Everton interested in replacing Koeman with Rafa Benitez
By Cay North
After an awful start, Everton could move on from Ronald Koeman and bring in a familiar face and former rival manager.
Everton has played eight matches this season, and despite spending big at the window to improve, they’re looking like one of the worst five or six teams in the Premier League.
It’s strange that they’re the big underachievers this year, after qualifying for the Europa League last season in Ronald Koeman’s first year with the club.
These results come after they’ve added talents such as Gylfi Sigurdsson, Jordan Pickford, Davy Klaasen, and Michael Keane. They also brought back homegrown forward Wayne Rooney, which should have given them some leadership that they lacked during the last season.
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At the minimum, Everton should be firmly in place to return to the Europa League. Instead, they’re sitting in 16th place with a poor record of two wins, two draws, and four losses.
The losses aren’t as bad when you look at the opponents. Three of them came at the hands of Chelsea, Spurs, and Manchester United.
However, there’s also a home defeat to Burnley, and Everton looked completely lost when Atalanta defeated them in the Europa League group stage. Their losses to the title contenders weren’t close ones, either. Chelsea defeated them 2-0. They lost 3-0 at home against Spurs, and 4-0 at Old Trafford.
When a team improves their squad on paper this much, and still underachieves, the blame usually goes to the manager. After all, Everton’s new signings have all had recent successes at other clubs. The problem looks to be with Everton, not its new talent.
In this case, the manager in question is Ronald Koeman, who took Everton to the Europa League in his debut season. The club finished seventh, finishing with 61 points and an 18+ goal differential. This season, however, the goal differential has dropped all the way to a terrible -8, which is worse than 18th placed Leicester and tied with 19th placed Bournemouth.
While the initial rumors have been rejected, Everton have their eyes on Rafa Benitez, who is most known for winning the Champions League in 2005 with Everton’s main rival. Benitez joined Newcastle United after a failed stint with Real Madrid, and led the team back to the Premier League as winners of the Championship.
Their success didn’t end with immediate promotion. Newcastle is currently ninth in the league, and they look competitive despite fan discontent with their ownership. Despite being known for his time at Liverpool, Everton would make sense as a destination for Benitez because of his ties to Merseyside.
The Everton board has also backed Koeman, but regardless of their support, he’s admitted that the club is in the middle of a crisis. It doesn’t appear that a change will happen right now, but it’s still early in the season, and if the failure continues, the support of the board will likely disappear quickly.
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If the Toffees do make a change at the manager position, the talk of Benitez being an option will probably start back up again. Managers have denied interest in other jobs before and changed their minds later, and clubs have also sacked managers that they’ve previously expressed confidence in, so the story is worth keeping an eye on as the season develops.