Koeman spent millions but he didn’t buy into the Everton way
IN the end, one photograph gives you an insight to this story. On Sunday evening, as Evertonians fumed over their team’s latest abject performance, Ronald Koeman was pictured strolling into a plush Manchester restaurant.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with a manager having a social life. Far from it. But, once again, a smiling Koeman gave his critics reason to believe Everton’s troubles and fortunes were the furthest thing from his mind. It felt as if it had been like that from the start. Koeman was appointed Everton manager on June 14, 2016 after leaving Southampton, but did not start working properly until the first week of July after finishing a holiday in the Caribbean.
He spent a lot of time jetting away. Even after Everton were beaten 1-0 at home by Burnley at the start of this month Koeman flew out of Liverpool rather than stay behind to work on the mounting problems.
This approach jarred around the club, not least as the two previous incumbents — David Moyes and Roberto Martinez — were the first into work and the last to leave.
Given we are now in an era where those who roam the dugout are obsessives, studying and scrutinising every detail to gain an advantage, Koeman was cut from a different cloth.
When he arrived, he was shocked by the fitness level of the players he inherited from Martinez and set about rectifying that. He also imposed new rules, all players needing to report at Finch Farm for 9am. Early results were good and suggested that Koeman could rub shoulders with the other big characters in close proximity.
The players liked Koeman’s no-nonsense approach and even after what proved to be his final game — Sunday’s ruinous 5-2 defeat to Arsenal — some still spoke about how much they admired him as a character and felt the blame should lie with them.
‘We’ve been s***,’ one said bluntly. That may be so but for the £6million a year that Koeman was being paid — and the £150m Everton invested during the last transfer window — it was down to the manager to find a solution when things were going wrong. Increasingly, though, he looked to be a man without answers.
It shouldn’t have been this way. Pre-season could not have gone better, with Koeman basing himself at a hotel in Enschede, Holland. It was a location from which he launched successful Ajax campaigns. But two statistics leap out from the past three months: Everton conceded the first goal 10 times in their last 12 matches; and Koeman made a substitution at half-time in nine of their 17 fixtures. It suggests he kept picking the wrong team.
He will argue that after signing nine new players they should have had the chance to bed in. However, the men he put his faith in have, to put it bluntly, done nothing.
Koeman asked his board to invest £70m in Swansea’s Gylfi Sigurdsson and Ajax’s Davy Klaassen. The Iceland star was the one he implored his board to buy and negotiations with Swansea began in May. But why was he so set on going all the way through to August to get that deal done when the necessity was to buy a striker after Romelu Lukaku joined Manchester United?
Koeman must be held accountable for that error, as must director of football Steve Walsh. They should have been working in tandem but their relationship was at best distant, at worst strained. Koeman has paid the price but that does not mean Walsh is immune to scrutiny. He remains under pressure as the transfer window looms into view.
Come January, Koeman is likely to be somewhere warm — assuming the Dutch FA don’t ask him to resurrect their national team’s fortunes — with his memories of Everton fading.
Put simply, he never had a connection with Everton. He cut himself off from the figures around the training ground who are part of the club’s fabric and never bought into the history. HE
gave the impression he was using Everton as a stepping stone to his dream job — taking over at Barcelona. He denied that,, but some felt it spoke volumes that the last three letters of the number plate on his Bentley read BAR.
There is a story from a sportsman’sn’s dinner, held last May at the Titanicc Hotel near Liverpool waterfront, when Koeman was guest speaker. A crowd of Evertonians had gathered and were eager to hear what was next. His talk, though, left them puzzled.
He told them to be realistic and understand their position in the table. They wanted him to givee them a reason to dream. Instead he left them feeling despair. It is whyy he finds himself back on holiday.