Paul: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending upon where in the world you are, and what time of the day you’re listening to this rather immediate post-match response, Talking the Blues. George and Andy, a belated Merry Christmas to you both. 

And to everybody that’s listening, I suspect for most Evertonians, the Christmas cheer has dissipated already.

 And, yeah, well, Everton 0 Nottingham Forest 2. Andy, your immediate thoughts?

Andy:  I think today proved conclusively that without a shadow of a doubt, Sean Dyche has not got a Scooby Doo about to win a game when his side is enjoying more of the possession. 

Because we’ve just taken the point of Arsenal who dominated us, we’ve taken a point of Chelsea who dominated us, and we took a point of City who dominated us in the possession stakes. Today, we out-possessed Forest in both halves of the game and never seriously threatened them until Beto’s late header, which was, I think, our only attempt on target. 

So, you know, against Arsenal, Chelsea and City, we were the team who were looking for, ostensibly, we were the team who were looking to counter-attack in the face of overwhelming possession by the other team. 

Today, we had much better possession and didn’t have a clue. Forest came to play on the counter-attack and executed damn near perfectly. And I think any Evertonian who seriously harbors the thought that Sean Dyche is the right man to take the club forward even for the remainder of this season. 

George: Quite honestly, I’m sorry, in my opinion, his time is absolutely done and dusted. And as somebody sent me a text message within a couple of minutes of the end of the game, he shouldn’t even make the car park after watching that because that was absolutely dreadful. 

Everton Football Club today? Absolutely shocking. I couldn’t figure out what the game plan was other than lump it forward. I’m sorry, it’s one of the most dispiriting afternoons of football I’ve seen for a long time. 

Even more so, having taken points from Arsenal, Chelsea and City and given people a little bit of hope. It’s all been dashed against the rocks.

Paul:  Fair comments, Andy, fair comments. I’ll say a bit in a minute. 

George, your initial thoughts?

George:  Paul carry on, say what you want to say, because I’m not going to contradict any of that. It was, you know, I mean, my only thought was we look better with two people up front, but we only, I’m just so sick of it. 

I’m so, so sick of it. We’re playing at home. We’re playing lump it football. Why not start with two men up front? Why not start with Calvert Lewin and Broja? Why not? And the answer is so sad and so pathetic that Andy is absolutely right. 

Time’s up. Time’s up. Thank you very much for all your hard work. And I don’t doubt that you’ve worked out every day. You haven’t got a clue. Go away. Go away immediately. Yes, Paul, what were your thoughts? 

Paul: I’m going to start by using an expression from one of the two people who set up Netflix, and they said that their game and Netflix was set up, obviously, actually just at the start of the Internet revolution. 

But they basically said that the business that they were in was too competitive to shade the truth. And they had to say the truth about what business that they were in and what the faults of the business were and what they had to do in order to rectify. 

And they did not without some difficulties along the way. But I thought the expression too competitive to shade the truth is particularly relevant to Everton football Club at this moment in time. 

And yes, we can all talk about what could you bring in? What is the response to bringing somebody new in at a time when there’s going to be enormous change throughout the club, and particularly when there’s not going to be a huge amount of money in the January transfer window, which we might talk about a little later in the podcast. 

But the fact is, and both of you have expressed it perfectly in the sense that Sean Dyche, even if he did have the ideas initially, or at an earlier stage within his career has run out of ideas. And the game has moved on, as we’ve talked about previously. 

And increasingly, he is a, you know, he’s a beached whale, he’s a boat that’s above the low watermark. The type of football that he tries to play is no longer effective or efficient enough. And as in industry, when an industry or when an operator within an industry becomes ineffective or less efficient than its competitors, it gets found out and its market share reduces and eventually it goes out of business unless it changes. 

And we are at that point as a football club, whereby we’ve made a change of ownership, massive change in the finances of the club as it has been discussed. And now we need to make the real change, which is the change in our product, which is what happens on the pitch. 

And that is not gonna happen under Sean Dyche. And Sean Dyche has had many opportunities this season to make those changes as he sees fit, but he hasn’t been able to do so. And the most telling point for me today, and I tweeted about it, and I think I sent a few WhatsApp messages about it, was that we looked no different with Broja up front than we did with DCL up front. 

George: Were you surprised? Well, they’re two entirely different players, aren’t they, with what I would imagine- Well, they’re exactly the same job. Different skill sets. But as you say, they’re asked to do exactly the same job, which to me demonstrates and proves without any controversy whatsoever that Dyche only has one way of playing football. 

Paul: And that way of playing football is no longer effective from my perspective, and I think from everybody that saw the game today, and has seen many of Everton’s games in recent times. And I don’t think Dyche is performing at the highest level that he can perform at, but I don’t think that the highest level that he can perform at, perform at is good enough anyway so therefore yeah exactly so therefore we have a you know we have a severe problem on our hands and….

You know seven out of the last nine games we’ve failed failed to score a goal if you look at the record throughout 2024 you know it’s significant, he’s now significantly below his career average in the Premier League in terms of number of goals scored I did a quick calculation out of the 37 games that we’ve played this season we’ve scored 32 goals,  conceded 49 so it’s not even as if you know that the style of play is working either defensively or certainly not offensively.  37 games eight wins, 15 draws and 14 defeats 

Now some people might argue well you know, 

if you perform like that over a full season, it gives you enough points to stay in the Premier League. But my argument would be that that’s not I mean, whilst that is our base objective, that’s an objective that’s far too, too low for Everton football club and the standards should be expected from this football club. 

And what I actually believe, the standards that they’re the Fiedkins themselves will expect from our football club going forward. So do you think they will ask for? 

Well, I think they’re going to. I think they’re going very, very quickly, not based on any inside information, because they are, and have been thus far, you know, very closed in terms of any comments that they’ve made. 

But I can’t believe that looking at today’s performance, in particular, gives them any belief that things are going to change enormously, understandably whether or not he’s supported in the transfer window or not. 

And I made a comment in the Observer this morning, this morning being Sunday, that even if we went out and made looking for a new goal scorer, our priority in the transfer window in January, which free scoring goal scorer in their right mind would possibly want to come to Everton at this moment in time? 

