Andy Burnham sends rallying cry to Everton fanbase after Benitez appointment
Everton fans must put their bitterness aside and support new manager Rafa Benitez, claims Andy Burnham.
The Mayor of Greater Manchester is a boyhood Everton fan and while he does not support the move personally, he vows to give the man some time before judging him.
On Jamie Carragher’s The Greatest Game podcast, Burnham said that he would’ve rather gone for Nuno Espirito Santo, who ended up taking the vacant managerial seat at Tottenham Hotspur.
Speaking about the Benitez appointment, Burnham said, “Still mixed about it, but we’ll get behind him. Obviously he’s a manager with incredible pedigree.
“He wouldn’t be the name I would’ve gone to first. There was no obvious candidate. None of them made total sense. I thought Nuno would’ve been our best out as the quality he brought through at Wolves was impressive.
“However Everton are in a position where we need a Champions League winner and how many of those are around? Sometimes we’ve just got to put the bitterness aside and get on with the modern world of football.”
Give the man some time
A number of fans have already written of Benitez’s Everton spell without him managing a single game for us.
We must treat him like we would with any new manager that walked through the door to replace Carlo Ancelotti.
Yes, most of us might not like him for the fact that he managed Liverpool and called us a small club in the past, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s enjoyed a silverware-laden career and could be the man to take us to the next level.
Despite all the protests and threats, he still stood up in the face of it to accept the Everton job and he deserves to be lauded, not berated for it.
Once he’s been in the job for a while and is unable to get the results then calling for him to be sacked his justified, but right now the team needs us to get behind the Spaniard.
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