Sean Dyche has given Everton hope for a better future

Sean Dyche has given Everton hope for a better future

Sean Dyche often said he could write books on what he was going through at Everton. He does not need to. The chaos that was visible from the outside is more than enough to make it clear he had, at times, an almost impossible job.

 

Over recent weeks he took to stressing, publicly, the challenges he took on went beyond the ones pitched to him. Given that he joined Everton amid the boardroom, dressing room and relegation crises of January 2023, that is some going.

Back then, he knew he was entering a survival battle that could go all the way. He knew he was inheriting a fractured club with a fan base exhausted at having pulled Everton through one relegation battle and staring down the barrel of another.

Yet there was so much to come that he did not know. Over the next 23 months he would have to deal with two unprecedented points deductions, the sale of key players and all of the chaos that came with Farhad Moshiri’s search for an escape route from Everton.

Dyche shouldered a lot of responsibility at a club that, for large parts of his tenure, was devoid of leadership. He was the public face who had to answer questions over the finances of a club that breached Premier League spending rules and, at times, appeared to flirt with collapse. None of that was his fault.

 

Yet he kept turning up. He was, of course, paid handsomely for his duties. He did not always do them with a smile on his face – often viewing his media work as a battle to be won against reporters rather than an opportunity to use the press to build a connection with supporters.