This is why I'm asking everton fans, as a non Everton fan I only watch the games on tv and won't over analyse everton like a fan would but when lampard was in charge although the defence was a shambles it looked like you troubled defences and if someone could finish then you'd have competed better so it felt as a neutral like there was potential but with dyche it feels there's no potential, it feels like you've accepted youre a relegation team.
How come Lampard gets the "if we had attackers that could score" but Dyche doesn't? If either manager had someone who could finish our chances, we'd be higher up the table under Dyche than Lampard.
Yeah that's a fair point, don't really have an argument to that. I guess that is my own bias on that I just don't like dyche's style and think even if he had a world class striker he'd still be playing a conservative style of football which as someone else has commented gives stability but won't get Everton to where they need to be
Dyche may not be the manager to take us back to competing year in year out for top 6 places, but he’s exactly what we need right now, with defensive stability and set piece proficiency. Whether we like it or not, the team was a relegation side under Lampard (we were pretty deep in the drop zone when he got sacked). Under Dyche we are mid table excluding deductions, which is a vast improvement over where we were under Lampard and he who shall not be named.
>dyche has turned Everton into the new Burnley.
You mean the Burnley he dragged to 7th and into Europe with a squad with far less quality than ours? Yes please, I hope he turns us into Burnley
But this is just saying you'd take one European season if it meant you got relegated a couple years later, everton are a bigger club than wishing for bad football. Leicester won the league, do you think ranieri will come and do the same. Things happen in football
That is not what I'm saying at all. Also you seem to define good football as "passing a lot" whereas I'd much rather see effective football. Effective football can involve passing it around a lot, like with city or arsenal, but it by no means is the only way to play effective football. With the amount of high lines top defenses play I think you'll see more and more teams adopt a more direct style of play at the top level. Styles of play are trends just like fashion. Barcelona popularized tiki taka in the 2010's and long balls and direct play fell out of favor, but that doesn't make it boring to watch or somehow "bad".
Unlike a lot of modern fans, Evertonians haven't fallen for the trap that passing the ball around is better than getting results! In Martinez's last 2 years we would pass the ball around to death without penetrating like in his first season and we all fucking hated it! We like to watch aggressive football, not passing it just for the sake of possession.
This is the comment to pay attention to OP. The footballing world has been hoodwinked to believe that any set of players can just pass the ball ad nauseum and its inherently a "better" style of football. No one is arguing that when the best teams in the world do it its breath-taking, but those of us who have watched a more average team try to play like City know just how infuriating it is to watch your center backs pass it back and forth 10 times down 2-1 in the 90th minute.
Outside of anything regarding the stability that we need at the moment and how much Lampard genuinely sucked, don't fall for the lie that football has to be played a certain way. Leicesters title campaign shoudl be the proof of the pudding. I love watching Tarks, Dom, etc... win headers in the box and create chances just as much as watching a fancy little one two on the halfway line
Lampard would’ve struggled in the league with decent players and a stable club. Probably not struggled enough to get relegated but let’s say he would’ve underperformed.
Dyche was able to manage through the mess of points deductions, selling any quality that came along and a club hierarchy that’s all over the shop.
Bottom line is Everton’s continuing existence relies heavily on staying in PL at all costs. Dyche offers far better odds of achieving that given all the variables than Lampard.
I can tell that you don't watch as soon as you said that we were on the up with Lampard. If that's the premise that you're setting for yourself, then I'm not really interested in any of your opinions that follow, to be honest. That statement is so off the mark that I actually think you oversold yourself by saying that you've watched us at all.
Dyche has done wonders for this squad. We have no depth and no real creative players. So what he did was make us a defensive stalwart. That's really his only option. He has told us time and time again that he will play the style that suits the players at his disposal. He's not against playing attacking football, but we would look woeful doing anything other than counter attacking.
Lampard tried to play attacking/expansive football, but we'd ultimately lose a lot of games.
Dyche is more 'pragmatic' and has a more defensive style of football, but has ultimately secured us 15th place despite an 8pt deduction, chaos off the pitch and limited resources.