And the reason for that is not the prospects of being at Everton, not the prospects of having new owners or the prospects of moving into a brand new stadium next season. It is looking at the manager and saying, would I want to be a number nine, a central attacker, playing in a side managed by him? 

And the answer to that question is almost undoubtedly no. So you’ve only got to talk to Broja. Exactly, you know, and he looked majorly fed up today, on the occasions when the camera’s panned in on his face. 

I mean, he looked thoroughly fed up. And I think it’s your choice that said, he’s probably thinking, thank goodness, he’s only here on loan. 

George: Erm… Blimey. At one point, you know, talking about people looking fed up, the camera goes round the crowd and you think, my God, these people have paid to watch this. 

And then the next thought is, some people have been paid reams more to actually produce this. It goes back to what Andy said. It’s just clueless, hideous, horrible, change it immediately. It cannot possibly be worse, can it? 

Allerdyce isn’t available, is he? We’ve got to have somebody who wants to play football. It’s just, that was, that was evil, really bad. The play, sorry Andy, go on. I’m just saying it was inept, it was insipid, it was, I mean you’ve used the phrase previously, it was anti-football. 

Andy: It was terrible, absolutely terrible. You know, I mean, the thing that amazed me was there was still as many blues left in the ground at 95 minutes as there was. I’m surprised that the place wasn’t a lot emptier long beforehand because what they’d been served up as their Christmas treat was diabolical. 

You know, 36,000 Evertonians turned up there today to be entertained and they got milked. One attempt, one target, and that came when we were 2-0 down and the game had long since gone, long since gone. 

The game had gone before Forest scored the second if we’re brutally honest. Yes. All that did was cement the result. Forest were never in trouble. Their game plan was, Everton are at home, they will be obliged to attack, let them. 

That will leave spaces for us. Yeah, plus the fact that they were probably very confident that if they did let us attack, we would produce very little anyway. Nothing would happen. You know, as Paul: just said, it’s twice we’ve scored in the last nine games. 

George: Well, this is just silly. Just silly. The whole thing’s just silly. And the Friedkins will be in dereliction of duty if they let us linger on for much. longer. This is just crazy. Just crazy stakes. I mean, I don’t want them to be in a position where they just, you know, blindly make a change. 

Yeah, we don’t need your reaction. But they must have considered this. Absolutely. I mean, I was qualifying that statement. I’d qualify that statement with I want them to make a change. I just don’t want them to make it. 

Paul: But they’re not making a change just for change. It’s safe. There is an absolute requirement here to make a change. Because even if you I think even if you were, you know, a Dyche fan, and there can’t be that many of them around at this moment in time, I think even they would recognize that dike is not performing at a level that even if you were a fan, you might expect him to do so. 

George: He’s performing at his level, Paul:. I would argue that he’s not performing at a level anywhere remotely close to what the vast majority, 99.9% of Evertonians want us to see and want to see how we want the team to play. 

But he’s performing to his level, which is clearly nowhere near the standard. I mean, it’s not even a Championship standard, no disrespect to the Championship. Never in the memory of man is it Premier League level. 

Andy: We’re getting embarrassed by just about every side in the league. I qualified it before, we did well against Arsenal, we did well against Chelsea, we did well against City, against teams who were dominating possession. 

So Dyche’s best is when we’re getting 25% or less of the ball. How on earth is that supposed to be competitive? How is that supposed to be entertaining? You know, nobody wins trophies with 25% or less possession. 

You know, in the odd game, yes, but in every game, come on. It’s criminal, you know, but he’s performing to the level that he can muster and it’s woeful. He’s got himself into a position because of his inability to create a style of forward play that gives us a reasonable chance of scoring goals. He’s taking the view that the first duty of the team is to not conceal the goal. 

Paul: Which at one level is okay, but it’s inconceivable that you can go through every single game and not concede a goal. I mean, I thought Pickford had another excellent game today. He saved two, possibly three other goal chances, so it could have been much, much worse than 2-0. 

But that’s not the point. You can’t go through a whole season and not concede goals. I mean, football doesn’t work that way. You have to have a counter to the fact that even with the most defensive setup and with, you know, a very, very good goalkeeper, we’re going to concede goals. 

And what is our response to conceding goals? And the fact is that we don’t have a response to conceding goals. I mean, we just don’t have a style of football in any way. that gives us a reasonable chance of scoring goals, except on the odd occasion, such as, you know, Wolves came when we won 4-0, but even then, you know, there were sort of other factors at play in that. 

And our whole attacking approach today, you know, not once did we get the ball crossed from it, you know, where one might consider it to be a traditional area for the ball to be crossed from, you know, from the byline deep in the opposition’s area. 

Andy: It just didn’t happen. Most of the balls were lumped forwards centrally to an isolated attacker, and it was meat and drink for Nottingham Forest who, you know, they have set themselves up as being defensively sound, and they are. 

But they’ve also done the second part of the equation, which is to be dangerous on the counter attack. And we just don’t, that element of our game just doesn’t exist at all at this moment in time. And you have to point at the manager. 

Paul: Individual players, you can take responsibility for individual errors or individual, you know, for missing chances as in when they come along. But ultimately, the players are playing to the instructions that are given by the manager. 

And it’s clear to me at least that the manager’s sole focus is on conceding as few goals as possible and hoping to either sneak a goal on the counter attack or sneak a goal through a free kick or a corner or a throw-in routine, none of which has been particularly, clearly none of which has been particularly productive in recent times.

 I mean, the number of, I haven’t done the figures, but the number of goals that we scored from open play must be minimal this season. So it all comes back to, and you know, sorry for people listening if this sounds awfully repetitive, that Dyche no longer has, from my perspective, no longer has a role as manager as Everton Football Club, because he cannot produce the results that we need in order to stay in the division. 

You know, we’re somewhat fortunate at this stage that there are three teams, or possibly four teams, less effective than we are, but there’s no guarantee that that will continue throughout the season. 

George: Why would you take that chance if you’re the Friedkins coming in?

Andy:  They can’t, they can’t afford not to. I mean, if they watch that match today, they have to act because, you know, the Arsenal, the City and the Chelsea performances were exactly what we expected. 

