Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

In what has to be most unsurprising move ever, David Moyes is the latest recipient of the tried and trusted Goodison Park pension-pot top-up. He’s being hovering around for ages, like one of them Huel-fools from the gym, who always want to use the pec-fly machine and constantly ask ‘How many sets have you got left?’

‘Not many mate. But I’ve got loads of scrolling to do on my phone, so take your Crocs and socks and fuck all the way off.’

Unless he’s a big cunt, obviously.

Not really. 

And talking of bi…

The replacement of Sean Dyche, the human school-floor-buffer, with Moyes, has elicited nothing more than a massive shrug from the supporters. Well, apart from that fella from Toffeeweb. Has someone checked he hasn’t thrown a rope up?

Anyway, to speculate wildly – it’s the internet, why not! – is it most likely that what did for Dyche was his contract situation rather than just recent form? 

If you were him, with only six months remaining on your deal, would you be using the transfer window as a bit of leverage? Telling the new owners that it’s difficult to attract players, and indeed have authority with the present squad, when there’s every chance you won’t be around next season? And when it quickly become apparent that an extension isn’t going to happen, you think ‘Fuck this, I might as well bail with a pay-out now, keep my reputation intact and save myself a load more grief. Maybe even take in the Ashes and Burning Man before accepting another job’?  

What Dyche’s departure will make more clear now is whether he was in fact Everton’s problem. Or was he just the individual dealing with Everton’s problems, which are legion?

What came first, the chicken, or the man who looks like an egg?

Is Dyche really a dinosaur, stifling creativity and footballing joie de vivre, or a pragmatist who plays to the strengths of the limited resources at his disposal? Or perhaps more pertinently, protecting their weaknesses?

As we all know though, sacking managers is Everton’s equivalent of stopping the small boats, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter what the issue is, that’s always the solution.

By the way, dinosaurs get a bad rap, don’t they, for being shit at stuff? It doesn’t really seem fair to blame them for never having good ideas or inspiration though. The poor bastards never had the internet or the telly or nothing, so no wonder they come across as boring and thick.

But that’s beside the point. The problem Dyche was always going to have was that winning ugly is fine. There’s just never going to be much patience for losing ugly. 

Given the state of that squad, there is some logic in bringing in someone who will presumably stick to a similar formula, as opposed to the potential pram-fire of some Pep-disciple from Red Bull Plovdiv trying to get them to adopt his philosophy – not even putting it in inverted commas –  mid-season. Moyes got chased from West Ham, after all – despite being literally one of their best managers ever – because they were liking watching shit on a stick, even after paying proper dough for loads of players.

Still, you can see the new owners’ working out, especially when you hear all the comforting phrases like ‘safe pair of hands’, ‘steady the ship’, ‘knows the club inside and out’, and ‘l think that cardie is actually Autograph, not Blue Harbour. You can tell he’s been living in that London’. 

In terms of the story that’s being written for the supporters though, it doesn’t get the pulse racing by any means. It sort of says the last eleven years have been a fever dream, and here we are, waking up in sweat-soaked sheets like the start of Apocalypse Now, with exactly the same manager – who loads were absolutely sick of when he left – but a shadow of the team he assembled when he sloped off down the M62.

Custy la.

For all football fans say they want ‘stability’ – what does that even mean? – it’s novelty and the illusion of momentum and progress that’s the real hook. Look at Manchester United, they are no longer shite, they ‘just don’t have the players for Ruben Amorim’s system, yet.’

Or in the words of infamous Kopite (probably) Benito Mussolini: “You must always be doing things and obviously succeeding. The hard part is to keep people always at the window because of the spectacle you put on for them.”

And the worry is that very soon, Evertonians will look out of the window and say: ‘He’s swapped the wingers over and not made a sub until the 65th minute.’

Until the club has real money to spend on players though, or more to the point are allowed to spend actual money on players who aren’t from the middle aisle in Aldi, then Moyes is going to have his work cut out to effect any significant change to that side. Because, to be quite honest, the most important return to the club at the moment is unlikely to be the Moyesiah himself; it’s probably Dwight McNeil, otherwise known as ‘the other one who can play a bit’. 

Having said all that, and despite the massive lack of ‘whelm’, we have to get behind Moyes, as we would any manager. Because it’s not about him, and indeed it’s not about the players, and it’s definitely not about you. 

It’s about Everton. 

I can’t leave that at the end with a straight face. Do what you want. Someone’s going to shout ‘Make a change Moyes’ during the Villa game anyway – it’s as nailed on as no one laughing when I refer to our Guinea-Bissau centre-forward – does he even get a game for them? – as ‘Samuel’ Beto, as he runs like some big lass in one of them security videos, desperately trying to squeeze past the overwhelmed security guards into a shopping mall on Black Friday.

Up the Toffees.