Martin Samuel: Marcelo Bielsa wants to understand Everton’s transfer policy, join the queue

Who wouldn’t be fascinated by the processes of a £500 million spend that has taken the club to 19th in the Premier League amid consecutive relegation battles? Who wouldn’t find it compelling to have explained a managerial recruitment policy that would appear to involve the owner shouting: “Bring me the opposite of him!” seven times now?

Bielsa was the first choice after a failed attempt to open negotiations with Mauricio Pochettino last year, which at least contained a certain symmetry, Pochettino being a Bielsa disciple. Depending on who you believe, though, Carlos Corberan is now the back-up, or maybe Sean Dyche or Nuno Espirito Santo or Marcelino, formerly of Villarreal, Valencia and Athletic Bilbao – and a call was even placed to Sam Allardyce to pick his brains, although nothing more than that.

It’s all very Everton. If Everton went for lunch it would join the line outside that hot new sushi place with only six seats at the counter, get bored two from the front, and nip to the pub next door for a steak and kidney pudding, chips, gravy and a pint. That’s Everton. Nothing is consistent, little makes sense.

Hurrying away from the scene of the latest debacle at the London Stadium on Saturday, the owner, Farhad Moshiri, even told a reporter that sacking or retaining the manager wasn’t down to him. The only surprise is that Moshiri is now flustered to find Bielsa isn’t exactly rushing into his arms; or maybe appointments are not his bag, either.

There is an episode of South Park that takes aim at its animated rival Family Guy. South Park’s creators hated Family Guy. In the episode Cartoon Wars, it is claimed that Family Guy’s jokes are interchangeable, random and irrelevant to the show’s actual narrative. One of the main characters, Cartman, then discovers that Family Guy scripts are in fact written by a pod of manatees arbitrarily selecting idea balls and dropping them into an AI joke generator.

And if Everton’s recruitment strategy were similarly constructed it would all make sense. Managers, players, even directors of football, all picked at random by sea cows. Maybe that is the secret that Bielsa is trying to unlock.

Except Family Guy’s fictional manatees actually produced a hit show. By contrast, it is hard to recall a big decision Everton have got right during the Moshiri years. Even refusing to sell Anthony Gordon to Chelsea last summer is looking a misstep with hindsight, as his form dips horrifically and Newcastle United make a reduced offer.

And Tuesday, the move to recruit the winger Arnaut Danjuma, of Villarreal, collapsed, despite the player passing a medical, when he promptly decamped to Tottenham Hotspur to sign for them instead. Kevin Thelwell, Everton’s director of football, has come up with a 120-point plan to rejuvenate the club, but getting transfers done is basic stuff. 120 points? Wars are won with less.

Bielsa’s reticence is therefore wholly understandable. Everton’s transfer strategy means any new manager will inherit a first-team squad built by seven predecessors: Frank Lampard is responsible for eight of those players, Rafa Benitez six, Ronald Koeman three, Marco Silva and Carlo Ancelotti two each, Roberto Martinez and David Moyes one apiece.

It wouldn’t be so bad if any of the group seemed greatly keen on the hard running that is the essence of Bielsa’s own game plan, but there was scant evidence of that at West Ham on Saturday. Bielsa has told his prospective employers that Everton lack pace, particularly at the back. Their response has been to lose a winger to Tottenham. Smooth.

Bielsa is also known to believe that his methods need a pre-season to work successfully. He has never taken a European club job – and his next one will be his seventh – mid-season. It makes one wonder what research Everton put into their appointments when such a crucial piece of information seems to have eluded them.

Indeed, even in South America, the only position Bielsa has ever taken outside the months of May, June and July, was that of Argentina’s national manager in October 1998 – and the national team did not have a game until February 1999.

Yet this is the Everton way. Lampard wasn’t the club’s first choice the last time either. The board initially wanted a return for Martinez on a job share with the Belgium federation, except nobody had sounded out his employers, who killed the idea instantly because it was a World Cup year. Then a fan pushback vetoed the appointment of Vitor Pereira and a trial for club hero Duncan Ferguson was curtailed after a single defeat. Enter Lampard.

And now exit. The irony being that while Everton consistently chews up managers it leaves their reputations relatively unharmed. Who knows with certainty whether Lampard was good at his job? Everton is like the bad boyfriend some women misguidedly think that they can change. Give it a week or two and you’ll find out Everton’s slept with your sister. Again.

Maybe Bielsa can be persuaded that this time it will be different, too. Yet all the signals are wrong and all his instincts are right. His methods need time and he hasn’t got time. His methods need sweat and Everton’s players don’t sweat. He has a coherent philosophy and Everton do not. 120 points of improvement? He’d be better off with the manatees.

Broken record won’t keep Kane at Spurs

He’s still two short. You do know that, yes? Harry Kane versus Jimmy Greaves. The younger man still has two goals to go to equal Greaves – or he would if Tottenham kept records like, say, Liverpool.

Tottenham state that Greaves scored 266 goals for them, because they do not count his two in a 5-1 win over Ipswich in the 1962 Charity Shield. Liverpool, meanwhile, record Roger Hunt as having 285 goals, including the one against Everton in the 1966 Charity Shield.

Not that Kane isn’t going to make history, whether the mark is 266 or 268, but it seems rather churlish to disparage Charity Shield goals now that managers such as Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola count a win as a legitimate trophy, equivalent to the Super Cup in their own countries.

Of course, Kane has never had the opportunity to play in the modern equivalent, the Community Shield, because Tottenham have been neither league champions nor FA Cup winners during his career.

Yet that is not on Greaves. Equally, Jimmy couldn’t rack up goals in a competition as tame as the UEFA Conference League, in which Kane claimed six last year.

Either way, for all the talk of new contracts, it is hard to believe Kane will be sated by personal milestones for much longer. Had Daniel Levy been prepared to do the deal, Kane would have departed for Manchester City in 2021, still short of Greaves’s record. Being part of Tottenham’s history would not have kept him then, just as it is unlikely to make him reject Manchester United if they put in a realistic offer this summer.

– The Times

Originally published as Martin Samuel: Marcelo Bielsa wants to understand Everton’s transfer policy, join the queue