And fair play to the players and to him, you know, that plan works. You wouldn’t pay to watch it again, but it worked. Now, today you come to a point where we’re supposed to take some sort of initiative. 

Absolutely clueless. No, no, no idea what the word means. Even so. I will be just, I’ll be disappointed if the team is out against Bournemouth. I want something to happen and happen sooner than this. 

I don’t want him going into the transfer window with, you know, anything on. No, no, no. Time’s up. That would be crazy. If he’s got any influence in what happens in the transfer window, that would be absolutely dark and mad. 

Because he’s not, it’s surely to God, even even, even if the outside chance that he survives the season, he’s not going to go into next season with him at the football club. So any player acquisitions, be it even loans, never mind a permanent signing, surely cannot be, he cannot be given that kind of responsibility or given that level of influence over the future, you know, makeup of the playing squad. 

It would be insane. You know, talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I mean, we’ve said this to the cows, come on, but throughout the period that the takeover process was going. We have to hope upon hope that the Friedkin group were already making their moves in terms of securing a manager even if only to get us to the end of this season because as Paul said you know we’re fortunate at the moment there are four teams below us.

But is that going to remain the same you know is that gonna stay the same you know, you don’t want to you don’t we can’t carry on with this endless fight in relegation something has to be done to turn this squad around to get them to win a couple of games and give us some breathing space and moves at least one more place up the table you know if you look at the table on these obviously yeah Palace have gone above us today with a with their result. 

Wolves, Leicester, Palace, Southampton and Ipswich below us. Wolves have had a bit of new manager bounce already and they’ve closed the gap. I think they’re only a point behind us now. 

George: They are one behind us yeah. Yeah so there’s a distinct possibility you know, that they’ll go above us within the next two or three games and then that puts us one place above the drop and all it needs is for one of those other clubs be it Leicester, Southampton or Ipswich to suddenly find a little bit of form and we are in deep, deep doodle. 

We could be in deep, deep doodle again. So that the Friedkins please you have to have used to take over transition time to prepare some plans and prepare some moves to stop this almost inevitable slide into the bottom. 

Paul: I’ll be bitterly disappointed if they haven’t, bitterly. I think there’s a number of reasons, sorry George?

Paul: Why what you’re saying is right Andy. (i) is obviously our current form. (ii) is Dyche’s historic record in terms of how he plays football, how he addresses the game of football. 

(iii) is the increasing evidence that his style of football is becoming less and less competitive even when his team are playing to the best of their abilities and there’s no way that this Everton team is currently playing to the best of its abilities. 

And (iv) I think is the specific set of circumstances that surround Everton. going into the summer, even if we were to escape relegation, and obviously all Evertonians are hoped that that is the case, we are leaving Goodison Park, so we lose our home ground advantage at the beginning of next season, because going into the new stadium will be a new experience for this Everton team, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that we will perform any better there than we have done at Goodison previously. 

In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest that when teams move into a new stadium, they do find it difficult for a period of time. But also, we’re finding it difficult to play at Goodison at the moment. 

Andy: We are. I mean, you know, the club has joked in the past about fortress Goodison. Goodison’s not been a fortress for a long, long time. The fans are a fortress, but the idea of visiting teams that, oh my God, we’re going to Goodison, it’s going to be horrendous. 

I don’t believe anybody, certainly in the Premier League, fears coming to Goodison. They might fear the crowd as much as they’re going to get a load of abuse. But Goodison, fortress Goodison, for me, no longer exists, I’m sorry. 

Paul: Do you want to qualify that as saying Dyche’s Goodison?

Andy:  No, because we weren’t, it wasn’t a fortress under any of the last four or five managers. You know, we’ve had odd blips, where we might have had two or three games where we’ve had good performances. 

But overall, the trend for the last five or six years, and indeed, a lot longer, if we’re brutally honest, is that we can’t sustain it for some reason. The Football Club has been unable to sustain any kind of momentum and form at home for a long, long time, certainly since the Moyes era. 

You know, Martinez’s first year was good, we’ve always said that, the first year was great, year two was poor, year three was absolutely dreadful. And we’ve never sustained any period of domination of games since then. 

You know, we had the odd blip under Koeman, you know, when we beat City 4-0 was magic, but did we sustain it? You know, you know, we had a decent performance. is under Marco Silva, did we sustain it? 

George: No. And you can say that about all the rest of them, Benitez, Lampard, Allardyce, all of them. We’ve never… And Ancelotti is the most fascinating one. Yeah, there were no crowds there. Yeah, but Andy, even he said, I don’t know why they can’t sustain. 

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the greatest managers the world of football has ever seen. And it completely bamboozled into the point where, you know, he got the hell out of it as soon as he could. 

Sorry, Paul, I cut across you, but… No, no, it’s fine, because it’s a valid point, because if Goodison is no longer a fortress, and I agree with that, be it under tight shore, be it under previous managers. 

Paul: It points to the fact that there’s no guarantee that Bramley-Moore will instantly become a fortress. No, it might do over time. You know, one hopes that it will. But the final point I was going to make about why the timing of when Dyche goes is so important, apart from the obvious issues with regards to relegation and potentially with relegation, is that there is going to be so much change at Everton in the summer because so many players are out of contract. 

Who makes the decisions either to offer new contracts to those that we might still want? First of all, who makes the decision as to who we might still want? Is it Dyche? Shouldn’t be, because we don’t really want Dyche to be there any longer than today’s Sunday evening. 

Will it be Thelwell? Who knows? There’s been somewhere that the Freidkins are minded to keep Thelwell in place. But what influence does he have over events? I think the Friedkins have proven already at Roma that it is they that choose their manager, not the director of football. 

Therefore, any decisions that Thelwell may want to make in terms of which of our current players do we want to offer new contracts to is probably subject to either the Friedkins or subject to whoever they choose to be the next manager. 

Obviously, a number of players are going to leave anyway, either through age or just by virtue of the fact that they no longer want to stay at Everton or that they can be offered either better career prospects or better financial rewards elsewhere. 

