Ranking every Everton manager of the Premier League era from worst to best
Everton are once again looking for a new manager after sacking Sean Dyche. But where does Dyche rank among the club’s best and worst managers of the Premier League era?
There have been quite a range of coaches at Goodison Park over the past 33 years, with some enjoying considerably better results than others.
Here’s our ranking of every permanent manager (no caretakers, with apologies to David Unsworth and Duncan Ferguson) that Everton have had during the Premier League era.
13. Mike Walker
Ah, the silver fox.
“We’d pass the ball 50 times without it leaving our half, give the ball away and our opponents would score,” Neville Southall later recalled of Walker’s tactics. Sounds about right.
Over thirty years later, Everton fans are still pondering how Walker managed to lead Norwich City to a famous victory over Bayern Munich. It can’t have been the same bloke that didn’t last a full year in Merseyside.
He’ll always have the comeback victory over Wimbledon, at least. Heaven only knows where the club would’ve ended up without it.
12. Rafael Benitez
We’re arguably being generous to Rafa not sticking him rock bottom here. It’s safe to say that his reputation differs quite considerably from one side of Stanley Park to the other.
Given his history, this was an appointment that felt doomed from the offset. But he actually made a decent start at Goodison by leading the club to four wins from the first six outings of 2021-22. While his 31% win percentage is actually about par in recent years.
Ultimately, Benitez’s promising start didn’t last past September and he proceeded to oversee a run of results and performances that’s about as hapless as Everton have been in the Premier League era.
The Spaniard only limped on as far as January, making him Everton’s shortest-serving permanent manager of the Premier League era. Who could’ve seen that one coming?
11. Howard Kendall
Were we ranking Everton managers full stop, there’d be no questioning Kendall’s place at the top.
Two league titles, one FA Cup, one Cup Winners’ Cup and one of the best periods in Everton’s history as they lay a genuine claim as one of the best sides in Europe during their mid-80s heyday.
Unfortunately, the ‘Premier League era’ stipulation means we have to place the legendary coach among the bottom few rungs of this ranking. Everton were distinctly ordinary in the inaugural 1992-93 campaign, ending up 13th, while he departed midway through the next season after a seven-match winless run.
A third stint proved a sad and ill-fitting final chapter for Kendall’s story on Merseyside, as they dismally succumbed to a 17th-place finish and stayed up by the skin of their teeth by notching 40 points in the 1997-98 season. At least his story didn’t end with relegation.
10. Ronald Koeman
The Dutchman led Everton to wins in 24 of his 58 games in charge.
A 41% win ratio was actually about comparable to his immediate predecessors David Moyes and Roberto Martinez, while a seventh-place finish from his one full season sounds like a dream in comparison to what’s followed.
But that’s a spin Alastair Campbell would be proud of. We must consider the context of what he inherited, including a 25-goal-a-season striker in Romelu Lukaku, while the basic numbers ignore the often ponderous football.
Worse still was his disastrous track record with signings. There’s an argument that Koeman’s transfer dealings are responsible for a decline they’ve not yet recovered from seven years later.
READ: Ranking Everton’s 10 weirdest & most questionable signings of the Farhad Moshiri era
9. Frank Lampard
At least he wasn’t Benitez, eh?
Lampard inherited a team in a tailspin and he took his time to get them back on course. But things picked up, just in time, in the run-in; impressive home victories over Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester United and Chelsea proved vital to their survival in 2021-22.
He lasted about a full year in charge, and from 38 Premier League games he led Everton to 35 points. It’s hard to make a case that they’d have stayed up in 2022-23 had he stayed in the post much longer.
8. Walter Smith
Rangers enjoyed a period of unbridled joy during the Scot’s legendary spell as manager.
The same unfortunately can’t be said for Everton at the turn of the century, whereby Smith’s nearly four seasons can be neatly summarised by a big shrug.
Three successive bottom-half finishes and an ignominious departure amid a faint whiff of relegation, Smith’s time at Goodison leaves behind few fond memories.
Behind-the-scenes factors, such as the regular sales of top players, offer some mitigation.
7. Sam Allardyce
“So it’s come to this, has it?”
The requirement to appoint a firefighter in Big Sam served as a staunch reality check for Everton fans at what the club had become.
