Barnfred 55
Player Valuation: £80m
Ray Wilkins was a guest on SSN yesterday morning reviewing the weekend football. He was quite complimentary of Koeman as a manager but also Everton as a club, which surprised me as I've always found him to be quite dismissive of us in the past.Let's face it, Martinez had one very good run with us during a season where the overall calibre of the League was pretty low (So low that LIVERPOOL under Brendan Rodgers could actually mount an actual title challenge FFS) and even then he bottled our push for Top 4 in games we should have won. Moyes would have been pilloried for getting us so close to a Top 4 finish only to throw it away against Palace like Martinez did
Just look at the gap between the top 7/8 teams that season and everyone else and then look at what happened once everyone had a chance to both strengthen in 14/15 and suss out Martinez's tactics. I argue that 13/14 was the aberration and both 14/15 and 15/16 were the norms, especially when you look at Martinez's Wigan side
Koeman has to deal with a much more competitive League, and though he's hardly set the world on fire he's given a solid enough account of himself thus far. Lot's of work still to do of course, and the people shouting for more exciting togger and boss tekkers may eventually get their wish once he's fully settled in, but as of right now he's going to have a tough season of righting the ship after two horrific League campaigns, getting the players fit again and also getting them well drilled defensively after years of poor defensive coaching
All being well, he'll get us fighting for European places again and leave a good foundation for his whoever his replacement ends up being
Basically he said that if Koeman can achieve European qualification at Southampton, then he can achieve at least that at a bigger club like Everton with a much better squad at his disposal.
When asked if we could challenge for the league he said possibly, but that we're more likely to be challenging for CL place, especially if we strengthen in January.
Praise indeed from an unlikely source.