Who makes the decision as to who are the new players coming into the squad? Potentially, we need to replace anything up to 12 new players coming in over the summer. Can the Friedkin’s today say that they have a plan in place that allows for the transition of manager, squad and stadium at the end of this season and for all of that then to be completed in the very short period that is the close season because we finish in May and we’re back playing competitive football again in August. 

Paul: I don’t think they can. I think whoever they’re minded to bring in as manager, they need to bring that in, that person now. (i), so that hopefully results can improve in the very short term. (ii) give that new person, whoever that new person is, the opportunity to look at the squad, look at who he may want to keep and to work out where the deficiencies are and who he wants to bring in. 

Because to expect somebody to do that, just in the summer itself, is highly unrealistic. Dead right. So, you know, I don’t think any way that you look at it, you know, and even, you know, people like Henry Winters are saying this morning that there’s a case for keeping Dyche. 

I don’t believe there’s a single, I don’t believe there is a case at all for Dyche and I can’t think of a single good reason to do so. Neither. What’s three of those? Yeah, I mean, of course, the question is, and the obvious question, because I would ask it if I was sitting in the other camp, is well, okay, who do you bring in then? 

Andy: Well. Who’s available? Is that the answer to that question? And then you start narrowing it down from there. Yeah. Inevitable names are going to get mentioned. Southgate, Potter. Those are the first two that will get trooped out. 

I mean, I don’t know where they’ll go. I really don’t. And we don’t know what they’re thinking is anyway. But you would hope that with their involvement with Roma and whatever, that they’ve got a handle on who may or may not be available throughout Europe. 

Because quite honestly, and it’s a purely my personal opinion, I wouldn’t want Gareth Southgate or Potter as the next man to do that at the football club. I don’t think Southgate, I was playing anything like the kind of football that we want to see, it might be slightly more effective than Dyche, but I I think it would all be marginally better to watch. 

And I don’t think Potter would handle it. I don’t think he would cope with it. I don’t think he’d handle the magnitude of a job that would be landed on his plate worthy of being offered an accepted job. 

Paul: I don’t know how, you know. Is the evidence to support that view with regards to Potter just based on his experiences at Chelsea?

Andy:  Primarily, yes. Primarily, yeah. I think Chelsea was too big a job, too big a club, too big a job for him at the time. 

And they had much more going for them. than the Everton that Graham Potter might inherit now worthy to be offered and accept it all. So you wouldn’t take Pochettino either because he failed at Chelsea? 

I don’t think I would know. I’ve got a mate of mine who’s a really staunch Spurs fan, never, never rated Pochettino. And when he went to Chelsea, my mate Texan said he will not last. He’ll be 12 months maximum. 

And he’s a, he’s a, he’s a, a rabid Spurs fan and he never rated Pochettino. I don’t know. I don’t know, bro. I don’t know who I’d like. But I think it’s more a case of this, there’s a, there’s a few names who I definitely wouldn’t like. 

And, you know, that probably doesn’t help the conversation. But without, without scouring around the internet to see what other managers are currently available. I honestly don’t know, but you know, I’m just hoping that whoever within the Friedkin Group is taking on responsibility for the recruitment of senior personnel coaching staff, whatever the goodness and has got some far better ideas than I am. 

And just to ask the same sort of question with regards to Southgate, your aversion to Southgate is based on the style of football that you present? And style of football and the fact that in his time as England manager, he’s had the pick of, the pick of the best players and not, not won anything. 

 To me, he’s not a winner. We need a winner. You know, people are talking about him getting a Knighthood for what he’s done for the England football team. What’s he won? Tell me what he’s won. You can’t because he’s not won anything. 

So is he the right man for Everton Football Club? No, I want someone who’s got a proven track record of winning. And whether we could offer someone of that ilk, you know, the, you know, tempt them to come and join Everton is another massive question. 

But I sure as hell don’t want someone who has got no record of winning. Getting to the finals, getting to semi finals, whether it’s FA Cup, League Cup, World Cup, European Championships. I don’t care. 

I’m not interested. Nobody remembers who the losing semi finalists were. nobody unless it’s unless it’s you we know the years that we lost the semi-finals but i don’t want i don’t want to be associated with second best you know just being a contender you know what sorry and we do want to be a contender but no that sound gate is not the answer for me never will be if he gets to if he’s offered a gig and he gets the gig i will wish him every success and i hope he can ram every one of these words right back down my throat but i won’t be holding the breath.

George: What’s the question? Gareth Southgate not just in terms of the likely candidates but uh because I’ve got my own views which I’ll stress in the second about with regards to Southgate but what’s yours?

I thought Southgate did a really good job with England but I’m tired of managers. I want someone with a philosophy about how the game should be played.

 So I discount what happened to Potter at Chelsea, Ii think Chelsea at that time was a nightmare and I’m really impressed that that bloke who’s got the gig now has sorted it out but he has sorted it out and he’s sorted out the most petulant looking squad i’ve ever seen and he’s got them playing football so that’s good.

So if Potter was to be offered the evidence job I would think oh good the system would he likes to put the ball on the deck and play football with it that will do absolutely fine by me.

I take Andy’s point about winners but they’re rare and you know the last one we had that would assume was Ancelotti or Benitez if you like, and they achieved nothing. 

There’s a complete clean sweep needed at Goodison Park, stroke, brand new leader. And just because his name’s been mentioned, I would be very happy with Graham Potter. I think he believes in the game of football. 

He believes in, I think the play, you know, I kind of look at it like, what do the players think? Now watching today’s match and anyone, you know, there must have been a majority, perhaps, of the people listening to this podcast who watched it on the telly. 

You saw Broja’s face. You saw this guy go, is this it? Is this, is this it? This is the way Everton play football. This is what I’m supposed to do here. Well, that won’t do. I don’t believe Potter would do that at all. 

And I kind of wonder what the players would want. And I’m sure they would want some freedom from systems. plans and you must do this and you must do that and maybe I’m being naive, maybe the whole of football is now completely systematic but I don’t really believe it. 

I read an extraordinary article in the paper this morning, this guy going that the problem with Man City is that Harlem won’t track back, so of course, you know City can get outnumbered now. 

Is that really it? I think the problem with City is that they’re going to get relegated and the whole club knows it and they’re kind of going well. What are we supposed to do now? Guardiola would be a good idea. 