In terms of results, Allardyce did a perfectly decent job. He inherited a side that were struggling at the wrong end of the table and led them to a respectable eighth place in 2017-18.
But the infamously meat and potatoes football was difficult to stomach, a stark contrast to the “long-term ambitions” promised by Farhad Moshiri.
READ NEXT: Where are they now? Everton’s 7 wonderkids from Football Manager 2015
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name every player Everton have signed for £20m or more?
6. Sean Dyche
It’s a bold call to sack Dyche when you’re staring down the battle of a relegation battle. Let’s see how this one ages.
As with his spiritual brethren Allardyce, Dyche’s style – or lack thereof – was always unlikely to win over many admirers. And after nearly two years, you can forgive any fans for going all existential about what’s the point of it all.
But Dyche steered Everton to safety in 2022-23 (just) after they looked in dire straits under Lampard and miles clear of the dropzone in his one full season. They’d have been pushing for a top-half finish in 2023-24 were it not for the eight-point deduction.
This season, successive draws against Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea demonstrated he’s not lost the knack for organising a defence and grinding out a result. They’ve also failed to score in eight of their last 10 Premier League outings and are precariously close to the abyss.
5. Marco Silva
Maybe it’s because Silva has thoroughly rehabilitated his reputation at Fulham that we’re a bit more inclined to give him the benefit for his underwhelming stint at Goodison.
Eighth place in his one full season doesn’t seem so bad now, when you consider what’s followed. Highlights included a 4-0 thrashing of Manchester United, while lowlights included a 6-2 tonking at home to Spurs.
A familiar second syndrome at Goodison ultimately left you feeling this was not one of Europe’s top young coaches, as he’d been billed. A 5-2 defeat in the Merseyside derby that left Everton in the relegation zone was understandably too bitter a pill to swallow for the board.
4. Roberto Martinez
Ever his own PR man, Martinez will tell you he rocked up at Goodison fresh from leading Wigan Athletic to the FA Cup. As opposed to getting them relegated.
He inherited sturdy foundations from Moyes and initially, the slightly more shackles-off approach was a breath of fresh air. He was doing well to get the best out of a young Romelu Lukaku and had Everton riding high in the top four come Christmas.
The second half of that first year saw the club go on a seven-match winning streak in which they regularly scored for fun, but that stellar run was bookended by two slumps that cost them Champions League qualification in the end.
Martinez was blessed to work with one of the best Everton sides of the Premier League era, and at times it felt like a good fit. But back-to-back bottom-half finishes told the story of wasted potential.
READ: Where are they now? Everton’s 7 wonderkids from Football Manager 2015
3. Carlo Ancelotti
Don Carlo’s Covid-era spell at Goodison already feels like some kind of hazy fever dream, given Everton’s subsequent years of turmoil and relegation battles while he’s been off winning yet more Champions Leagues at The Bernabeu.
We’re not just dazzled by the glamour here, either. The suave Italian didn’t deliver spectacular results or perform miracles, but his 46% win percentage and 10th-place finish in 2020-21 stands out like a sore thumb in the otherwise miserable late Moshiri years.
2. Joe Royle
The only man on this list to have delivered silverware in the Premier League era, Royle was always going to be somewhere near the top.
Everton had failed to win any of their first 12 matches of the 1994-95 campaign and ended it lifting the FA Cup, beating Sir Alex Ferguson’s imperial-era, all-conquering Manchester United with a 1-0 masterclass at Wembley.
Genuine Everton royalty.
1. David Moyes
Silverware evaded Moyes over the course of his long, 11-year tenure, so you might make a case he doesn’t deserve to be top.
The Glaswegian’s football wasn’t the most stylish, and his achievements not all that sexy. And he was arguably lucky to make it past his disastrous second full season (2003-04), in which Everton finished 17th on 39 points – a record low until 2022-23.
But he more than justified the faith shown in him by establishing Everton as a consistent top-half team from that point onwards, starting with them finishing fourth, above their Champions League-winning neighbours in 2004-05.
Moyes transformed Everton and left the club with solid foundations when he left for Old Trafford. It’s easy to forget now that the general consensus at the time was that he deserved a crack at the biggest job in the country.
How Everton could do with something like that once more. Could they?