Dyche has avoided catastrophic Lampard Everton mistake that still frustrates me

Manager Sean Dyche walks past images of Everton’s cup-winning teams of the past in the Goodison Park tunnel ahead of Wednesday night’s 3-0 win over Burnley

After the emotional roller-coaster of the previous week, Evertonians were able to savour the twinge of a long since forgotten emotion at Goodison Park on Wednesday night, the hint of a cup run.

A club and fanbase still reeling from the passing of chairman Bill Kenwright was forced to put up with the whispering campaign surrounding the hearing of their profit and sustainability charge with some outlets filling the void created by an absence of hard facts with a dangerous inference that Everton had somehow already been found guilty with a 12-point deduction on its way.

The Blues’ players keep telling us that such matters aren’t even on their lips when it comes to Finch Farm chatter but they along with club staff and loyal but long-suffering supporters must place their faith in the so-called ‘independent commission’ (Who are they? How and why have they been appointed?) and the process they will draw their conclusions from in a case of which there seems to be very little transparency right now.

Those fans who travelled over a thousand miles in the space of four days from Merseyside to Dorset and back twice to watch a brace of thrashings will need no reminder over the resultant scorelines. A 4-1 drubbing in the cup at the hands of a mostly Cherries second string gave the hosts – who had lost their previous four games, including surrendering a 3-1 lead at Elland Road to lose 4-3 to Leeds United last time out – the momentum to then follow that up with a 3-0 victory in the Premier League the following Saturday for a 7-1 ‘aggregate’ success.

Just what was Lampard, a serial winner during his own playing career, ‘saving’ his senior stars for? There was a six-week gap for the World Cup coming up and instead of resting limbs, the decision just left Everton moods brooding as they approached a bleak mid-winter.

While sports science now enables us to monitor individual players’ fitness levels with great accuracy, we’ve all been brainwashed into thinking major tinkering of line-ups should now be the norm for cup games. But why?

For this correspondent the concept of ‘cup keepers’ is one of the biggest fallacies in modern football for this correspondent. Goalies don’t need resting.

It was a generation ago but imagine Neville Southall being told he was being given the night off for cup games? It would be ridiculous and the same goes for Jordan Pickford now who Sean Dyche is thankfully picking.

Having tied down England’s number one to a new long-term contract earlier this year, it would be madness for Everton not to field him in as many matches as possible.

This isn’t the Under-6s where you’re obliged to give everyone a go. Those on the fringes of the first team picture are paid handsomely enough for their services to wait for their chance to come on merit.

The ‘big six’ have the strength in depth within their squads to get away with considerable shuffling of their packs but frankly Everton don’t. Dyche was absolutely right to make minimal changes to his starting line-up against Burnley to build upon the 1-0 win at West Ham United three days earlier and was rewarded with an all-too-rare comfortable 3-0 passage in a competition that the Blues have previously often laboured in.

There’s an audio clip in BBC Sounds’ Everton: Nothing Will Be The Same podcast series put out earlier this month when fan Katie Carter speaks for all Blues by saying she wants to be taking part in a raucous coach welcome at Goodison Park for an FA Cup quarter-final rather than another relegation battle. It’s not exactly an outlandish expectation for a club of the Blues’ size and stature within the game.

Okay it’s the League Cup but Everton are now in the last eight of a competition with a home draw against Fulham to reach the semi-finals where – given that Port Vale have been paired against Middlesbrough – there would be a one in three chance of having a lower division opponent separating you from Wembley. Given the slim pickings for Blues who have followed their team through thin and thinner in recent times, it’s a heady prospect indeed.

Also, whatever you think of him – on arrival Dyche described himself as “a Martmite manager” when referencing his own personality that can divide opinion – Everton are now increasingly looking like a team shaped in their gaffer’s image when it comes to footballing philosophy. This is in stark contrast to the perennial question of “What does a Lampard team actually look like?” that was continually asked by many during his predecessor’s time at the helm.

There can be a certain amount of snobbery in football that so-called more ‘progressive’ styles of play are now preferable than the methods supposedly deployed by Dyche but after romping to promotion from the Championship last season, Vincent Kompany’s new-look Clarets are finding life far more challenging in the Premier League.
Also, after the Goodison Park faithful were often left frustrated by the Blues’ attempts to play a version of ‘tiki-taka’ under Roberto Martinez, there is a strong case that the eighth manager in seven years under Farhad Moshiri actually plays in the best-suited manner for Everton since David Moyes as this Frankenstein’s monster of a squad tries to claim back a distinct identity.

With the club’s want-away owner actually attending a game at Goodison Park for the first time in over two years, with 777 Partners’ Josh Wander and Don Dransfield also looking on as they were at London Stadium on Sunday, it was a timely reminder to those within the corridors of power and any future chiefs what is actually ‘The Everton Way’ and who out there can deliver it. Dyche, who has spoken about how Kenwright pushed to bring him to the club, rightly pointed out this week that the Blues’ best sides of the past always had an edge to them and he wants his own team to possess that in a modern way.

That was embodied by the presence on the pitch to lay wreaths alongside Kenwright’s partner Jenny Seagrove and the late chairman’s daughter Lucy – a beautiful gesture that touched the hearts of everyone – of the club’s last trophy-winning manager, Everton legend Joe Royle. While Royle had grown up with the best traditions of ‘The School of Science’, it was the physicality and directness of his self-proclaimed “Dogs of War” that brought their most-recent silverware to date.

Along with his team-mate Howard Kendall, a title-winner in 1970, Royle is one of just two men to have won trophies with Everton as both a player and a manager. Unfortunately, the way football is geared up now financially, League Championships currently appear to be beyond the Blues’ grasp but if they’re not at least trying to win cups then they have no raison d’etre.