’s former technical director, should have been enticed but was not.
Former Everton defender Michael Ball said this week that Lampard should select players who will be bolder at Turf Moor. ‘Who is going to have the confidence to play that through ball, to make that correct decision, to take an extra touch when one is needed?’ he said. ‘Who is going to take that big opportunity? At this point I think Frank really needs to be brave and start looking at youth.’
Calvert-Lewin – who Lampard said is looking sharper amid his full recovery from injury – reveals in his GQ interview that he has a positive outlook. ‘You’ve only got one life,’ he says. ‘That’s one of my mottos. Do what makes you happy.’
His club need him to apply that sense of urgency to his football.
Dele Alli has failed to make an impact since arriving, and has been spoken to by Lampard
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