Talking Point: Everton’s dramatic 3-2 win at Crystal Palace was very different to a previous trip to Selhurst Park last year
They’re still way off where Sean Dyche and Blues fans would want them to be but Everton are now a different beast than they were in the not-too-distant past thanks to his managerial endeavours.
It was only on March 20 last year that an Everton side came to Selhurst Park and were torn apart 4-0. Following that meek capitulation, then Blues boss Frank Lampard said: “There is only so much you can keep trying to butter someone up to get confidence. You’re playing at the cut-throat end of football; this is the FA Cup quarter-finals. If you haven’t got the confidence to play, you can flip it and say: ‘Have you got the b****** to play?’ Apologies but that’s the football term. We didn’t play that badly today, Palace didn’t play that well. It was a lack of confidence, and a lack of what I just said. It wasn’t tactics.”
While Lampard was subsequently able to secure his own dramatic 3-2 win over Crystal Palace a couple of months later to preserve Everton’s Premier League status for another season, plus another Goodison victory over them, 3-0 in the October, the latter result proved to be a false dawn in a season that produced the lowest equivalent points total in the club’s history. A serial winner throughout his glorious playing career, the Chelsea legend was able to heal the rifts at a club fractured by Farhad Moshiri’s misguided appointment of former Kop Idol Rafael Benitez, who in addition to his past employment across Stanley Park with Liverpool was a manager long past the peak of his powers. But the reality was that the Blues were diving headfirst towards a first relegation in 72 years on Lampard’s watch last term before he was finally relieved of his duties.
Let’s not forget that Everton will still joint bottom of the Premier League with Southampton when Dyche was appointed in late January. But even though they were the only club fighting against the drop not to add to their squad in the winter transfer window – despite the best efforts of their new manager, director of football Kevin Thelwell and others – he still managed to keep them up. It’s been far from plain sailing for the 52-year-old, who previously spent the best part of a decade getting Burnley to punch above their weight on a relatively shoestring budget – he’s proclaimed that he reckoned he had one book in him from the tales of his time at Turf Moor but he’s already got enough material for a trilogy from his first few months at Goodison Park – but the signs are now there that this group of players are starting to turn a corner.