Everton fantasy to land Thomas Tuchel or Mauricio Pochettino with Frank Lampard one defeat from sack
Frank Lampard may be one defeat from the Everton sack but the club can forget a pair of star replacements, according to Phil McNulty.
The BBC journalist has bemoaned the fact that the Toffees are lurching from one match to another with a huge cloud hanging over the current manager, who could have been removed there and then if the team had been thrashed at Old Trafford on Friday (6 January).
A loss in the crunch meeting with Southampton on 14 January could be enough to end his tenure but McNulty has dismissed the possibility of Thomas Tuchel or Mauricio Pochettino coming in as fantasy talk.
Speaking live on BBC Merseyside on Monday morning (9 January, 7.53am) McNulty said of Lampard: “I think he’ll certainly get one more game. Everton were ok on Friday. I think if they’d had a performance like they had against Brighton and were swept away there may have been a decision to be made there and then.
“We’re in this ridiculous situation where we are moving from game to game. We think he has survived from Manchester United. We move on to Southampton and if Everton don’t beat them it will all start again. A constant tale of chaos.
“It’s an absolutely huge game. This situation with Everton moving from game to game invariably only ever ends one way. You do get the impression that if Everton don’t beat Southampton next week then there will be a decision to be made.”
After touting Sean Dyche and David Moyes as the most likely candidates if Lampard is removed, he went on (7.56am): “They’re not going to get Pochettino or Tuchel. You’re living in dreamland if you think that. So maybe those are the two names [Moyes/Dyche] at the forefront.”
Turmoil
McNulty paints a bleak picture of the situation at Goodison Park, but that is the reality of life at Everton at the moment and Lampard will be feeling the heat of it more than anyone.
Whether the former Chelsea boss should be in the firing line to this extent is a valid question, when he is still contending with the departure of and failure to replace Richarlison.
But even he can’t deny that the encouraging signs earlier in the season, where the defence was strong and the team wasn’t conceding goals, have long since dissolved.
Decent performances on either side of Manchester since Christmas prove that there is something in this side, but the kind of abject defeat they suffered at home to Brighton on 3 January was highly concerning.
Moyes, currently clinging to his own job at West Ham in a similar situation to Lampard, and Dyche, who was sacked at Burnley soon after beating Lampard’s Everton last season (6 April), aren’t exactly inspiring choices right now but would be experienced pairs of hands with more relegation survivals on record than the incumbent.
The Carlo Ancelotti hire creates hope of another superstar boss arriving at Goodison, and you can never say never in football, but since a second battle against the drop become the order of the day the likes of Tuchel and Pochettino are vanishingly unlikely to relish that prospect.