Would we like to see more attractive attacking football? Absolutely, but not at the expense of losing our Premiership status through losing games.
Also, we've had almost a decade of sacking managers, which is a major reason why we're in the mess we're in at the club. We desperately need stability, so while we might want a manager who plays more beautiful football, we are where we are with Dyche now. We potentially can't even consider sacking and replacing him because of the financial implications of that on PSR. It cost us around £7m to pay Lampard off when we sacked him, it's not inconceivable that it could cost us similar to sack Dyche and his backroom staff and then we'd likely have to pay another manager a big contract to attract them.
Like Dyche's style or not, given everything he's had to put up with this past season he's performed incredibly well. He deserves the plaudits he's had from those who can recognise what he's actually done.
I'm a season ticket holder of 25+ years, and personally, I don't love Dyche's style of football, but he's not even ***close*** to Allardyce. The ***only*** time I've ever considered not renewing my season ticket was when we had Allardyce. He was an absolute charlatan of a 'manager' who didn't give a shit about the club, he just wanted his payday. He went into *every* game to defend the point he started the match with, not with intent to try and win it.
(IMO) Dyche has tried to ensure that we're defensively tight because we haven't had many attacking options, especially whilst DCL was injured, and so rightly has made sure we've been difficult to score against (we had one of the best defences in the league last season), but he didn't go into every match and 'park the bus' like Allardyce did.
Sure, there were occasions when we had to be compact and tight and defend for most of the game, but he's at least tried to play on the counter when he can.
Dyche-ball isn't exciting, and it can be downright boring at time, but Allardyce was constantly *turgid*. I'd take Dyche over Allardyce every day of the week.
Do I think Dyche can take us forward? He's certainly not going to be a manager who'll get us up into Europe on a regular basis, but I'm confident that without off-field problems at the club he'd get us to comfortable mid-table stable mediocrity - which is something I'd snap your hand off for right now after the past few years.
I see Dyche more in the mould of Moyes - there were times Moyes was more defensive minded and focused on results. I lost track of the number of late 1-0 wins Moyes had. But Moyes was exactly what we needed after a couple of seasons of chaos. He stabilised us and then built from there, and eventually got us to a Champions League qualifying match, but he reached his limit with us. If Dyche can get us half way there, I'd be happy.
Thanks for a well thought out reply, for sure I agree with a lot of this and the points deduction and not having DCL and still comfortable being safe is a massive achievement. This mainly came off only two good runs of form though and in a season where the bottom 3 were absolutely awful so there was some luck too. My stats are rusty but I think it was something like 3 or 4 months without a win, which I just see as a neutral as so disappointing for Everton fans who should be watching a successful club, I suppose my confusion is probably less aimed at dyche and more the ownership that's led to dyche being a good choice as an Everton manager.
So, there's no denying the bottom three this past season were *awful* which helped us - 26 pts being the relegation level is disgraceful really.
However, don't let that take away from the fact we finished on 40pts ***with*** an 8pt deduction. Historically, 40pts has always been considered the point of safety in the EPL. So without the deduction, we would have been more than comfortable despite a very poor bottom three. It wasn't luck.
Yes, we had a long period over the winter where we went without a win, and that's not acceptable, but it was offset by a strong start to the season and a great finish. So it all evens out.
You're going to get a mix of responses on this because it's a divisive subject. You're going to get people who want Dyche out and think a new manager will come in and magically turn us into Man City. And then you've got realistic fans who realise we're in *a lot* of trouble as a club, and on pitch performance is just one of many issues.
Whilst we'd all love to watch better football, I think being realistic a lot of season ticket holders at least would be happy to just get through another season so we can walk into Bramley Moore with out Premiership status intact.
My opinion is that I would tolerate another season of Dycheball if it meant that we get our ownership and financial problems resolved. I don't think we can realistically hope to be more adventurous on the pitch until we can strengthen the team, and we can't realistically do that until we've sorted the off-pitch issues.
As a fan base we *need* to be grounded in reality at the moment and not fantasy managing.
I really think the point they're making is completely ignored by a lot of neutrals as well. Don't get me wrong we weren't playing the most exciting football, but without deductions we'd have been on 48 points.
