I don’t know when I first knew that I was Ev-curious. I guess on some level, I’ve always known. There is something about them that is utterly compelling. They are always the car crash and I cannot help but slow down to stare.

In terms of natural resources, they are one of the biggest clubs in English football’s post-war era. They were one of the original ‘Big Five’ to push for the Premier League. But they’ve never enjoyed any of the dividends.

A single season in the Premier League is considered a lottery win for most clubs. By that rationale, Everton have won the lottery every year for the past 33 years and yet they have never come close to challenging for the title, they’ve only won a single trophy in this period and, most baffling of all, they almost always seemed to be broke.

That ended in 2016 when Iranian businessman Farhad Moshiri turned up, over half a billion quid was splurged across five seasons and, of course, Everton being Everton, they nearly got relegated. Several times.

But what if it were possible to go back and stop it all from happening? What if it were possible to seize control just before the club let slip the surly bonds of reality and to stop them spending a fortune in order to get much, much worse at football? Well, perhaps there is…

“We were so close, you know, Iain,” says Bill Kenwright as the ink dries on a tentatively worded one year contract spread across the boardroom table. “I don’t mind telling you that I really thought Bobby Martinez was the one. We were within touching distance of the Champions League and her sweet, sweet riches. We finished fifth! But then it all started to slide and now we’ve ended up in eleventh two seasons in a row. That’s just not good enough, Iain. Not for this club. Not for Everton. I want you to do better.”

“How much better?” I ask.

“Top half,” he says, executing a pair of textbook jazz hands. “I won’t accept anything less.”

I think about this for a moment.

“So…tenth?”

“Ninth, if you can manage it,” says Bill. “But tenth is fine.”

“I must confess,” Bill says, “we were very close to hiring Ronald Koeman. But when I heard that a 38 year old rookie with a mediocre career in what can only loosely be referred to as ‘football journalism’ was available, well, I had to make my move. I called up Ronald, I told him that his 500 games of top level managerial experience were all well and good, but that he’s weighed down with something terrible that’s never troubled you at all.”

“Which is?”

“Dignity,” he winks. “I look at you and I think, there’s a guy who will just keep on coming back, no matter how it looks. I know what people will say: ‘Shouldn’t he have a grown up job by now? Shouldn’t he be writing serious books or something? What does his wife think? Ah, but you’ll shrug it off as you always do and you’ll just go and do the same thing again and again. And again. And I think that’s just smashing.”

“Well, thanks,” I say.

Bill smiles.

“There is one problem though,” he says. “We stopped the process before Ronald signed his forms. But we weren’t quite quick enough stop Erwin…”

“Erwin?”

“Erwin Koeman,” says Bill. “Ronald’s brother. He’s your assistant manager.”

“But…I wanted my own assistant,” I say. “I was hoping to promote Duncan Ferguson so that he didn’t hate me. Or to maybe tempt Steve Bould away from Arsenal for reasons that I don’t want to explain at this time.”

“Can’t do it,” says Bill.

“But isn’t it going to be incredibly awkward?”

“Almost certainly.”

“But surely he’ll want to tear up the contact and stay loyal to his brother?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have thought so,” says Bill, shaking his head.

“Why not?”

“It’s a four year deal for £20,000 a week. Almost no assistant manager in the world has a deal like that. No, he’s far too expensive to pay off and he has no intention of leaving so I think you’re just going to have to find a way to work together.”

This is the first, but sadly not the last, of a series of unpleasant surprises. Our two best players, Romelu Lukaku and Ross Barkley are on the shopping list of every major club in Europe. We have only three senior defenders: Phil Jagielka; Ramiro Funes Mori and Ashley Williams. We have just a single right-back, Seamus Coleman, and he won’t be fit until the Autumn. We have four strikers, Romelu Lukaku, Baye Oumar Niasse, Enner Valencia and Arouna Kone, all on first team wages and I generally only play with one up top. We have multiple high earners on the transfer list with no reported interest in their services whatsoever. And we have about 68 teenagers on the books with so little chance of making it as professional footballers that I want to call them all up immediately and urge them to focus on their schoolwork.