I’d like that. Anybody who’s been at Man United, no. I don’t have any ideas, go on Paul:, give us your ideas. I’m just trying to think about what the weekends have already said about what their objectives are for the club and you know that they’ve set out a number of like longer term objectives. 

Paul: Obviously, without necessarily saying it the first priority is always going to be to retain opposition as a Premier League club so survival is always like this sort of you know the base from which you start and I think both of those managers mentioned and others would provide a better chance of survival than Dyche would. 

So there would be a benefit in having either Potter or Southgate and I think interestingly with regards to both and I accept entirely that Southgate hardly sets the heart you know pumping faster. in terms of your style of football. 

But he has demonstrated an ability to put together a system and to put together an infrastructure behind the team that produces better results than those that have tried to do so previously with not necessarily any better players. 

And I think for one, Southgate would be able to do that and he would be able to bring in his international management experience into an Everton setup and with good guidance from the ownership, provide a much more stable base than Everton have had since the sort of peak, Moyes/Kenwright days, albeit obviously in a very different environment today and one would hope with much more financial backing. 

So I wouldn’t be wholly against Gareth Southgate coming in. to do that. I think the other points about Southgate coming in to do that would be that he would be somebody who might we might find it easier to attract better quality players and better quality coaching staff around him because he has demonstrated an ability to develop on the coaching side and as I say to develop an infrastructure around the English national team which benefited the English national team under him and I think also has benefited the team going forwards. 

So if we wanted a more strategic sort of manager at this stage I don’t think Southgate is an unreasonable call if I’m being totally honest although I accept entirely you know there’ll be a lot of people who say you know that’s not very it’s not very exciting well perhaps it’s not excitement that we need at this stage it’s somebody that they can who is intelligent.

I don’t think anybody really doubts his intellect somebody who can provide some strategic input as to how to develop the club going forwards and somebody who might be attractive to people who want to come to the club to develop their own careers which is surely you know what any investor would be looking at at this at this stage they don’t want necessarily to buy players because they won’t necessarily want to pay the premium and they’ve already suggested that PSR is an issue so you know we’re still going to have to buy players who perhaps have not reached full potential or have the potential but you know just need a different style of management in order to maximize it and I think Southgate would tick many boxes on that front. 

I go back to my previous a choice and choice that I’ve talked about previously and to a degree, although not quite as modern, David Moyes still ticks many of those boxes and has the benefit of knowing Everton Football Club and having a relationship with the Football Club and a relationship with many of the fans, albeit I can tell you that some of those fans and some Evertonians wouldn’t want it. 

I get that. But what I don’t really want is just like, you know, a quick fix merchant, because that’s not going to help us in any way, shape or form. So it is really difficult. But I think you start from the position of, well, what happens if we do nothing? 

Well, if we do nothing, we end up keeping Sean Dyche which is not acceptable. Therefore, we must do something. And then it’s a question of what do we do then? And that’s the difficult bit, particularly then also, as we talked about, when the director of football’s role, there’s a big question mark over that. 

There shouldn’t be a question mark as to why you need a director of football. I think in modern football, you definitely do need one. But there’s a big question mark as to whether Thelwell is the right director of football going forwards. 

And these are decisions that the Friedkins have to make fairly quickly, I think. I think so.

Andy, you’ve gone very quiet. 

Andy: Changing the director of football and the manager might be saying, maybe two steps you don’t want to take at the same time. 

Then what happens if Thelwell says, well, I can’t work with manager X or manager Y, because they have a completely different footballing philosophy for me? If the Friedkins were at a point where the manager would say, and then Thelwell says he’s not happy working with that manager, that sounds to me like he’s writing his own resignation letter, if that were to be the case. 

Because if the owner had made the decision on the manager, you would hope that they’re confident that their decision is the right one. I mean, we’ve all seen what’s happened when holders have made decisions on managers in the past. 

We’re just hoping that these guys have got a bit more sense than the guy they’ve just replaced. I don’t know I mean this you know we’re I mean this really is a critical, critical period now for the club and particularly for the Friedkins as the new owners because I guess the jury’s out on them as well until they do something. 

Andy: You know yes they’ve come in and they’ve injected the money in and they’ve secured the keys to Bramley-Moore etc etc which is a good start that initial marketing thing seems to have gone down really really well but it’s now you know they’ve got one or two major league decisions to make in what appears to me to be a rapidly, rapidly approaching time period like as our kid said you know we’ve got bonus on what the fourth so all in terms of (ineligible), they might need to, they might feel as we do and they might feel as we do and need to act much sooner rather than later. But they can only do it if they’ve already laid their plans and made some approaches and what have you. 

Paul: Yeah and Bill Foley’s an interesting one isn’t it? Because he’s the owner of Bournemouth and when he came in, and I don’t think Friedkins will do this, but when he came in he made some quite bold claims about he wanted Bournemouth to go from where they were to becoming a team that would compete for European football. 

And you know so far on the evidence of this season and currently in sixth place whether they can maintain that or not, obviously nobody at this stage can say, but they are having you know the best season in their history and yet they picked up you know a head coach that frankly very few people had heard of before before he arrived. 

Andy: But they said he had a very poor start but they stuck with him and gave him the opportunity to correct things and he has done it big time. Yeah and they backed him in the transfer market. So it’s not as if a new owner coming in that establishes exactly what they expect from people and then making the right appointments on top of that, can’t radically change things. 

Paul: You know we’ve talked often about what one of the things that the Friedkins have to do is change the culture of the club. The culture of the club is completely stale, it’s stale from the days of Bill Kenwright and the people that he had in the club, it’s grown even staler with the people that Moshiri retained and brought into the club. 

And surely one of the things that the Friedkins have to do in the very first instance is rapidly change the culture of the club, both off the pitch, but also on the pitch, and that necessitates change. 

And again, you then have to ask yourself, where does the culture come from? The current culture of the club as a business comes from the people that have owned the business previously and the results of that are demonstratively in front of us, both Kenwright and Moshiri. 

That’s why, from a competitive point of view, we’ve not moved forward at all. Okay, we’ve got a brand new stadium, but the brand new stadium nearly killed the club because we didn’t fund it. not properly, on day one. 