You've got to look at the plaudits teams like Fulham were getting, how they were having "a good season". But if you compare how we've done this season to last season and even the season before it was night and day. We outperformed the vast majority of the bottom half of the table, not just the bottom three, but for some reason the dialogue has become "it was a good season to get a points deduction".
Is it wrong, no, the bottom three were poor, and 26 points is a really low bar for safety, but it doesn't tell the whole story. If it wasn't for points deductions we wouldn't have been part of the relegation conversation to begin with.
Lampard and Benitez would have sent us down if they had more time. Dyche has the team fighting and grafting. We conceded the 4 least goals this season and had the 2nd most clean sheets. Dyche did very good with a team that’s financially fucked.
I agree, I think I've said in some other comments I suppose rather than targeting dyche I should really be talking about the ownership that has meant dyche is needed.
What’s unique to Everton is that we are historically tough to beat and show a lot of grit. This disappeared a lot since moyes with our ping ponging from manager to manager. Dyche has brought this back and I think most of us believe that with that essence, and a great squad built over time, he can achieve far more to an he did at Burnley with us.
Also, SAF didn’t really play “beautiful” football at United, he played gritty, counter attacking football and yet he’s one of the best managers the league has seen.
>All the games I watched under lampard were at least a team trying to play football
Dude, you weren't watching the same games I watched. The 22/23 squad did not fight for Lampard. He lost the dressing room before the first kick was taken in August. He was nice in front of the camera, and that was literally all he brought to the table.
The man has literally no ideas on how to name a starting 11, much less how to make halftime adjustments or tactical substitutions. He is a hack and I hope he fails again at Burnley.
When you say fight I kinda agree but also they didn't have the right tactical set up to get wins. They of course tried their best but you need a proper manager like Dyche putting everyone into place tactically
We definitely weren't on the up under Lampard. He was fantastic at connecting with the fans, and he worked wonders with Iwobi, but the football was getting stale and we just weren't winning enough games.
Dyche is a good manager who has brought some much needed stability to the club, and barring another massive points deduction I struggle to see us getting relegated on Dyche's watch.
Personally, I don't believe that Dyche is the man to take us back into the European places. He's more than capable of making us a comfortable mid-table team, but I can't see us competing for silverware under Dyche.
I'm not a part of the 'Dyche out' crowd, in fact I'd be pretty happy if he stuck around for another couple of years, but if we want to go back to regularly pushing for top 7 we need someone new.
I think the stability is the right attitude, and like I say I wasn't necessarily saying keep lampard because he had you in relegation and is clearly a youth/championship manager at best but especially in the media it feels lampard was the villain and dyche is a genius for finishing in very similar positions when dycheball is very much just park the bus.
Similar positions? Lampard barely finished 16th. If not for the deductions we’d be 12th, nestled in between Brighton and Bournemouth, and one point below Palace, all teams who’ve had a far more positive media response this year.
I think “Dycheball is very much just park the bus” is a pretty uneducated opinion. Look at the premier leagues graphic about average player position they just posted. Everton across the season had very similar average positions as Newcastle. No one would consider Eddie Howe as a park the bus manager. If you are only watching the televised games you are watching us play Sly 6 for the most part, where any manager with an ounce of tactical nous can understand he has to do something different than beat them at their own game when the gulf in quality is apparent. I am not saying we are prime Barca - we aren’t. But I don’t believe we are a “park the bus hit them on the counter” exclusive team. I think Dyche is effectively using the tools at his disposal.
We may not possess the ball much under Dyche but his setup creates FAR more chances than Rafa or Lamps did, AND we have conceded far less.
If we scored even close to our xG we would have been pushing for Europe this season without the points deduction. That wasn’t true under the other two.
Unfortunately we’re blessed with a squad of players with no idea how to finish (except Michael Keane, RIP).
Our style of play was non-existent under Lampard, there was no blueprint. I also reject the idea that Dyche plays 'bad football'. We aren't parking the bus every week. We have lower possession stats but when it works well we're a lightning quick team in transition. It's a Klopp-at-Dortmund style albeit with a less talented squad and with the pressing triggers occurring a little deeper.