“But you do have a transfer kitty of £45m,” whispers Bill, with a twinkle in his eye.

“But we’re £9m into our overdraft,” I tell him.

“Oh, I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” he grins. “If I know anything about football finance, this will all work itself out. Why don’t you buy some ‘number tens’, eh?”

“Why would I do that? We’ve already got Ross Barkley.”

“Come on, Iain, everyone loves a number ten. We could get Wayne Rooney back from Manchester United!”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What about Gylfi Sigurdsson at Swansea?”

“Nope. Not comfortable with that,” I say quickly.

“How about this kid Davy Klaassen that I’ve been reading about?”

“I don’t fancy him.”

“How about…” says Bill, leaning towards me conspiratorially, “….we sign ALL THREE OF THEM!”

“Bill,” I say firmly. “It’s stuff like this. This is exactly why I’m here.”

The priority, as everyone should be able to tell, is the defence. We need a centre-back, ideally a left-footer, and then a right-back, on the basis that poor old Jonjoe Kenny isn’t going to be the guy. Like winged monkeys with notepads, my scouts are sent out across Europe to look for reinforcements.

I also spend an inordinate amount of time working out training schedules, scouting patches and maximising the roles of every member of staff. I’ve learned a bit about myself over the years, I know I have a tendency to micro-manage, so I’m going to keep a close eye on my youth teams, but I’m not going to actively handle them. I need to focus on the first team.

Tactically, I’ve got a very clear idea of how I want us to play. We’re Everton, so we need to be a physical side. We’ll always close you down, we’ll always snap into tackles. Then we want to get the ball out onto the flanks where our  fleet-footed wingers can roar into space, looking to cut the ball back to the onrushing striker or the attack minded midfielder. Or anyone else who can scamper forward in time. That’s our ‘Dogs of War’ tactic.

But there will be times when we want to protect the lead, slow it all down and kill the game. We don’t need to change the shape too much to do that, just the mentality. That’s the ‘Sleeping Dogs of War’ tactic.

And then sometimes we might be a bit desperate and need to get back into the game by any means possible, leaping openmouthed at the throats of our enemies like some vicious mythical extinction dog. And that’s ‘Fenrir’s Revenge.’

But you can’t really know anything until you’ve seen your players play. We’ve got three weeks until our first friendly, but I just can’t wait to get them out there and see what they can do. So I set up the easiest friendly available. In terms of logistics, at least…

There’s always a risk to playing against your reserve side. If you win, what does it really prove? If you lose…well… should you just quit there and then? But we have to find out what we’re working with and it’s better to do that behind closed doors than in front of the world’s media. I pick two different elevens and I give them one half each against our U23 squad.

It takes just five minutes for the U23 squad to open the scoring.

Ramiro Funes Mori is turned inside out by Leandro Rodriguez who leaves him on his bottom and zips off to spank the ball inside Martin Stekelenberg’s near post. That is mortifying. Fortunately, we wrestle our way back into the game with a Romelu Lukaku header and a neat finish from Yannick Bolasie. But the kids should be level again when Rodriguez smashes one home after a Stekelenberg fumble. The referee disallows it, presumably to spare Stekelenberg’s feelings.

The second XI come on at the break and Enner Valencia sees it as an opportunity to stake a claim for a place on the bench ahead of Oumar Niasse. He scores with a fine finish to make it 3-1, but young David Henen finds it all too easy to add one of his own at the other end under absolutely no pressure from Ashley Williams. Valencia makes it 4-2, pouncing on an error from carrot-topped centre back Morgan Feeney, but there’s still time for Mason Holgate to completely misread a long ball and allow Henen to make it 4-3.

And so, not for the first time in my life, I can say with some confidence….Everything’s coming up Everton. 

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