2024/25 Sean Dyche

[roy vernon]

Here’s a scenario for you

A complete basket case club approaches you 20 games into the season already in the bottom 3. It’s just sold its best attacking player and has no funds for a replacement in that window. Every other manager it’s approached has knocked them back to date. Its only striker has been out injured for the entire season. This club has not seen a manager last longer than 18 months since 2016 and has fired 6 managers and seen another one walk since then.

The club has no money for transfers in the immediate future and will probably need to sell your best players every summer window. There’s a looming points deduction that could hit at any time. The owner wants out and could sell the club at any point. There’s no permanent CEO or BOD and the DOF is one season in. They also have a militant fan base that expects to be challenging for Europe and winning trophies whilst having the only positive net spend in the league.

By the way if you get it wrong and don’t keep them up you’ll forever be the manager who ended Everton’s top flight status, put them in the championship going into a new stadium, and actually put the mere existence of the club into doubt.

So when they come and offer you a 2 and a half year contract, do you:

Expect that you’ll be fired at some point and ask for a massive salary and a termination pay off?

Or

Ask for a salary that’s befitting of the club being in the bottom 3 and graciously accept that you could be terminated for free at any point even if you achieve all your objectives?

Some people don’t seem to understand the relative negotiating positions of Everton and Sean Dyche AT THE TIME we hired him. It’s a different ball game now, but at the time, we were on our knees begging him. He was therefore able to dictate the terms and we accepted them based on our desperation to stay up (which he then delivered)

Dont cry about the realities of that commercial negotiation after the fact. If we choose to bullet Dyche now then I guarantee you whatever the payment is it will be a drop in the ocean compared to what the cost of relegation would have been.

He'd been out of work for a year, after being fired by the mighty Burnley, that hardly makes his bargaining position any stronger than ours. Let's be honest, this job was beyond his wildest dreams. Although I think the may regard those dreams as nightmares by now.

Anyway, I doubt that even Everton were stupid, or desperate enough, to have given him a £5 mill bonus if he was bad enough to get sacked before his 2•5 years were up. I think it is far more likely that the sum mentioned was what was left on his contract at the beginning of the season. As you say, if he's sacked and a new man keeps us up, the expenditure was justified, provided we can find the money to do it.

My take for what it's worth, is that he will see this season out and will not get a new contract. Having said that, if we could get someone in very rapidly, I'd like to see him replaced now.