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Wasting £144M and going into the bottom three - why Everton sacked Koeman

Ronald Koeman was fired on Monday, leaving Everton in the relegation zone.
Ronald Koeman was fired on Monday, leaving Everton in the relegation zone.

How, Ronald Koeman might wonder, did it come to this? Everton’s season has unravelled at far greater speed than some of their one-paced players can run. England’s fourth-highest spenders find themselves in the bottom three. They have lost four games by at least three goals. Koeman has lost his job.

His position had become untenable. Supporters deserted him before the board dismissed him. If he retained the players’ backing, their performances rendered it a still greater indictment of his tactics and team selections. Remove him from the equation and perhaps some of this season’s underachievers will be spurred back to form.

Koeman was not the sole culprit, but he was the common denominator in any conversations about how and where it all went wrong. The Dutchman was not just in a wretched run of results. He illustrated that managers, like players, can go through periods of bad form. Skewed decision-making came with consequences. Koeman exhibited an inverse alchemy: everything he touched turned bad.

READ MORE: Everton sack Ronald Koeman

Consider the choice of Idrissa Gueye as the only specialist central midfielder in his valedictory game against Arsenal. It afforded Mesut Ozil, Aaron Ramsey and Alexis Sanchez the freedom of Goodison Park. It gave Gueye so much ground to cover that he lunged in for two tackles he would not win, collected the inevitable cautions and duly departed early. Everton, 2-1 down at the time, went on to lose 5-2.

Or the matches when he fielded all three of Everton’s No. 10s. It looked like they were playing with nine men. When Wayne Rooney, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Davy Klaassen have been on the pitch together, the aggregate score is 6-0, and not to Everton.

Or even the fact that the last goal of his reign came from Oumar Niasse, a player Koeman initially denied a squad number but who, for all his limitations, kept on trying. Perhaps Koeman got Niasse wrong, too.


Or the nine times Koeman made a half-time substitution, often accompanied by a change of shape. They amount to admissions his initial moves were mistakes. Everton have had no settled team, no regular system. Koeman knew neither his best side nor his finest formation.

In what seemed a sideswipe at the Dutchman, Oasis’ ‘The Masterplan’ was selected for the half-time music in the Arsenal game. Koeman did not seem to have one. Not on the pitch and certainly not on the transfer market.

The probability is that this summer is destined to be remembered at Goodison Park as a colossal missed opportunity. It was Everton’s chance to progress and they regressed. Koeman spent £144 million and Everton emerged weaker, losing a 25-goal, £75 million striker in Romelu Lukaku and failing to find a replacement. If the gamble was that Olivier Giroud would arrive, it backfired.

And if others share some of the responsibility, Koeman’s imprint was on the spending spree. He wanted Sigurdsson, at a price 50 percent higher than Everton had ever paid for anyone else, when they needed a centre-forward. Instead, he imported his compatriot Klaassen.

Thinking became blurred, selection complicated. It should have been Rooney or Sigurdsson, not Rooney and Sigurdsson. It shouldn’t have been Klaassen at all; certainly not at £23.6 million, anyway. Ross Barkley, whose Everton career seemed ended by Koeman’s needless bluntness, is injured but looked a superior player to any of the newcomers. Once again, Everton paid a lot to get worse.

Somewhere along the line, the Dutchman forgot the keys to their improvement in the second half of last season: Lukaku, Barkley and Tom Davies, who added dynamism but was benched for the new signings. Stripped of that trio, for different reasons, Everton lacked a cutting edge. Factor in disastrous defending, with Michael Keane’s loss of confidence accompanied by Ashley Williams’ loss of competence, and spring’s well-configured unit became an autumn shambles.

READ MORE: We’ve let him down – Keane backs Koeman after Arsenal capitulation

READ MORE: Gary Neville thinks he is done as a football manager

Like Roberto Martinez before him, Koeman showed little understanding of Everton’s identity, little realisation that the Goodison faithful do not appreciate laboured build-up unless it brings an end product. Like Martinez, home defeats did huge damage to his standing. Apart from Koeman’s first two games on the road, Everton’s away record was dreadful. Excellence at Goodison compensated last season, bringing a respectable seventh-place finish. Not this; 18th position is embarrassing.

And when results dried up, Koeman could not draw on a bank of goodwill. His capacity to blame his players, or indeed anyone other than himself, revived issues about his man-management that were raised when AZ Alkmaar sacked him. An eloquent talker was perhaps too open, but his rhetoric showed little affinity with Everton or understanding of its identity.

The Holland job may beckon for Koeman but few ever thought his relationship with Everton would be a long-term affair. Instead it lasted 16 months; long enough to spend the biggest windfall in Everton’s history. Koeman’s disappointment may be assuaged by a huge pay-off, but money was at the root of his problems. With expenditure comes expectations of excellence. Instead, his Everton were shocking this season. It is why it is no surprise Koeman has gone.