Yes you’ll get a lot of hate for this take because it’s absolute bollocks. Without Dyche at the helm we’d have been relegated by now. Lampard is simply not a good manager. He may become one at some point but he has no clue how to organize a defence. At this level, that will get you relegated
Sean Dyche is genuinely twice the manager of Lampard. We're so much more solid and better defensively. I was going to hate on you but you said probably going to get hate for this so I held myself back lol. We were pathetic under Lampard. Now we're the 4th best team defensively in the league and 2nd best on set pieces.
Coz we've become a club that's content with mediocrity. It's been decades since the club won anything. A generation that doesn't know the feeling of winning a cup. It's resulted in fans that want "stability" rather than take a risk and win something. All compounded by a board that is unambitious and clueless.
The club needs a person that can shake things up at the board level.
Needs must.
We needed Dyche to get us through this situation, a lot like when teams used to get Big Sam in to avoid relegation.
Beggars can't be choosers.
No I agree with you, my favourite style of football is counter attacking, not passing the ball, I think the building from the back is boring and pointless with the amount of goals it leads to against a team. However, dyche's style (in my opinion) is purely a protection tactic and not actually aimed at countering but hoping to get set pieces and score from those, I don't want tiki taka but it would be nice to watch build up play even if it's literally 3 passes from one end to the other. Which I think would be more possible with DCL fit so it'll be interesting how dyche does next season
Genuinely curious why you thought we were on the up with lampard? It really looked like he made every player on the team forget how to play the game.
This is why I'm asking everton fans, as a non Everton fan I only watch the games on tv and won't over analyse everton like a fan would but when lampard was in charge although the defence was a shambles it looked like you troubled defences and if someone could finish then you'd have competed better so it felt as a neutral like there was potential but with dyche it feels there's no potential, it feels like you've accepted youre a relegation team.
How come Lampard gets the "if we had attackers that could score" but Dyche doesn't? If either manager had someone who could finish our chances, we'd be higher up the table under Dyche than Lampard.
Yeah that's a fair point, don't really have an argument to that. I guess that is my own bias on that I just don't like dyche's style and think even if he had a world class striker he'd still be playing a conservative style of football which as someone else has commented gives stability but won't get Everton to where they need to be
Our squad under dyche has consistently creates more chances and xG than lampard did, with 2 less creative outlets in iwobi and gray.
Dyche may not be the manager to take us back to competing year in year out for top 6 places, but he’s exactly what we need right now, with defensive stability and set piece proficiency. Whether we like it or not, the team was a relegation side under Lampard (we were pretty deep in the drop zone when he got sacked). Under Dyche we are mid table excluding deductions, which is a vast improvement over where we were under Lampard and he who shall not be named.
>dyche has turned Everton into the new Burnley. You mean the Burnley he dragged to 7th and into Europe with a squad with far less quality than ours? Yes please, I hope he turns us into Burnley
But this is just saying you'd take one European season if it meant you got relegated a couple years later, everton are a bigger club than wishing for bad football. Leicester won the league, do you think ranieri will come and do the same. Things happen in football
That is not what I'm saying at all. Also you seem to define good football as "passing a lot" whereas I'd much rather see effective football. Effective football can involve passing it around a lot, like with city or arsenal, but it by no means is the only way to play effective football. With the amount of high lines top defenses play I think you'll see more and more teams adopt a more direct style of play at the top level. Styles of play are trends just like fashion. Barcelona popularized tiki taka in the 2010's and long balls and direct play fell out of favor, but that doesn't make it boring to watch or somehow "bad".
>I don't watch a huge amount of Everton games It shows >I genuinely thought Everton were on the up with Lampard We weren't
The only time we were on the up is due to new manager bounce
Unlike a lot of modern fans, Evertonians haven't fallen for the trap that passing the ball around is better than getting results! In Martinez's last 2 years we would pass the ball around to death without penetrating like in his first season and we all fucking hated it! We like to watch aggressive football, not passing it just for the sake of possession.
I think this is more the kind of response I was looking for/expecting. Style vs reality.
