Craig Shakespeare will be a great assistant at Everton

The word of the day is optimism. Farhad Moshiri has laid down large sums of money to get a new manager and his staff, and this will be, for better or worse, the crew that determines Everton’s fate this season.

So, without being unrealistic, we’re going to look at the positives, and Craig Shakespeare on this coaching staff is certainly one of them. Shakespeare did a fine job as coach as Leicester city, and I wrote a month and a half ago (though this search has felt so much longer) that he was actually qualified to get the top job here outright.

The man is a very capable coach, and the hope is that his presence on this staff adds some contour to the dreary dull (sorry, optimism only) Allardyce style of play. The two played together at West Brom in the midst of the fall of Communism in Russia but have turned into rather different managers.

Shakespeare’s Leicester City averaged two goals a game in 2016-2017 and played a compelling brand of counter attacking football. Everton, sadly, just isn’t built for that. But here’s the ideal situation: Big Sam brings his traditional well organized defending, and the return of Seamus Coleman and Yannick Bolasie give Shakespeare just enough wide play going forward to give us a watchable offense.

Yeah, I know, I said optimism only today. Sorry folks, that’s about as optimistic as I can get.

I’m far more confident than I was on Sunday that we’ll survive this season and be back in the Premier League next year. I think that if we can get rid of Big Sam this summer, the Moshiri project can get back on track and we can get back to Europe soon.

Craig Shakespeare on the sidelines gives us two Premier League quality managers working together to fix the problems at Everton FC, and all of that puts us in the best situation we’ve had since just after opening day.