Rumours of Everton management clearout keep growing

The chatter keeps getting louder and louder as more media outlets are slowly picking up the stories. Now it’s the Mirror reporting that Everton’s majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri is going to clean house this summer with current Director of Football Steve Walsh and manager Sam Allardyce both getting the sack. Also to face the music are going to be Big Sam’s technical staff, along with the scouting group as well.

Interestingly, the report also adds that chairman Bill Kenwright is now on board too with the overhaul. Kenwright, who this coming summer will have headed the club for 14 years, was rumoured to be on the way out himself this season but there have been no such indications despite CEO Robert Elstone reportedly leaving to head up the Rugby League.

The article goes on to say that the two main men charged with building Everton up from this disastrous season are going to be Marcel Brands and Paulo Fonseca, as Director of Football and manager respectively.

Brands is currently occupying the same position at PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands, a role he has occupied since 2010. A former midfielder, Brands played his whole career in the Dutch league for FC Den Bosch, Waalwijk, NAC Breda and Feyenoord. He won the championship with Waalwijk in 1988 and in the process was named the best player in the League as well. Following his retirement he managed Waalwijk before becoming techincal director there, and then moving on to similar roles at AZ Alkmaar and then at PSV.

Over the years, Brands has been credited with the emergence of Dries Mertens, Kevin Strootman, Georginio Wijnaldum, Memphis Depay and Davy Pröpper among other players. He signed a new contract with PSV at the end of the 2016-17 season, and his current deal expires in 2020 so Everton will have to buy him out should they chose to appoint him.

Plenty has been said of Fonseca already, who has a contract about to expire with Shakhtar Donetsk this summer and is said to be interested in a switch to the Premier League. His attacking 4-2-3-1 formation plays a refreshing brand of football and is more in line with what Blues are looking for than the dour, lifeless husk of a team Everton have become under Allardyce.

Fonseca, who has been personally recommended by Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, has been a frontrunner for the Toffees job since Ronald Koeman’s desperate slide to begin this season and with Moshiri said to be a fan of is work, will likely have a lot of money thrown his way to come over.

While the number of changes throughout the organization in such a short time under Moshiri is disturbing, it is good to see him willing to do whatever it takes to get Everton contending for a top six spot and hopefully for a trophy again.