Ambitious Everton look for upgrade on the Dyche grind

Sean Dyche was never the manager Everton really wanted.

- RICHARD JOLLY

For 18 months, however, he was the one they needed. He wasn't their dream manager but a grim realist at what threatened to be the grimmest period they have ever experienced. And then their reality changed, just as his did. The arrival of new owners, in the Friedkin Group, the start of an era that will include moving into a £760m state-of-the-art stadium, would inevitably call for a manager who was a symbol of ambition.

Dyche never did make it to Bramley-Moore Dock, but then he was never going to. Not with his contract expiring in the summer. But there might have been a chance he would make it to the end of the season. Until a man who was supposed to represent a guarantee of survival had Everton appearing ever more endangered: by the revivals of Wolves and Ipswich but, above all, by their own chronic inability to score goals or win games. There wasn’t the ruthlessness of the best Dyche teams; a manager who rarely seems to doubt himself lost a little confidence in his ability to conjure an improvement. He may be disappointed to depart but the impression is that he was not devastated.