But off the pitch, sorry, on the pitch, the culture of us as a footballing institution, for want of a better word, has deteriorated over a period of time, because there’s been no consistency in terms of the type of managers that we want, and the choice of managers has been entirely wrong. 

And the big thing about corporate culture is that corporate culture can only come from the top. Any business, its culture is a reflection of the individuals that own the business. And it starts with the one person or the small number of people at the top of the business that own the business, their beliefs, their business philosophy, their ambitions, their standards, their ideals, and there’s many other words you could use, 

Trickle down into the group below then. So it goes from two or three people who perhaps own a business to the group below, which might be the board of directors, which might be six, seven, eight people.: 

And then they influence, sorry, Andy, go on.

Andy:  No, I was just going to say that there’s possibly the biggest question, because they haven’t constituted a new board just yet. Nobody will. Well, I know they will. 

But we’re talking about changing a manager and potentially a director of football, when we haven’t yet got a fully constituted board in place, who are then going to define the culture that you’re talking about, and hopefully instill that culture. 

And if necessary, replace current people with people who will better serve the culture that they want to bring into the club. So there’s, you know, without putting the cart before the horse, we need that board to be sorted, probably even sooner rather than later than changing the manager. 

I mean, if we’re talking five days for the manager, they haven’t half got the work cut out for the new board in place before then. 

Paul: Well, there’s a new CEO coming into the club, we’ve got a new finance director in place already.

 Obviously, we’ve got a new executive Chairman in place. So there have been changes at board level. And I’m not I’m not here to represent the Friedkins in any sense. But I think the idea that they haven’t made changes or they’re not about to make changes is misguided. If you don’t know, I wasn’t suggesting that they weren’t about to make changes. 

Andy: All I’m all I’m suggesting is the of the of the list of priorities that Mr. Friedkin at the very, very top has got on his plate, is finalizing the makeup of his new board of directors at Everton Football Club. 

Whether it’s three years’ word before, which we’ve said ten times, isn’t enough, or whether it’s half a dozen or eight or nine or whatever. Yeah. And I think that’s a fair comment. The point I was going to make was that whilst they’re doing that on the business side, and they recognize the reasons for doing that on the business side, as indeed most business owners would, they surely must see the same is true on the footballing side. 

And that means Sean Dyche, it means Kevin Thelwell, because the footballing culture cannot change whilst the same individuals who are responsible for that culture remain in place. So if we want to see a short-term improvement in our footballing fortunes, if we don’t believe that Sean Dyche, or rather if they don’t believe that Sean Dyche is the right person to see us through to the end of the season, 

Paul: If they believe that there is too much change that would need to take place at the end of the season to leave it to the end of the season, that leaves them with only one choice, which is to make those changes now. 

And I think on the evidence of how the team is playing, how the team is responding to Dyche, how Dyche himself is performing, how Dyche himself is communicating with the media, he probably recognises that too. 

Yes, I think that’s very common. No, forget the tactics for a minute. This was not evidence inside today that came out buoyed by some decent results. against much better sides in recent weeks. This was not an Everton side that came out that said, we get three points a day, we move ourselves into that group within the league that occupies the middle of the table as against that if we don’t get the result, we stay in the group that occupies the bottom four, five, six clubs in the bottom of the league. 

And we played like a team that actually believed that’s where we belong. There was no, the team, not at any point in the game, looked like a team that had drawn games against Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea. 

They were having too much of the ball, they didn’t know what they were doing with it. Yeah, and then you get into the whole, you know, footballing philosophy, which is Dyche’s philosophy. My point is that, you know, mentally, they just went in a position to say to themselves, we’ve got enough belief in the manager, in the tactics and in ourselves as players, to take on board three reasonable results, 

And to do something with that, to carry that momentum into a game which, you know, in normal circumstances, despite the fact that Nottingham Forest is now second in the league, we should have expected to win. 

We’re just not in that position. And my experience of takeovers and when there’s a change of ownership of businesses, those people coming in know that. They recognise those signs very, very quickly and they will make the changes. 

Andy:So I think there is no doubt about the fact that changes will be made and those changes include the change of manager very, very quickly. I hope so. You keep muting yourself, bro. I’m sorry, bro. Go on, what were you saying? 

Paul: You’ve done it again. George, are you still there? 

George: Yeah. What were you saying? I was going to start crying. I was embarrassed watching that today. I don’t want to watch any more of it. I understand the point about you can’t do knee jerk football management, although Christ knows it certainly felt like that over the past few years. 

But I just don’t want to watch any more of it. It’s too depressing to watch sports played like that. It’s horrible. So there’s no such thing as a change can’t come fast enough. It can’t come fast enough. 

Paul: And obviously we’re recording this before we’ve had a chance to listen to Dyche’s comments in the media and they will be out by the time this is published. But obviously we’re talking whilst he will have been talking. 

It’ll be very, very interesting to hear what comments he does make about how and why the team performed in a manner in which they have and whether he accepts any responsibility for it. We talked the other week didn’t we about what the subject questions that the media should be asking. 

They should be asking Sean is it the players fault that you performed the way you did today or is it yours? How does he answer that? 

George: I dread to think, I give up listening to him, to be honest with you, Paul:. 

That’s why I say he says it, I bet it isn’t interesting. I don’t want to listen to any more silly excuses. He was pleased with the effort that was put in, because if he was pleased with the effort that was put in, well, I don’t know what he was watching. 

There can be no aspect of today’s game, Paul, perhaps, Pickford’s performance. Paul, Pickford, just about, yeah. That anybody could derive any satisfaction or pleasure, that’s all. No. No, it was absolutely… 

Paul: And the great tragedy, of course, is that, you know, all of this comes, and again, I don’t think this will be lost on the Friedkins, this comes in our final season at Goodison Park, and we entered the last few months in our home, and they must see also, they, you know, and again, I know I’m sort of looking for reasons why they need to do something now, but they must also see the potential uplift in removing the sort of the impact that Dyche is currently having, 

You know, and for talking about cultural things on the football team, and therefore, on the crowd. Because again, now, you know, and this is not a criticism of anybody in the crowd, but that was not a… 

That was not a Goodison post-Christmas crowd today.

