RandoEFC

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

Fuck Mourinho.

Goes without saying that a young, inexperienced but hungry manager is fine, and is indeed the preference to be honest, but what we need goes far beyond the playing side of things. We've got half of a football club to rebuild and that's being modest. Lampard, Rooney, whoever might haul us back towards mid-table in the second half of the season and that's the immediate priority, but without an experienced Director of Football or Sporting Director to oversee things and mitigate the risk of appointing a manager that fails, we're going nowhere, and appointing someone who then isn't allowed to do their job like Brands wasn't is no better.

Being widely reported now that Lampard and Rooney are to be interviewed. I've always liked Lampard but I'm not sure on his managerial record. Hard to judge at this point overall but his last days at Chelsea, he struck me as someone who was either too stubborn or lacked the ideas to improve upon what was going wrong. It's probably a lazy analysis but some would put some of his Derby success down to his connections and who he was able to bring in on loan. I don't personally know or remember enough to comment on that. Still, he's a young manager and they always have room to improve on their weaknesses if they're hungry enough and I suspect he is. There's enough there to get behind if he comes in even if I'm not that sold on him at the moment. I've made my feelings clear about Rooney. Starting to look like an exciting prospect in management and he'd obviously want the job and be fully committed. Minimal worries there about it being a stepping stone for him or it being a 'career' move. Now obviously isn't the ideal time, that would be at least the end of the season or probably even further down the line. Appointing him now would be a risk, but I can't see an appointment that wouldn't be risky. And does Lampard pose a significantly less risky appointment than Rooney? I don't know that it does.

Dorries is one of those who will go down swinging. Thick, ill-informed and obsessed with the 'culture war' politics like immigration rhetoric, attacking the BBC and cracking down on 'woke' protestors. Not fit to be in Parliament let alone a ministerial brief. She knows if Johnson goes down, she'll never get a sniff of cabinet again hence she'll fight to the death if that's what it takes to keep the bloated scarecrow in power. Same for Patel and Rees-Mogg.

Ironically, Koeman came across as more like this than Ancelotti despite Ancelotti being a genuine world class manager, admittedly with his best years probably behind him, and Koeman being a poor manager with a very mixed track record. Didn't really get the stepping stone vibes from Silva when he was here. While he was quite understated in his manner, he was never accused of being less than fully committed to the club. I liked Marco Silva a lot to be honest, felt as though the combination of him and Brands in the Director of Football role had a nice balance to it. He ended up in the same downward spiral as every other Everton manager though through a mixture of bad judgement and bad luck. Groundhog Day.

Murray through the first round after five sets against Basilashvili. Should have a chance of another couple of wins having beaten the seeded player in that section.

First of all that's pretty impressive considering they started the season without even a starting eleven of senior players. Secondly, asking "good enough for Everton" isn't how it works. By that logic, Champions League winner Benitez should have been amazing and he was shite. Martinez won an FA Cup, Koeman had mixed it in the European spots with Southampton, Ancelotti is now at Real Madrid walking La Liga having won their first trophy of the season this weekend already. They were all plenty "good enough for Everton" but none of them brought us success. The best manager we've had in our lifetime is David Moyes (depressing I know but clearly true). When we brought him in, he came from Preston in the Championship and Everton was the biggest managerial job he'd had by a long way. Experience and current standing should be taken into account but to dismiss someone as "not good enough" because they've never managed at the level is far too simplistic. You need to get the right guy based on a range of criteria and while it would be far from an ideal signing, I'd rather go for it than Martinez or Nuno Santo.

I've always taken this as a pretty strong indication that they aren't doing as bad of a job on impartiality as the noisy fringes would have you believe. The downside is, I do believe the noisy fringes have succeeded in castrating their news coverage to some extent as they aren't exactly bold in reporting on political issues, even when the facts are clear, in fear of political factions using it as ammunition against them. That aside, I agree they can do a better job and stuff like when they had that lawyer on who had links to Jeffrey Epstein to comment on the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict the other week was a poor effort. Some of their journalists, such as Ros Atkins and Lewis Goodall do some excellent investigative journalism still though. The other thing you haven't mentioned that I'd add is the educational value of the BBC. They put in a huge effort to put stuff in place at the start of the pandemic when the school's closed that helped a lot of people with the initial shock of home-schooling and the likes of Newsround (which is a real god-send, I'll tell you) gets used all over the country on a daily basis. BBC Bitesize seems to have regressed in value as better alternatives have become available but it's another example of what the BBC has offered as a service to the country in the past. Actually restructuring the way the BBC is funded isn't the worst idea ever. It feels a bit archaic these days that you have to pay the licence fee or get threatened with legal action. I don't know what the best solution is, but it's beside the point really, Nadine Dorries and this government have no interest in the best solution, they're just threatening and attacking the BBC because the right-wing fringe of the party wants them to report news in a more right-wing manner, and they need to stop those MPs from submitting no-confidence letters in Johnson. This will be accompanied by increased anti-migrant rhetoric and various other populist announcements over the coming weeks. They've even dubbed it "Operation Red Meat" in Downing Street which tells you all you need to know. The (hopefully) last mad gambit of a flailing, failing government. All they have left is to go back to the racist and authoritarian shtick dressed up as 'libertarianism', because that's all they've ever had to offer.