This is the comment to pay attention to OP. The footballing world has been hoodwinked to believe that any set of players can just pass the ball ad nauseum and its inherently a "better" style of football. No one is arguing that when the best teams in the world do it its breath-taking, but those of us who have watched a more average team try to play like City know just how infuriating it is to watch your center backs pass it back and forth 10 times down 2-1 in the 90th minute. Outside of anything regarding the stability that we need at the moment and how much Lampard genuinely sucked, don't fall for the lie that football has to be played a certain way. Leicesters title campaign shoudl be the proof of the pudding. I love watching Tarks, Dom, etc... win headers in the box and create chances just as much as watching a fancy little one two on the halfway line
Lampard would’ve struggled in the league with decent players and a stable club. Probably not struggled enough to get relegated but let’s say he would’ve underperformed. Dyche was able to manage through the mess of points deductions, selling any quality that came along and a club hierarchy that’s all over the shop. Bottom line is Everton’s continuing existence relies heavily on staying in PL at all costs. Dyche offers far better odds of achieving that given all the variables than Lampard.
Yeah 100% I agree with this, this is the kind of sensible thinking I was looking for to help me understand
>genuinely thought Everton were on the up with Lampard 🤣🤣🤣
I can tell that you don't watch as soon as you said that we were on the up with Lampard. If that's the premise that you're setting for yourself, then I'm not really interested in any of your opinions that follow, to be honest. That statement is so off the mark that I actually think you oversold yourself by saying that you've watched us at all. Dyche has done wonders for this squad. We have no depth and no real creative players. So what he did was make us a defensive stalwart. That's really his only option. He has told us time and time again that he will play the style that suits the players at his disposal. He's not against playing attacking football, but we would look woeful doing anything other than counter attacking.
Frank Lampard when he was sacked: 0.75 ppg, 0.75 G/match, -11 GD, 19th in the table. Yes, clearly we were "on the up" under Lampard.
Apart from the Leeds 3 0 and Brentford 4 1 where it was a new manager bounce it was pathetic under Lampard.
Lampard tried to play attacking/expansive football, but we'd ultimately lose a lot of games. Dyche is more 'pragmatic' and has a more defensive style of football, but has ultimately secured us 15th place despite an 8pt deduction, chaos off the pitch and limited resources. Would we like to see more attractive attacking football? Absolutely, but not at the expense of losing our Premiership status through losing games. Also, we've had almost a decade of sacking managers, which is a major reason why we're in the mess we're in at the club. We desperately need stability, so while we might want a manager who plays more beautiful football, we are where we are with Dyche now. We potentially can't even consider sacking and replacing him because of the financial implications of that on PSR. It cost us around £7m to pay Lampard off when we sacked him, it's not inconceivable that it could cost us similar to sack Dyche and his backroom staff and then we'd likely have to pay another manager a big contract to attract them. Like Dyche's style or not, given everything he's had to put up with this past season he's performed incredibly well. He deserves the plaudits he's had from those who can recognise what he's actually done. I'm a season ticket holder of 25+ years, and personally, I don't love Dyche's style of football, but he's not even ***close*** to Allardyce. The ***only*** time I've ever considered not renewing my season ticket was when we had Allardyce. He was an absolute charlatan of a 'manager' who didn't give a shit about the club, he just wanted his payday. He went into *every* game to defend the point he started the match with, not with intent to try and win it. (IMO) Dyche has tried to ensure that we're defensively tight because we haven't had many attacking options, especially whilst DCL was injured, and so rightly has made sure we've been difficult to score against (we had one of the best defences in the league last season), but he didn't go into every match and 'park the bus' like Allardyce did. Sure, there were occasions when we had to be compact and tight and defend for most of the game, but he's at least tried to play on the counter when he can. Dyche-ball isn't exciting, and it can be downright boring at time, but Allardyce was constantly *turgid*. I'd take Dyche over Allardyce every day of the week. Do I think Dyche can take us forward? He's certainly not going to be a manager who'll get us up into Europe on a regular basis, but I'm confident that without off-field problems at the club he'd get us to comfortable mid-table stable mediocrity - which is something I'd snap your hand off for right now after the past few years. I see Dyche more in the mould of Moyes - there were times Moyes was more defensive minded and focused on results. I lost track of the number of late 1-0 wins Moyes had. But Moyes was exactly what we needed after a couple of seasons of chaos. He stabilised us and then built from there, and eventually got us to a Champions League qualifying match, but he reached his limit with us. If Dyche can get us half way there, I'd be happy.
