Everton cycle of self-destruction eerily familiar for Sunderland fans

It's looking increasingly hard for Everton to stop the rot, and Sunderland fans will sympathise.

Michael Graham | Jan 4, 2023

Everton cycle of self-destruction eerily familiar for Sunderland fans /

With the exception of a handful of clubs, it’s never really nice to watch anyone struggle. For Sunderland fans, though, watching Everton right now may bring up a few bad memories.

I write this with absolutely no affiliation with Everton other than general respect. The Toffees are one of the grandest old clubs in English football, a club that values tradition and history and commands some of the best supporters in the country.

And yet, it is sinking, crushed beneath the sheer weight of accumulated expensive mistakes and accelerated by a ‘rot’ from within. We Sunderland fans know it because it is all looking eerily familiar.

Everton’s 4-1 home defeat to Brighton might just see the back of Frank Lampard. If it doesn’t, it’s surely coming pretty soon regardless. Why? Because it is that time of the year - the panic time of the year, the part of the year when a new-manager bounce can have the most impact. Early enough to give them enough time, but too late in the season for rivals to be able to respond.

We know it well because we have seen it. Sunderland fans lived it. It was our home-run swing in what became a perpetual desperate scramble for Premier League survival.

All of the hallmarks are there too. A little immediate bounce, then limping to survival before an end-of-season euphoria at avoiding the drop. Then a slow summer of increasingly uninspiring transfers, pre-season optimism evaporating into inevitable struggle, then all coming to a point with an indefensibly bad borderline comical performance.

For Sunderland in any number of Premier League season, read Everton in 2022/23. Also, though, Everton in 2021/22 as well – and that is the problem. It becomes a cycle, and every time you are forced to repeat it, the harder it becomes to escape.

It wasn’t always this way with Everton. In fact, Everton used to be the team for stability. There was occasionally a Mike Walker along the way, but Howard Kendall (162 games) was replaced by Joe Royle (123 games), who was replaced by Walter Smith (173 games), who was replaced by David Moyes (516 games), who was replaced by Roberto Martinez (140 games).

Since Martinez left in 2016, though, Everton are onto their sixth permanent manager. That’s how it starts.

Then, of course, every new manager coming into a Premier League club is going to want freedom to spend a bit of money, and the more desperate the club gets to attract someone of pedigree the more they cave to the demands.

So they spend. The problem is, there has been that much player turnover that the books still carry amortised spend on players who have already left, and those who remain have been taught one lesson they don’t ever forget: Managers don’t last long, so is there really much point in respecting them?

And, while Lampard is far from the greatest manager around, it’s never really the manager’s fault. Not entirely anyway. The likes of Martin O’Neill, Gus Poyet and Dick Advocaat weren’t bad managers either. Each new manager just has less chance of effecting lasting change.

Surely the worst goal conceded in Everton’s recent history?

That pass from Gueye puts Neville’s against Wigan to shame.

A masterpiece in slapstick #EFC https://t.co/iY66h9lBda
— Matt Jones (@MattJFootball) January 4, 2023

They have to keep on trying, though. It is their only remaining choice, and there is a chance – a chance – they might appoint someone who can bring it all back together and break the cycle. Sam Allardyce, a man who has already managed Everton, was probably that chance for Sunderland, but we’ll never know for sure.

Whatever happens with Everton, it will be eerily familiar for Sunderland fans, and that should be frightening words for anyone on the blue side of Merseyside.

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