Andy:  No, exactly. It wasn’t a yuletide crowd, was it? Well, it’s normally, you know, everyone comes to the ground in a good mood, you know, after Christmas and looking for the last game, the last home game of the year. 

Everyone’s hoping for a good performance and a victory to send us into the new year in good heart. And we got zilch. Yeah. And they expected zilch to be fair. I think, unfortunately, yeah, that’s the problem now, is the crowd’s expectations have been dumbed down. 

You should lent my mic. It would appear so, bro, yeah. I mean, just, had we got a point today, people would have probably would have accepted it because that’s where we’ve been for the last. three or four games three or four seasons then yeah well yeah.

But Ii mean I was meaning in the immediate past well, yeah you know if you don’t if you don’t lose you know which is Dyche’s mantra.

Don’t lose the game you know don’t go out and try and win it just don’t lose it well whilst I understand that it doesn’t make for very entertaining watching and it doesn’t stir the loins if you like and i think there’s a vast majority of Evertonians now want to have their loins stirred again by something or something that they can actually appreciate and get behind so put an advert in the paper for a loin stirrer.

Will you. what what do you buy Everton football club one loin stirrer must play football on the deck with pace ……hey dear we’re probably getting a bit giddy now i was just thinking about walking down Goodison road and there’s a chip shop and a beef burger stand and a loin stirrer and a program salesman.

I want to change the subject. I want to talk about something that’s bigger even than Everton football club. How long have we got, how long have we got? how long’s a piece of string?

Okay, this all all comes out unformed but over the past four years I’ve reduced watching football to watching Everton because uh it was depressing enough and it was depressing enough watching Everton so the idea of watching other people play the game properly was a bit you know I kind of got depressed about that. 

But I’m cheered up by the Friedkins, even though they’ve been here for a whole fortnight now, we haven’t got a new manager. But anyway, I’ve started to watch a lot more football, which is interesting. 

So I watched this week, I watched Liverpool v Leicester until Liverpool went in front. And then I watched Arsenal v Ipswich until Arsenal went in front and then you stop watching because, you know, that’s kind of the end of it. 

But here’s where I was going. Leicester scored first, they scored in six minutes, I think, at Anfield. And by the 36 minute, they had then started some of the most tacky time-wasting that even someone as old as me has seen. 

People going, oh, I’m dying. But bollocks, I’m off the pitch. I’ll just stagger over the line and fall down. Now, you know, this kind of stuff that the game must do without and on the touch line, the manager was going mental. 

Giving the fourth official both barrels, quite rightly, in my opinion, except I suddenly thought to myself, just a minute, Mr. Slot, and all you other managers who bang on about cheating and time wasting and they’re dead right to bang on about cheating and time wasting. 

But until and unless those coaches and those managers actually stand up and get counted and go football should last for 90 minutes. Stop the clock when the ball isn’t moving. And then it doesn’t matter what acting you are doing about how bad his leg is. It doesn’t matter because he’s not going to gain any advantage. And neither is anybody else. And there were half a dozen incidents today where Forest players went down and Everton players went down. 

Oh, no, I’m not really hurt because we got the ball. Sorry. Here I come again. And I do not see why the game tolerates cheating. I don’t see what’s gained from this. And you said something, Andy, today in, you know, when we were texting you sort of during the match that you were fed up with shirt pulling. 

I don’t I’m I’m lost as to why football isn’t saying right. If you pull somebody’s shirt, that is a yellow card. If you do it twice in a match, that is a red card because it is cheating. And why are we accepting cheating? 

Andy: Well, we’re accepting it because the likes of Arnie Slott and everybody else, not picking on him because he’s Liverpool manager, bang on to the fourth official. They shouldn’t bang on to the fourth official. 

They should be banging on to the powers that be in football to say. the clock we’re going to play 90 minutes that’s what’s going to happen. Well they should also be talking to their own players in the training sessions to say no more shirt pulling, no more diving, no more pain and injury. 

George: Yes but Andy my point here is that they’re not going to do that. 

Andy: No, I know.

George:  But if you brought in a stopped clock then that all that stuff the players are not complete fools they’re cheats yes but they’re not complete fools they will twig very quickly but there’s no advantage to it there’s no point doing it so it will slowly disappear from the game especially if you legislate against it and suddenly I saw today that the advantage of the Premier League with all its money and its VAR and its action replays which you know the team in Rio Peru haven’t got and neither have Lincoln Town.  

Neither have Aberdeen got VAR to deal with things, so they can set a standard. They can go, no, you did pull his shirt, so that is a yellow card and you did it twice and we’ve got the evidence and you’re gonna miss the next game because that’s a red card. 

And at some point these things add up so that the game becomes something fairer because what we’re watching doesn’t make any sense to me anymore. I sound like Fred Truman, I don’t know what’s going on out there. 

But I don’t see in the middle of all the other things that’s going on with football, like, you know, I got a text from a United family the other day saying that United have introduced this 150 pound jacket, which is United’s new jacket for the season. 

It’s not even a shirt, it’s a jacket, it’s black, black and white, there’s no red on it. As a United fan, this upset him somewhat, I could understand that. That’s all gonna go on, all that commercialization and how they make the money and where the money goes and the players are gonna be paid more, la, la, la, that’s fine. 

George: I’m gonna accept that. If you will please get behind cleaning the game up so that it’s played in a fair manner. Thanks very much. No, no arguments there, bro. I mean, we’ve been saying this, but which World Cup was it when we were timing our long games and there was a game that was 58 minutes of live play. 

Because it was, you know, it’s. And the argument, because we have had this conversation and talking about it and as I remember Paul:’s argument was it’s all about television schedules. I don’t, I no longer buy that at all. 

Because it doesn’t stop the other games that have started. in the court from lasting as long as they last. The obvious one is American football. It’s a 60-minute game that can last two and a half hours. 

Take me out to the ball game, Andy. It’s a day out. I’ve been to a ball game. You’ve been to the ball game. It’s hockey. People are wandering around selling you stuff, selling your pretzels, selling your Coca-Cola. 

