Everton’s 2021/22 season went horribly wrong while Rafa Benitez was in charge, according to Gary Neville.
The Spaniard got off to a good start as Blues manager, winning four of his first six league games, but things quickly deteriorated, with the club’s next top-flight success not coming until December 6 against Arsenal.
After failing to turn around the team’s bad run, Benitez was fired by the club in January, and Frank Lampard was chosen to steady the ship.
Before a single ball had been kicked, Neville predicted Everton would be overachievers in 2021/22, a prediction that did not come to fruition.
When asked about his pre-season predictions for how the Blues would do under Benitez, the Sky Sports pundit expressed his amazement at how quickly the club’s season spiraled out of control.
“They were on my list of overachievers. I really assumed that because Benitez is such a consistent and reliable performer, he would move them into eighth place, where Wolves and West Ham are.
He isn’t always the most entertaining to watch, but he always manages to get a bunch of players organized and working together.
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I couldn’t believe how awful things had turned out. For me, United and Everton are the season’s biggest mysteries, a total riddle “‘I told the Overlap,’ he said.
“I assumed Benitez could accomplish it on his own since he has connections to agents who can get players in.”
He’d previously worked at Newcastle, where the environment was poisonous, and I believed he’d be ideal for dealing with a tough club like Everton. I expected things to go wrong at some time, but I never expected it to happen so rapidly.”
Neville singled up Everton’s decision to remove Lucas Digne following a relationship breakdown with Benitez as a low point, only to separate ways with the Blues’ manager a few days later.
“That surprised me,” Neville confessed. “It seemed absurd to sell him and then fire Benitez.
That just served to emphasize how awful it was. Digne was sold, the manager was fired three days later, and you had lost one of your greatest players.”
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