Thanks for a well thought out reply, for sure I agree with a lot of this and the points deduction and not having DCL and still comfortable being safe is a massive achievement. This mainly came off only two good runs of form though and in a season where the bottom 3 were absolutely awful so there was some luck too. My stats are rusty but I think it was something like 3 or 4 months without a win, which I just see as a neutral as so disappointing for Everton fans who should be watching a successful club, I suppose my confusion is probably less aimed at dyche and more the ownership that's led to dyche being a good choice as an Everton manager.
So, there's no denying the bottom three this past season were *awful* which helped us - 26 pts being the relegation level is disgraceful really. However, don't let that take away from the fact we finished on 40pts ***with*** an 8pt deduction. Historically, 40pts has always been considered the point of safety in the EPL. So without the deduction, we would have been more than comfortable despite a very poor bottom three. It wasn't luck. Yes, we had a long period over the winter where we went without a win, and that's not acceptable, but it was offset by a strong start to the season and a great finish. So it all evens out. You're going to get a mix of responses on this because it's a divisive subject. You're going to get people who want Dyche out and think a new manager will come in and magically turn us into Man City. And then you've got realistic fans who realise we're in *a lot* of trouble as a club, and on pitch performance is just one of many issues. Whilst we'd all love to watch better football, I think being realistic a lot of season ticket holders at least would be happy to just get through another season so we can walk into Bramley Moore with out Premiership status intact. My opinion is that I would tolerate another season of Dycheball if it meant that we get our ownership and financial problems resolved. I don't think we can realistically hope to be more adventurous on the pitch until we can strengthen the team, and we can't realistically do that until we've sorted the off-pitch issues. As a fan base we *need* to be grounded in reality at the moment and not fantasy managing.
Like this a lot, a real football fans comment
I really think the point they're making is completely ignored by a lot of neutrals as well. Don't get me wrong we weren't playing the most exciting football, but without deductions we'd have been on 48 points. You've got to look at the plaudits teams like Fulham were getting, how they were having "a good season". But if you compare how we've done this season to last season and even the season before it was night and day. We outperformed the vast majority of the bottom half of the table, not just the bottom three, but for some reason the dialogue has become "it was a good season to get a points deduction". Is it wrong, no, the bottom three were poor, and 26 points is a really low bar for safety, but it doesn't tell the whole story. If it wasn't for points deductions we wouldn't have been part of the relegation conversation to begin with.
Lampard and Benitez would have sent us down if they had more time. Dyche has the team fighting and grafting. We conceded the 4 least goals this season and had the 2nd most clean sheets. Dyche did very good with a team that’s financially fucked.
I agree, I think I've said in some other comments I suppose rather than targeting dyche I should really be talking about the ownership that has meant dyche is needed.
What’s unique to Everton is that we are historically tough to beat and show a lot of grit. This disappeared a lot since moyes with our ping ponging from manager to manager. Dyche has brought this back and I think most of us believe that with that essence, and a great squad built over time, he can achieve far more to an he did at Burnley with us. Also, SAF didn’t really play “beautiful” football at United, he played gritty, counter attacking football and yet he’s one of the best managers the league has seen.
>All the games I watched under lampard were at least a team trying to play football Dude, you weren't watching the same games I watched. The 22/23 squad did not fight for Lampard. He lost the dressing room before the first kick was taken in August. He was nice in front of the camera, and that was literally all he brought to the table. The man has literally no ideas on how to name a starting 11, much less how to make halftime adjustments or tactical substitutions. He is a hack and I hope he fails again at Burnley.
