Former England international and talkSPORT pundit Michael Gray has said that Everton have to get rid of Marco Silva and get a big name manager like Roberto Mancini or Antonio Conte in if they want to show ambition.
The Toffees currently sit 11th in the table after losing 2-1 to Southampton over the weekend and are closer to Cardiff City in the relegation zone than they are to Manchester United in sixth.
With Farhad Moshiri having held ambitions of breaking the stranglehold of the top six, Gray has insisted that the club need a change in the dugout to hit the heights they are aiming for.
He told Jim Whites’ talkSPORT show (22/01): “(Allardyce) has got more points on the board than what Marco Silva has got in his tenure, and that is after spending £90million.
“They’ve seen themselves drift away from that top six. I just wonder what this means for someone like Marco Silva. He’s gone in at Everton, told them he wants to play this more expansive football which I think they have seen, but that expansive football isn’t working for them.
“If Everton have got any ambition of finishing in that top six, they’re drifting further away rather than getting closer, they have got to go out there, and I’m not saying this will happen in the next couple of weeks… There are rumours Moshiri is not happy with the position that Everton find themselves in.
“If they are wanting to get anywhere near that top six… they’ve got to go out and look for somebody who has had success already and we’re talking (Roberto) Mancini, (Antonio) Conte, we’re talking that calibre.”
“If you look at the records of Silva and Allardyce, Sam had more points.”
“If they want to get top six, they should go out there for Conte or Ancelotti.”@MickyGray33 says Everton need a new boss to realise their ambitions ? pic.twitter.com/FxfLcHyhQG
— talkSPORT (@talkSPORT) January 22, 2019
Opinion
Gray is not messing around in his verdict on how the Toffees’ season has gone so far. With their squad and stature as a club, they really should be battling it out among the best of the rest and while they are within touching distance of Watford in seventh, the gap to sixth has grown and grown. Is getting rid of Silva the answer? It would be a cutthroat approach to the problem but if Moshiri really is desperate to establish the Toffees among the elite of English football then something has to be done. That is either going to be achieved by throwing millions upon millions of pounds on the squad – something which he is unlikely to warrant after the spending spree of 2017 – or by finding a manager who can make the difference, as Claudio Ranieri did with Leicester in their shock title win. Silva is treading water right now and he it going to have to improve if he is to remain in charge at Goodison for the long term.