Analysing the Premier League Managerial Merry-go-round
Crystal Palace, Everton and Tottenham all find themselves manager-less as July approaches. How big of a mess are they in?
The new Premier League season kicks off in seven weeks. Brentford host Arsenal on Friday August 13, but, as you may have noticed, the European Championships are the major focus of the sport currently.
There will only be 33 days between Euro 2020 ending and that first league game kicking off.
For most clubs, this is fine. While the likes of Manchester City, Chelsea, etc. will potentially be missing players who went deep into the competition, they have the strength in depth to counteract this. And, most crucially, they actually have a manager.
Yes, Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel can plan accordingly for these absences and can also, of course, bring in new players to improve their overall squad going into the season.
However, for Crystal Palace, Everton and Tottenham Hotspur, the story isn’t quite so rosy.
Roy Hodgson left Palace at the end of last season and since then both Nuno Espírito Santo and Lucien Favre have walked away from talks with the club.
Carlo Ancelotti was taken from Everton when Real Madrid came calling on June 1.
But Spurs have been looking for a new manager for 67 days, and counting. Jose Mourinho was sacked on April 19, right before the club’s League Cup final against Man City.
In that time they’ve had talks with Erik Ten Hag, Antonio Conte, Mauricio Pochettino, Paulo Fonseca and Gennaro Gattuso. Yet, still they have no one in charge of the first team.
While their rivals are negotiating for new players, these three clubs are approaching pre-season without a new manager.
They still have a week or two to get someone in place, but why has the process been so difficult for all three?
Let’s start with Everton, where it has been reported that Rafa Benitez is their ideal target to replace Ancelotti. This has been a less complicated selection than at the other two clubs, but there is a significant baggage that comes with the Spaniard.
Benitez is a legendary former Liverpool manager, having won the 2005 Champions League with the Reds.
Everton fans have expressed their anger at Benitez joining the club and many fans too see him as a step down from his predecessor.
Looking at Everton’s *squad, it isn’t quite the mess it was when Ancelotti took charge. The Italian stamped his mark on the team, improved a lot of the younger players and the team is now in the healthiest position it has been in since David Moyes left in 2013.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison and Ben Godfrey are the players Benitez should be most interested in. They are still coming into their prime years (the yellow section), but still put in a healthy amount of minutes in 20/21.
All three also all have a decent length left on their contract and thus should be seen as the future of the club.
The present of the club very much centers around James Rodriguez. The Colombian is just coming out of his peak years but still has plenty to offer. He couldn’t quite keep up his minutes throughout the season, but this was still the most amount of playtime he received since his first at Real Madrid in 14/15.
The likes of Jordan Pickford, Allan, Lucas Digne and Michael Keane have all also become important players for Everton and should all be suitable for Benitez.
Experienced players like Seamus Coleman and Gylfi Sigurdsson still have the capacity to play >1500 minutes of Premier League football too, which should help Benitez.
The former Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Chelsea manager is, on paper, quite a good appointment. It is just his history with Everton’s greatest rivals that makes things complicated.
But, given this squad and this manager, there is room for a good season ahead and Benitez should be able to continue Ancelotti’s work relatively seamlessly.
Given Everton’s recent transfer history, there should also be room for Benitez to spend this Summer.
Things are much more complicated at Crystal Palace. They’ve been turned down by Santo and Favre, but they also have an absolute mess of a squad on their hands.
Not only are the majority of key, and even fringe, players on the older side of professional football, but a lot of them are also out of contract and available to go on a free transfer.
While this will free up the wage bill, it is simply terrible squad management. Many of these players should have either been signed to new deals or should’ve been sold 12 months ago.
A squad rebuild is sorely needed. Fortunately, they have two great attacking talents in Wilfried Zaha and Eberechi Eze. Zaha is at the tail end of his peak and Eze is still growing into his best years. These two are a great starting point for any manager coming in.
The problem is that the positives mostly start and end there.
Of the two appointments that walked away, Favre was by far the more exciting option and would’ve been a great get for the Eagles. Unfortunately, the former Borussia Dortmund manager walked away from a three-year deal this week.
This has left the board having to start from scratch. The current favourites for the position are Sean Dyche, Frank Lampard and Steve Cooper (from Swansea City).
None of these candidates have the same level of experience or pedigree of Favre, but Dyche has shown he knows how to keep a club in the Premier League and how to work with a small, ageing squad.
Dyche’s style of football is also the closest continuation of Hodgson’s, meaning there would be less work needed in the transfer market. However, whoever they do bring in will have a tough time keeping Palace up this season.
It’s not an impossible task, but it will take a great Summer window and a smart managerial appointment to keep them up. Hodgson did a superb job to keep them team out of a relegation scrap over the last few seasons. But now this team is collectively far too old to keep going. Change is needed.
At Spurs, Daniel Levy told fans the club had “lost sight of some key priorities and what’s truly in our DNA.” To his credit, he has tried to find managers with a history of playing an exciting brand of football. However, all of them turned him down.
When Ten Hag signed a contract extension with Ajax and Pochettino opted to stay with PSG, the club then turned to a manager with more recent winning experience than predecessor Mourinho. But then Conte also turned down the club after a breakdown in negotiations.
New Managing Director of Football Fabio Paratici still arrived at the club and he quickly moved for Fonseca, but then when Gattuso became available they switched focus and attempted to bring the former Napoli manager into the fold. Instead, they ended up with neither.
The current reports are that Spurs have moved for yet another Jorge Mendes client, the aforementioned Santo.
This appointment would make a lot more sense for Tottenham than for Palace. The makeup of the Spurs squad is more suitable for Santo’s style of play. Fortunately for the Portuguese the squad is also pretty well set. It is not in a dire need for a rebuild.
However, there is the ever-increasing Harry Kane problem. The English striker has made it very clear that he wants to leave the club in search of glory. Tottenham haven’t won a trophy since the 2008 League Cup win and their seventh place finish last season was a worrying downward trend for the number nine.
While the likes of Pochettino and Conte could’ve conceivably put Spurs back into title contention almost immediately, it is hard to see Santo doing the same if he is to take charge — and knowing Spurs, there is no guarantee he will.
Given Conte walked away from the deal over disagreements over money, it is hard to see Spurs being too active in the transfer window either. While there are some quality players at Tottenham, there are still some areas that could do with improving — especially if Kane is to leave.
Santo’s appointment could be good news for Matt Doherty, who struggled under Mourinho last season. The Irishman thrived under Santo at Wolves and it’s easy to see how he could do so again. This would solve the right back issue that plagued Spurs’ defence last season.
Long-term replacements will need to be looked for with regards to Hugo Lloris and Toby Alderweireld, but the rest of the squad’s most used players are all at their prime years, so a capable manager will have plenty to work with in the squad as it is.
It isn’t quite a disaster for these clubs to have no official announcements made answering who will manage them next season, but that window of catastrophe is quickly closing in.
For various reasons the last number of weeks have been awkward and tumultuous for all three of these clubs, but Everton and Tottenham can still get everything ready in-time for the league season to start.
However, for Crystal Palace, they need to act quickly or else they could be left stranded. August 13 will be here before we know it.