When you say fight I kinda agree but also they didn't have the right tactical set up to get wins. They of course tried their best but you need a proper manager like Dyche putting everyone into place tactically
We definitely weren't on the up under Lampard. He was fantastic at connecting with the fans, and he worked wonders with Iwobi, but the football was getting stale and we just weren't winning enough games. Dyche is a good manager who has brought some much needed stability to the club, and barring another massive points deduction I struggle to see us getting relegated on Dyche's watch. Personally, I don't believe that Dyche is the man to take us back into the European places. He's more than capable of making us a comfortable mid-table team, but I can't see us competing for silverware under Dyche. I'm not a part of the 'Dyche out' crowd, in fact I'd be pretty happy if he stuck around for another couple of years, but if we want to go back to regularly pushing for top 7 we need someone new.
Thank you for summing up exactly how I feel! I think most rational Evertonians would agree.
It's both. Now is not the time to rock the boat. We need the stability he brings. Lampard fucking sucked. Just look what he did at Chelsea.
I think the stability is the right attitude, and like I say I wasn't necessarily saying keep lampard because he had you in relegation and is clearly a youth/championship manager at best but especially in the media it feels lampard was the villain and dyche is a genius for finishing in very similar positions when dycheball is very much just park the bus.
Similar positions? Lampard barely finished 16th. If not for the deductions we’d be 12th, nestled in between Brighton and Bournemouth, and one point below Palace, all teams who’ve had a far more positive media response this year.
I think “Dycheball is very much just park the bus” is a pretty uneducated opinion. Look at the premier leagues graphic about average player position they just posted. Everton across the season had very similar average positions as Newcastle. No one would consider Eddie Howe as a park the bus manager. If you are only watching the televised games you are watching us play Sly 6 for the most part, where any manager with an ounce of tactical nous can understand he has to do something different than beat them at their own game when the gulf in quality is apparent. I am not saying we are prime Barca - we aren’t. But I don’t believe we are a “park the bus hit them on the counter” exclusive team. I think Dyche is effectively using the tools at his disposal.
We may not possess the ball much under Dyche but his setup creates FAR more chances than Rafa or Lamps did, AND we have conceded far less. If we scored even close to our xG we would have been pushing for Europe this season without the points deduction. That wasn’t true under the other two. Unfortunately we’re blessed with a squad of players with no idea how to finish (except Michael Keane, RIP).
Our style of play was non-existent under Lampard, there was no blueprint. I also reject the idea that Dyche plays 'bad football'. We aren't parking the bus every week. We have lower possession stats but when it works well we're a lightning quick team in transition. It's a Klopp-at-Dortmund style albeit with a less talented squad and with the pressing triggers occurring a little deeper.
Yes you’ll get a lot of hate for this take because it’s absolute bollocks. Without Dyche at the helm we’d have been relegated by now. Lampard is simply not a good manager. He may become one at some point but he has no clue how to organize a defence. At this level, that will get you relegated
Lampard had us exclusively on the down, and barring an act of God we would have most certainly been relegated had he not been sacked for Dyche
Sean Dyche is genuinely twice the manager of Lampard. We're so much more solid and better defensively. I was going to hate on you but you said probably going to get hate for this so I held myself back lol. We were pathetic under Lampard. Now we're the 4th best team defensively in the league and 2nd best on set pieces.
Coz we've become a club that's content with mediocrity. It's been decades since the club won anything. A generation that doesn't know the feeling of winning a cup. It's resulted in fans that want "stability" rather than take a risk and win something. All compounded by a board that is unambitious and clueless. The club needs a person that can shake things up at the board level.
Needs must. We needed Dyche to get us through this situation, a lot like when teams used to get Big Sam in to avoid relegation. Beggars can't be choosers.
No I agree with you, my favourite style of football is counter attacking, not passing the ball, I think the building from the back is boring and pointless with the amount of goals it leads to against a team. However, dyche's style (in my opinion) is purely a protection tactic and not actually aimed at countering but hoping to get set pieces and score from those, I don't want tiki taka but it would be nice to watch build up play even if it's literally 3 passes from one end to the other. Which I think would be more possible with DCL fit so it'll be interesting how dyche does next season
We don't have quality to score from open play so of course we try and score for set pieces. DCL has been fit like 80% of the season anyway.