The management style of Sean Dyche is accompanied by all manner of stereotypes, not all of them flattering.
He is generally perceived to be an old-fashioned sergeant-major type who demands maximum application. He can drill a back-line into uniformed order with the best of them.
What you typically get from a Sean Dyche team is commitment, organisation and very little hesitation to revert to basics when the basics are called for.
In all of these regards, the former Burnley boss is painted as a throw-back, a non-nonsense meat and potatoes guy who stands unique amongst data geeks who can tell you the GPS stats for their reserve left-back at the drop of a hat.
Of course, all of this is a nonsense, a slight on a manager who is as tactically savvy as any of his peers, with intuitive man-management skills that are nigh-on unrivalled.
Sean Dyche is a thoroughly modern coach, one of the very best we have. He just happens to unfortunately embody the persona of a bouncer at a working men’s club.
Still, that didn’t stop social media taking great delight in succumbing to cliché soon after the ‘Ginger Guardiola’ took charge at Everton. A video emerged of the players huffing and puffing in training, all to a backdrop of Dyche grinning from ear to ear.
‘Good old Dychey’, seemed to be the patronising sentiment. He’ll soon whip those under-performing Blues into shape. He’ll soon have them running.
Which he has, though pertinently not to an extent particularly greater than what was evidenced under his predecessor Frank Lampard. Bar the odd exception such as Amadou Onana and Abdoulaye Doucoure, the Toffees’ overall milage has remained the same.
What Dyche has done at Goodison is firstly install a structure, and a sensible one at that, before trusting his players over time to embrace an identity, one that has organisation at its core, but also allows for any number of midfielders to bomb forward and assist Dominic Calvert-Lewin up top.
To date, the strategy is working a treat.
But back to the beginning and his appointment. On taking over at Everton last January, Dyche inherited a broken team devoid of any confidence. They had won only three games all season and somewhat inevitably they found themselves well-backed in the football betting to drop.
Pragmatism was required. The basics. Subsequently, all of the attributes that he is associated with – those that additionally diminish him – came to the fore and it’s no coincidence that four of their following five crucial victories were achieved via hard-fought 1-0 scorelines.
This season, however, we have seen a different Everton. There has been more adventure. More risks taken in the final third and more men advanced forward to allow these risks to be taken.
A 4-4-1-1 formation, that can easily switch to a 3-5-2 when up against it, lies at the heart of their improvement, a system that has got outstanding performances out of James Garner and Onana.
That has seen Doucoure play almost as a second striker at times and given license to Dwight McNeil and Jack Harrison to create down the flanks.
It should be said too that the form of Tarkowski, Branthwaite and Mykolenko at the back has been central to Everton winning games. A Sean Dyche team will always be solid, no matter what.
Only then came disaster, in the form of a ten-point penalty for failing to comply with FFP regulations.
How Everton, as a club, responded to this seismic set-back would be fundamental to the health of their short-term future.
And here we go back to Dyche’s man-management acumen, because what we’ve witnessed is a team hell-bent on immediately righting a wrong. Four consecutive victories leading up to Christmas, all to nil, is testament to that.
The Toffees still feature in the sports betting relegation markets. Due to their enforced points deduction they presently lie just a mere point above the bottom three.
Yet this is a team that is in infinitely better condition to their struggling incarnation of twelve months prior. With kinder fate, they would be fancied to challenge for a European spot.
Sean Dyche didn’t accrue the characteristics he is known for unfairly. Many of them hold true. But he is far, far more than silly stereotypes.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to Alamy*