The rinsing of the public, which is, you know, so distasteful, can continue. But could the public please be served up something that’s worth the money they paid for, that even if that heart will match we all watched this afternoon, you have to go on for 90 whole minutes and say, you know, there was a free kick. 

Forrest got a free kick because of a foul that Ghana Gueye got booked for at the start of the 19 seconds between Ghana Gueye’s foul and the boy kicking the ball. it didn’t get added on at the end. That was just substitution rubbish. 

Five minutes. If football has evolved into something where the fans are just fools, who must be fleeced for every penny and every, you know, the three away kits and all that stuff, that’s fine. Go ahead, you creeps, and we’re all addicts. 

And we’ll pay it because that’s who we are. But please present us with something that’s fair and decent and competitive and honest. Because watching football these days, watching Leicester, after 30 minutes ago, we got a waste of, you know, an hour. 

Are you back? Okay, it’s because I’m pressing the phone to me because I’m excited. That’s it. I just, I just feel as though it’s down to the coaches. It’s not down to people who do podcasts. It’s down to the people who are actually in football itself to go, no, this is crazy. 

Stop the clock. And then Arni Slott doesn’t have to waste his time bending the air, the fourth official, who can do nothing whatsoever about it. It’s all a performance. And it’s bollocks and it’s neither end of there. 

Just play the game fairly, please. Thank you. Maybe talking to Blues should convene a seminar to which we invite all the Premier League coaches. I would love to do that. I would love to hear their rationale. 

You know, an awful lot of those Premier League coaches are backers of VAR. And most, I don’t believe most football fans are, but VAR, you know, is one thing, actually stopping the clock. So the cheating that is endemic within football now. 

It must stop because it’s just, it’s ugly and children are watching it. It’s horrible. Absolutely horrible. 

Paul: I think this is a fascinating subject, George, and it is a subject that could take a long time to discuss it.  

And maybe we should discuss it over a specific podcast and see who else we can get on to talk about it. To answer your question, I think the game has changed from being a 90-minute game to not even being a 60-minute game. 

If you take your argument that the ball’s on you and play for X number of minutes per game, the game has changed to being a number of key moments game. And it’s almost like the Americanization of football. 

It’s become like American football world. actually, the result of the game comes down to a very small number of set players. And it’s those key moments that everybody, including the coaches, including all of the tactical staff and everybody else, work towards. 

And the rest of it is just fluff leading up to those.

George:  Well, I don’t like that, Paul:, but I accept what you’re saying. My point is about shooting. Yeah, I agree with you totally. Do not understand why we are paying to watch something where people are allowed to cheat. 

You know, Lindstrom this afternoon, he did get pulled back. That was a pen. The guy pulled his shirt when he was in the penalty area. The worst one was the one on Branthwaite. In Christendom, it was going to get given because it wasn’t that blatant. 

It was a perfectly ordinary shirt, Paul. Yeah, but the worst one was the first half on Branthwaite where he had his shirt pulled and then he was pushed. Now, it was in the area. You know, he went down. All right, he did go down a bit dramatically, but he was clearly pushed. 

And that was clearly picked up on the TV cameras. So VAR had access to that. So why on earth wouldn’t they step in with the ref and go, uh, ref? And you probably didn’t see it, but it was a clear shirt pull and then a clear push. 

Would you care to review it pitch side? Because we think you need to have another look at it. No, you can bet your bottom dollar adapting a Liverpool game or an Arsenal game on probably three or four other clubs playing. 

Andy: You know, the usual suspects that would have been reviewed. And I don’t think it was reviewed at all today. Um, that’s, that’s the problem with the AR is the inconsistency. The fact that they’ve got 22 cameras or something, I think it’s 22 cameras they’ve got at every game now in the Premier League, so they’re filming from 14 different angles. 

If they’re going to have the AR, then stop the clock, review it, if necessary, get the referee to have a look at it, and let him make a decision on the evidence that’s presented to him. It might take longer to play a game of football, as it does with American football, but you don’t get cheated in American football because they’ve got about five or six referees on the pitch, and so they’ve got multiple eyes on watching everything, 

But then it’s up for review. It’s up for TV review as well. And I don’t think you do get short change in American football. I watch American football every week. and you very very rarely see a boring game very very rarely do you see a boring game because there’s no cheating and because everything you know the whole thing about American sport is they want to win they don’t want draws that’s why you have overtime in every single game not you know it’s a completely different ethic.

Paul: It is yeah. Alright gents i’m conscious of time so i’m gonna I’m gonna call time here.

What more can be said other than to wish everybody well, we’re gonna speak after Bournemouth but to wish everybody a very happy New Year and very best wishes for 2025 both as Evertonians but also obviously just as people. 

And you know whatever your wishes are. Whatever your ambitions are, whatever your circumstances in life are, 2025 is a good year for you.

 George: yeah no problem with those sentiments whatsoever – we are as one, even Sean Dyche I wish him the very best.

Paul:  yeah i’m sure he can go on to other things elsewhere but yeah let’s not go back to that conversation.

George and Andy just to finish off on 2024 uh it’s been a great year for the Talking the Blues podcast. I know I’ve certainly enjoyed it and I know you two have as well, but more importantly the thousands of people that listen to us have enjoyed it and enjoyed it in increasing numbers.

So thank you to everybody that supports the podcast and we look forward to …..

Andy: They don’t realize how much it means to us. 

George: Well, yeah, I think we probably do the fact that they continue to tune in in almost ridiculous numbers. But we’re grateful for every single one of them. I think I think there’s a community. Well, I mean, there is a community, there’s a family of Evertonians, but there’s a community of people that listen to Talking the Blues and, you know, we’re very privileged to be able to talk to them. 

Paul: And yeah, it’s good stuff. Okay, well, all the very best for the new year. And we will speak after Bournemouth. 

Andy: Cheers, Paul:. I’ll say that on behalf of our kid, because he’s muted himself again. 

George: Oh, for God’s sake. 

Paul: In uncharacteristic form, George has left us with a technical issue. Probably sums up the year. Nicely, actually, George. Thank you for that. Yeah, all the best, guys. 

All: Cheers. Cheers.