Everton's new owners, the Friedkin Group, have sacked Sean Dyche by looking at the Premier League table. If they had looked at his track record and specific skills, they might have hit pause.
The results this season were not good enough. Dyche said this himself this week. At Everton he was dogged by a struggle to score goals, and eventually it worked out for him.
Nevertheless, is Everton's squad better than the teams above it? Is it better than Crystal Palace, West Ham or Manchester United?
It would be difficult to say that is the case, so if they are hovering above the relegation zone – rather than in it, as they were when Dyche arrived in January 2023 – then there may be deep-seated reasons for that.
For managers to survive, all teams need to feel like they are moving forward, and Everton have not been that way. But neither does the club. Everton have been stuck in a cycle of uncertain recruitment and ownership volatility for so long that it's hard to remember a time when that wasn't the case. They have also been in a financial stranglehold and Dyche is not the first manager at Everton to suffer from this.
But under Dyche they would not have gone down. At least, it's hard to imagine they would have done so. The 53-year-old played a trick on gravity at Burnley year after year and his time at Everton was marked by periods of difficulty, punctuated by short bursts of results that provided breathing space.
If Everton's owners had kept their nerve, there's a good chance it would have happened again.
With a move to their new ground at Bramley-Moore Dock looming, Everton literally cannot afford to start next season outside the top division. They have been a top team since 1954 and now would be a disastrous time if that streak were to end. So if the Friedkins have been concerned after their defeat to Bournemouth last Saturday, it's understandable.
Nevertheless, the sack of Dyche only increased the danger. Everton's side needs uncertainty and instability, just as it needs points deductions again, but that's what it has now. This move has probably opened the door to relegation further than it closed it.
West Ham have jettisoned Julen Lopetegui as they lost games badly. The same was the case at Wolves with Gary O'Neil. That's how it was at United under Erik ten Hag.
Dyche's Everton lost games on the margins, which is different. It wasn't good enough, but the question facing the new manager will be how much room there is to make things terribly better.
Clubs such as Brentford, Brighton and Bournemouth – smaller than Everton in stature and history – have preceded them in recent years with intelligent models and collective thinking. At those clubs, the coach is only one factor in their success.
At Goodison Park, the manager has had to do all the heavy lifting on his own in recent years and that can only work for so long – hence the havoc under the likes of Dyche, Frank Lampard, Carlo Ancelotti and Ronald Koeman.
Everton are not set up to do well, on or off the pitch. Perhaps new ownership and a modern stadium will change that. But not now. Not yet. However, a new face can introduce some freshness, and if they can find a way to score more, they will move out of the bottom three.
There seemed an obvious way forward in the short term and that was to give Dyche the chance to keep the club afloat, then thank him and say goodbye. His contract expired at the end of the season anyway. It is a big call to abandon that path now.
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