It's tempting to jump straight to that conclusion based on his lack of experience, occasional misjudged behaviour as a player and perceived lack of intelligence. I said exactly the same as you a couple of weeks ago when Mike Parry mentioned it, but if you assess the evidence of his very short managerial career, the job he's done at Derby has been very good. Admittedly not a huge bank of evidence, but the evidence that exists is overwhelmingly positive. Not saying he's the man, go and get him, but I don't think it should be dismissed out of hand, especially looking at the likely list of alternatives. Santo would be tedious as fuck, the likes of Fonseca, Kovac and Garcia have managed big clubs but mostly been sacked and are still living off brief spells of success almost half a decade ago and have never managed in England, Ferguson is no long term answer and going back to Martinez is insane even by our standards. Could do worse, that's all I'm saying.

So it's Kenwright pushing for Martinez. Also tried to do so in the summer before Moshiri said no and employed Benitez. Board haven't met with Moshiri yet so no discussions between them and no indication of whether he'll be offered it or not. Martinez would love to come back. Rooney would also definitely take the job if offered...

I would be open to Martinez simply based on the fact that most of the other likely candidates arguably have just as many drawbacks as he does. He wouldn't be my first choice and I'd remain wary. I remember after his spell with us my opinion of him was absolutely on the floor and now I'm thinking I've just forgotten how bad he was, or our ongoing shiteness since he left has just made his spell look better by comparison. Not a ringing endorsement and I'd say 90% of Evertonians seem even less keen than me.

It gets increasingly more difficult to think of ways in which the board can make themselves and the club look stupider than they already have but I think by bringing back Martinez and then having to sack him when he fails again, they've cracked it. It could go well with him having had a bit more experience under his belt. Maybe. I guess. Probably not though.

Potter might be swayed by a huge pay rise and access to a bigger transfer kitty. He wouldn't be the first. I still think he'd be a mad man to come though. Sorry but Dyche is a horrific shout. Good manager but the polar opposite of what we need. This idea that we need to get a 'safe pair of hands' type manager needs to get in the bin. Look at Arsenal, Brighton, Brentford, Palace, Leeds, Villa. The list of teams in this league who have taken a 'gamble' on a younger, hungrier, unproven manager when they could have looked at a Hodgson/Dyche/Benitez "he'll get you 17th" option, and ended up much better off for it is growing and growing. The real gamble nowadays isn't to employ a somewhat unknown or unproven quantity, it's to employ the managers that have made a career out of damage limitation and don't actually have the level of strategic thinking required to bring a club forward over multiple years. Dyche may not fall entirely into this category, but he's still a manager who plans to get to 40 points first and everything else comes second. He's not the type to have a five year plan to move you from mid/lower-mid table to the fringes of the top six. Solid, safe, reliable, know what you're getting. All just pseudonyms for mediocre. We need to aim higher. A manager on the way up, not a manager who's reached their ceiling of "safe pair of hands".

Potter would be mad to come here. We should have gone for him in the summer and let him and Brands get on with things while Moshiri fucked off and destroyed another train set somewhere far far away. I'm still not sure about this. Even Benitez managed to win a quarter of our league games with a massive injury crisis. Even a bang average manager should be able to do at least that well in the second half of the season which is all you need to avoid relegation. People have been using the same phrase "make or break" every single time we find ourselves here. It's a bit sensationalist. I can't remember the last season people weren't bricking it and saying "there's no such thing as too good to go down". If Ferguson can get us 4 points in two games again ot something and the permanent replacement can win 4-5 more games in the remainder of the season we're safe and despite people's exaggerations about our squad, we still have the quality to do that quite comfortably. I've heard this all before. Everton could be in real trouble this time. Ooh Everton haven't done very good business in the transfer market, that squad doesn't look much better than the teams below them. You're never too good to go down. They need someone like Allardyce to come in and steady the ship. As much as I loathe most of them, this squad has finished 7th, 8th, 8th, 12th, 10th in the last five seasons. It would take a staggeringly bad second half of the season for us to go down.

