Everton are about to make a massive manager gamble - and it doesn't make much sense

Nearly 12 years since he left Everton, David Moyes is reportedly on the brink of returning to the helm at Goodison Park. Sean Dyche is gone, allegations that José Mourinho could be in the running have been dismissed, and Moyes seems set return to the club he became synonymous with between 2002 and 2013. But is going back to the future like this really the best move for Everton – and what would Moyes’ appointment tell us about the club’s direction?

Why is Moyes heading back to Everton?

Everton’s club statement was shared with the traditional image of a lonely, seemingly mournful corner flag, but other formalities were not observed – the new owners failed to thank Dyche for his efforts, did not bother to wish him ‘the best in his future career’, nor did they pretend that they had ‘parted ways by mutual consent’ as so many other clubs might have. This was an old-fashioned sacking, a new owner culling the old broom, with space for sentiment seemingly thin on the ground.

In relieving Dyche of his duties, The Friedkin Group, who completed the drawn-out takeover of Everton on 19 December and brought them into a multi-club ownership group alongside AS Roma, perhaps bowed to the inevitable. This wasn’t just a new chairman marking his turf but an expression of dissatisfaction with Dyche’s undeniably turgid playing style, one that frustrated many fans even though he had kept Everton’s heads above water at a critical point in the club’s history with an expensive new stadium just over the horizon.

Relegation would have been disastrous from a financial and footballing standpoint and Dyche staved it off in expert fashion last season, but there was a sense that he had failed to find a way forward which would prove to be sustainable in the long term, and another battle with the drop beckoned with Everton just one point above the relegation zone at the season’s halfway point. He neither looked nor sounded like he knew how to make Everton more than a team that battled bravely against the prospect of sinking into the second tier, and entertainment was thin on the ground.

A parting of the ways had become almost inevitable, but bringing Moyes back after a long and varied career away from Merseyside was far from the only option available. Fenerbahçe manager Mourinho had been widely touted, even if it was unlikely that he would be willing to work under the Friedkins again after they fired him from Roma, and there are plenty of younger coaches making waves on the continent who could have been chosen to represent a bold future direction. Instead, Everton have traded one wily old operator whose methods are rooted a more old-fashioned British footballing tradition for another.

It may well be a very sensible move, one rooted in a realistic assessment of Everton’s current squad, but it also seems rather lacking in ambition. Moyes’ football has generally been pragmatic and while he has proven that he can still toughen a team up with his two recent stints at West Ham United, if the dour football played by Dyche was one of the reasons for his removal then it makes precious little sense to install Moyes. Plenty of West Ham fans were sufficiently bored with his brand of the game to cheer his dismissal after last season even though he earned them their first trophy in over four decades, after all.

In fairness to the new owners, the Friedkin Group have struck pragmatic notes with their first public comments since taking Everton over. Executive chairman Marc Watts didn’t make any wild boasts back in December, and even acknowledged that “restoring Everton to its rightful place in the Premier League table will take time” as the club’s new custodians prioritised fixing the parlous financial situation left behind by Farhad Moshiri.

Appointing Moyes aligns with that safety-first ideology, but sacking Dyche did not. For all that Dyche may have stultified those in the stands and for all that the club were undeniably in a relegation fight, their form had improved after a disastrous start and Dyche’s personal history gave few indications that Everton were all that likely to go down – after surviving last season, this one should have been relatively easy.

Will Moyes succeed at Everton?

It’s not immediately clear then what Everton expect Moyes to do differently from Dyche. He is not going to start playing free-flowing football unless he has experienced a psychotic break since leaving the London Stadium. The squad won’t be much better. His return might bring a tear to the eye of all but the youngest Evertonian, but he needs to offer more than a dose of nostalgia and a solid run to sixteenth place to look like a good appointment.

Moyes’ first stint at Everton isn’t really a useful yardstick for whether he will be able to do more than keep the Toffees heads above water this time around – it’s not like Tim Cahill is still around, and Jarrad Branthwaite wasn’t even born when he first took charge. Instead, we can look to his time at West Ham to make a judgement, and there are some good omens there at least.

Just as he did with Everton the first time around, Moyes took over a struggling side which lacked identity, beat them into shape, and eventually turned them into a European team, even winning the Europa Conference League. Things stagnated eventually and the football was rarely much fun, but there’s little argument that he exceeded his mandate, and Julen Lopetegui’s short and unsuccessful reign has made Moyes look even better by comparison.

But Moyes endured some notable failures between leaving Goodison Park and taking over at West Ham, struggling to step out of Sir Alex Ferguson’s long shadow at Old Trafford and slipping up in Spain – and his run towards the Conference League win was eased by over £160m of transfer spending that season and the presence of England star Declan Rice. That squad had substantially more talent than Everton’s does now and it remains to be seen whether he will be backed in the transfer market to the same extent. The shadow of profit and sustainability rules makes it highly unlikely.

At Everton, he will playing on a higher difficulty setting and has struggled under such circumstances before. It’s hard to imagine him doing much more than Dyche would be able to do, and there is a risk that the new owners are spending money on severance payments and signing bonuses to essentially stand still. Given the cost of the Bramley Moore Dock stadium, they can’t really afford to spend money just to tug at a few heartstrings by bringing back an old favourite.

And while Moyes’ appointment will likely lift the mood in the stands for a little while, it’s hard to imagine that he will do more with this team that Dyche could. The former Burnley manager may have been increasingly unpopular among supporters, but he was believed to be appreciated within the dressing room. Perhaps Moyes will spring a strategic surprise of some sort, but he would be acting against more that 20 years of type if he does.

The concern is less that bringing Moyes back is a bad idea, but that getting rid of Dyche in order to do so makes little sense. Had they swept Dyche aside to appoint an up-and-coming coach with an attacking style of play, it would have been a risky move but at least the justification would have been clear. Instead, they are trading one veteran defensive manager for another.

In short, the Friedkin Group’s first big move as Everton owners seems to have been to gamble on standing still. The risk is that Moyes may struggle to get to grips with a new squad and oversee a downswing in results, and the reward is that Everton achieve much the same as they would probably have done under Dyche. This is a move that only makes sense if you really believed that Dyche was going to take Everton down this season – and from an outside perspective, that seemed unlikely. It’s hard to contrive circumstances under which a club appointing Moyes in the midst of a relegation scrap doesn’t make much sense, but we may have found them.