Sean Dyche discusses potential of new contract at Everton

Sean Dyche believes he’s still earning the right to be Everton manager in the eyes of the fanbase despite steering the club to Premier League safety before the final month of the season in the face of two separate points deductions.

The former Burnley boss took charge of the Blues when they were joint bottom of the table at the end of January last year and after keeping them up last term, he got them over the line in 2023/24 ahead of tonight’s trip to Luton Town with three consecutive victories in the space of a week at Goodison Park.

Dyche – who confirmed that director of Kevin Thelwell has not yet spoken to him about a new contract – admitted that it’s been a roller-coaster experience for him at Everton in terms of how he is viewed by the supporters but he believes he is still learning on the job despite the significant improvement on last season despite the difficult circumstances he has been working in.

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The Blues boss, who is contracted until the summer of 2025. said: “At the end of last season they think it was a good fit. Then they say it wasn’t a good fit. Then we got the points (deduction) and won four on the trot and it was the best fit in the world. Some obviously misquoted my fun, I tried to have a bit of fun and said ‘the Messiah’ but it got ruined and I got slaughtered for that even though I wasn’t meaning it literally.

“Then you’re not a fit and now I am a fit again. But that is life as a manager.

“Some just have a miraculous period where they fit regardless. It’s just a thing about football and a thing about perception, we all do it, there are certain managers at certain clubs, they seem to get a really long lifeline where they sort of fit.

“I think and I made it clear when I got here, I think it’s fair, I said I have to earn the right to fit in here and I have to earn the right to be Everton’s manager and I still think I am doing. So I don’t take it for granted, I can assure you.

“The highs and lows, the hits and misses, the hero to zero as I call it, that’s just part of the job. Here it’s just more evident, quicker to go up and down and more drastic I think.

“It’s really quite sharp it goes from, ‘yeah, you know what you’re doing, no you don’t, yes you do’. At other clubs is less so but that’s what I’ve learned in my time – not that I’m moaning about it in anyway.”

The 52-year-old admitted that his job at Everton has been different to the one that was pitched to him – mainly due to the points deductions, without which the team would now be level on points with Brighton & Hove Albion – but explains how he’s learned to take the knocks that come his way. Asked if he relishes such challenges, Dyche said: “No, it’s very taxing, it’s very tiring. There is lots of anxiety and lots of stress.

“Most of my career has been built on keeping going forwards. I broke my leg at 17 at Nottingham Forest and thought that could be the end, I had four back operations and thought that could be the end but I still got 500 games in, I got booed off at Bristol City in front of everyone with them saying ‘we want him out’ and I was captain – that wasn’t enjoyable – but you keep going.

“Everyone thinks it was a beautiful story at Burnley but four out of the first eight months I got booed off every week. Everyone thinks it’s a magical story but it wasn’t, there were a lot of hard yards there, just a different kind.

“If that’s the fabric of your life, you tend to rely on it. You tend to go, ‘this is what it is’.

“It’s very, very tiring and very, very hard work but you go, ‘oh well, wake up, get on with it, stop crying,’ as my dad used to say. That’s the challenge, get on with it, ‘sweep the floor and make sure it’s a bloody clean floor’ – they were the rules I was brought up with and my dad brought me up like that so you keep cracking on, take the hits and get on with it.”

With his current deal expiring at the end of next season when Everton are due to play their final match at Goodison Park after 133 years, Dyche is refusing to look too far ahead at the prospect of leading the team into their new 52,888 capacity stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock. He said: “It’s not on my watch in that it’s once-in-a-lifetime for someone, it might be me, it might be someone else, those are the challenges of football. I’ve never lost sight of the fact that I’m a custodian.

“Can I take care of it? Can it be good in my hands and can it be better? I think we’re showing signs of that but there’s no guarantees.

“I haven’t got magic dust. Nobody’s got magic dust. I’ve been doing it all my life. I speak to the guys who apparently have got magic dust and they say, ‘I haven’t got magic dust’, so go figure.”