On the evidence of seeing Everton Under-21s’ 2-0 defeat to their Wolverhampton Wanderers counterparts, manager Sean Dyche might just have been proven right over his cutting vindication for not blooding the Blues’ youngsters.
Asked ahead of Everton’s last game at Manchester United why he wasn’t turning to players from the club’s academy to try and turn around his team’s flagging fortunes of late, the 52-year-old said: “There is no one I have looked at and thought: ‘You are ready to jump in.’” Harsh? Perhaps but seemingly true, even with the first team now on an 11-match winless streak in the Premier League.
Dyche once made a 12-hour round trip to the Grand Canyon only to ask to leave after just a couple of minutes but while the Blues boss’ underwhelming reaction to one of the natural wonders of the world sounds shocking, his recent stark appraisal of the yawning chasm between first team and academy football might be spot on.
Keith Wyness fumes about what he's heard on new Everton hearing
Kevin Ratcliffe lifts the lid on what Howard Kendall told him to inspire Everton's greatest night
Back in 2020, Dyche’s long-time assistant Ian Woan revealed in an interview with The Athletic that during a trip to Las Vegas, they made the long drive to see the Grand Canyon, the 277-mile long feature in Arizona that exposes nearly two billion years of the Earth’s geological history, only for his gaffer to be left nonplussed. Woan recalled: “He looked over the rim for two minutes, and said, ‘Alright I’ve seen it, let’s go.’ I said to him: ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’ He just looked at me and said: ‘I’ve seen it, what else have I got to see? I’m just looking at this big hole.’”
Without a fixture for three weeks, Dyche has taken his first
Read on liverpoolecho.co.uk