Kenwright bought the club in 1999 by the way. We were already very, very bad by then and had survived relegation on the last day of the season twice in the decade running up to that with the FA Cup win in 1995 an exception. It's not like he was anywhere near the post-80s downward spiral. Again, not to defend the old fool but just to be factually accurate.

Can't celebrate it, too embarrassed and disillusioned.

Eugh the thought of Bilic makes me sick. Martinez may have improved on his drawbacks since he left 6 years ago but every ounce of my gut feeling screams not to go back there. I don't know anything really about the Denmark manager besides him getting them to the semis of the Euros, but he's been the favourite for a while.

There are countless examples, Dalglish, Solskjaer, Shakespeare at Leicester. Our boardroom is absolutely impossible to predict though so who knows what will happen.

There's no basis for that speculation though. It certainly isn't the feeling from what I can see on social media. Besides, if the fanbase had that sort of clout with the decision makers at the club, Benitez would never have been the Everton manager in the first place. Kenwright is the threat when it comes to trying to put "Everton people" in long term charge of the club just because they're Everton people. He's probably making the case for Ferguson to be given the season right now. Like I said, I don't mind him getting the next couple of games and I'm not opposed to anything that sees us get to the end of the season in one piece, but I'd rather that involve Ferguson on a short term deal until the right replacement is available, than us giving a longer term deal now to someone like Nuno who won't take us anywhere either and will need paying off at some point next season when we sack him too. I don't think it'll come to that anyway. Mumblings from the well-informed on social media are that the board are already trying to choose the replacement whilst finalising the severance package. If they can dig out someone half-decent then fine but I genuinely believe a Nuno-type appointment is just as risky and dangerous as someone unproven.

Kenwright was and is horrid and is culpable for the Moshiri mess because he turned down several other opportunities to pass the club on to someone with some money because he was "waiting for the right one" and has chosen surely the worst person possible which just about says it all about his judgement. It's no defence of Kenwright but at least when he was fully in charge, the decline was manageable and could be rationalised by a lack of money. The club more or less fit the bill of a sleeping giant because if we'd got the same out of the resources we had when Moshiri took over as we did when we were cash-strapped, we would be sound. Of course this goes back to Kenwright's time as well but at least the lack of money he had was a mitigating factor. Moshiri has no such excuse and the damage he's inflicting upon the club is all just awful judgement. He has taken this club further bavkward in 5 years than Kenwright did in 25 years. They're both shite though. I genuinely think if they both fucked off and you got a couple of the halfway sensible lads off Everton Twitter to run the club we'd be in a much healthier position. Ferguson will obviously take over for the next game or two. But who's even out there at the moment? Nuno would be another just awful appointment. Ferguson has a shelf life, should galvanise the squad enough to get us through the medium term but we'll see enough cracks to know it won't work forever. I think you can give it to him for a while, and then when a half-decent option materialises (no idea who) we can thank him and ask him to step aside again. Not that I have any faith in any of the people in power to be able to execute anything resembling a plan here. There's no point in even speculating what they'll come up with next so it's time to wait and see, hang on for dear life and hope we're still a Premier League team in six month's time.

I'd take Ferguson until the end of the season. But last time he was in charge we ran a pretty rigid 4-4-2 with not much in the way of tactics and just a lot of blood and thunder. You need more than that in the long run even if he did fairly well. I might be going insane but I'm coming round to the idea that Wayne Rooney should be considered. I know at first it sounds very "jobs for the boys" and a lazy shout but it's not like there are many options out there. He also ticks a few boxes, young and hungry manager with a bit of momentum, you know it's not just another job for him, and he'd probably have more authority than any of our recent managers beside Ancelotti to bomb the problem players out of the club, the sort of authority that Benitez has been given, which is long overdue and might have been helpful had his own judgement not been so disastrous. That gammon Mike Parry posted this shout on Twitter a couple of weeks ago and I laughed at him for about a week but I've come around on it a bit. Mainly Jim White who he seems to text on Talksport as his main method of communicating with the fans which is appalling in itself. That isn't why he gets away with minimal criticism though. It's just because the media largely don't give enough of a shit to do any reasonable analysis of the non-Super League Six clubs. They'd have to commit 2-3 entire minutes to talk about us in that detail and they aren't interested. To be fair, most of the Sky Sports pundits have started calling it pretty well, especially Neville and Carragher (as usual) but you don't get an in depth analysis, it doesn't make the headlines on their website and you probably don't see it if you don't sit through the post game stuff which you probably wouldn't unless you were a fan of one of the teams involved in the game.

Nerrrrrrd. But I love it and might genuinely check it out. Maybe it's time for me to revisit my attempt to use a Czech VPN or whatever it is to access F1TV.