Everton Women manager Jean-Luc Vasseur sacked

In a surprise move, Everton today released a club statement saying that the Everton Women’s manager Jean-Luc Vasseur has been relieved of his duties with immediate effect. Leaving along with him are his assistants Frédéric Piquionne and Franck Plaine.

The Frenchman has only been in charge for ten games, and joined the Toffees earlier this season after the previous manager Willie Kirk was sacked after an uninspired start to the season.

The Blues just won their weekend Women’s FA Cup game beating Huddersfield Town 4-0 and finally looking coherent on the pitch.

Everton sit in tenth place in the league table out of twelve teams, and though they are not in immediate danger of relegation, the lowly position betrays the significant outlay spent over the summer in beefing up the squad.

The parallels between the men’s and women’s team are interesting, with the men’s side also severely underperforming and sitting just above the relegation zone and their new manager from the summer Rafa Benitez sacked just a fortnight ago.

Chris Roberts and Claire Ditchburn have been named to take over the team as interim coaches as the Blues go back into managerial search mode for the second time this season. The Women’s team has lurched from one crisis to another this season with their Director of Football and Everton Board member Sarvar Ismailov (who also happens to be a nephew of Alisher Usmanov, a business partner of club majority shareowner Farhad Moshiri) stepped down in disgrace following allegations of assault and causing grievous bodily harm.

More to come on this.