Dyche dismissal a risk that puts team's need to stay up in sharp focus

Sacking is no shock given manager's dour football but successor has a perilous task. Could Moyes be the right fit?

- Jonathan Wilson

It was life, but was it living? Everton have lost only four of their past 16 games in all competitions. They have kept five clean sheets in their past eight games and in the past month have frustrated Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City. They've taken 17 points from 19 games this season, which the past decade of the Premier League would suggest, if repeated in the second half of the season, would leave them right on the edge of relegation.

Given the trend is for the relegated three to get fewer and fewer points, the sense is that, even with Wolves and Ipswich showing signs of improvement, they would probably have survived if Sean Dyche had stayed.

But on the other hand, Everton have failed to score in eight of their past 10 games, and have lost the past two, against Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest. Eventually clinging on for clean sheets, relying on the absolute focus of the rearguard and on Jordan Pickford to make a couple of outstanding saves a game becomes untenable. And perhaps more than that, it becomes unwatchable. If Everton fans have become disillusioned, if eking their way to safety, goalless draw by goalless draw, has come to seem unbearably joyless, they can hardly be blamed.

Dyche lasted just under two years. Although his win percentage was higher than that of Frank Lampard, his immediate predecessor, it was worse than every other Everton manager since Howard Kendall's second spell, in 1997-98, and the fourth-lowest in Everton's history.