With just seven points from their opening eight games and languishing third from bottom in the Premiership table, Everton are a club in crisis. It wouldn’t come as any great surprise if manager Marco Silva were to become the first Premiership coach to get his marching orders this season.
The Portuguese 42-year-old has already had a couple of meetings with club owner, Farhad Moshiri. While Silva says he feels confident about his future at the Goodison Park, the latest sad showing when the Toffees lost to Burnley at Turf Moor hasn’t done anything to calm any doubts that he must surely have about being sacked.
At least both team and manager have some time to try and get their acts together thanks to the international break. Their next game is on Saturday the 19th when they entertain West Ham at Goodison Park. It will be a crucial game; one which will probably determine Silva’s fate.
After the defeat by Burnley, Silva said that the team’s confidence was not at its best. It’s something of an understatement. He also said that he understood the Evertonians anger with his side at the moment. He went on to say, however, that the players must stick together and that last season the team had endured worse moments.
Words are all very well, but the fact of the matter is that the Toffees are experiencing their worst run under his management. The last time they suffered four successive defeats was back in January 2015 when Roberto Martinez was in charge.
When all is said and done, Silva is realistic, and he has stated that the next game is a must-win.
Injuries to players are always a problem for any manager. The hamstring injury that 29-year-old midfielder, Fabian Delph picked up in the Toffee’s last match against Burnley is a worry. He has pulled out of the England squad.
Worryingly for Silva, Delph’s injury is on top of the fact that Jean-Phillipe Gbamin is still out after damaging his right quadriceps last August. He is not yet sufficiently recovered to start training.
It must be small comfort for Marco Silva to know that he is not alone in terms of speculation about his future with his current employers. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is also in deep trouble at Old Trafford. Even a manager like Mauricio Pochettino can’t take his position for granted at Tottenham Hotspur given how badly they are performing right now.
You only have to take a quick look back at the statistics to see that at least one manager gets sacked from half of the number of clubs that amass only nine points in their first ten games.
Being a football manager is a pretty precarious job. A poor string of results and a set of severely disgruntled fans (rather like the Evertonians), puts managers’ heads on the chopping block. Looking back over the past ten years, the average of managerial sackings per season is 6.2.
At the moment, Marcus Silva stands first in the queue of likely sackings this season if things don’t quickly improve for Everton. That’s why so much hangs on the next game away to West Ham. It could well be his last.
