We all have to be honest about what’s going on at Everton – I’ve been there

Everton FA Cup winner Anders Limpar has been speaking about the current Blues team

Everton FA Cup-winning hero Anders Limpar believes the current team should be doing better with the manager and players that they’ve got. Despite a brace of sporting sanctions, culminating with eight deducted points, Dyche, the Blues’ eighth manager in as many years, steered the team to Premier League survival before the final month of the campaign for the first time since 2021 last season.

Everton finished with five consecutive home wins, including a first Merseyside Derby victory at Goodison Park for 13-and-a-half years, and without their punishments would have finished level on points with 11th placed Brighton & Hove Albion. However, although they went into the current international break unbeaten in their last three matches, they have won just one of their seven Premier League so far and currently sit 16th in the table.

Speaking on the Royal Blue podcast’s Goodison Park: My Home nostalgia series, Limpar turned matters onto the current team. The 59-year-old, who was part of the Blues side that lifted the 1995 FA Cup against Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United – the club’s last major honour to date – told the ECHO: “A big club like Everton, we always say ‘we should never be in the relegation zone.’ But I have been there.

“Everyone talks about the famous game when we escaped against Wimbledon. We were 2-0 down and needed to win and won 3-2.

“Two seasons ago, we were going down at half-time on the last day before Abdoulaye Doucoure scored and we stayed up and then last season we had the points deduction. I have been at Everton playing when we were poor and at the moment, and we all have to be honest here, we are going through a poor state of the club’s history, just now.

“I’ve talked about this so many times. We have great players, we have a great manager but for some, some reason, it doesn’t click, for what we want at the moment.”

The former Sweden international, who manager Joe Royle described as “a football genius” and “the most gifted player I ever worked with,” added: “I can’t criticise the team because I’m not at Finch Farm every day. I should be there from Monday to Sunday to see what’s going on.

“So for me, to look at Everton from an old player’s point of view, we all want Everton to be great and do good things. The easiest thing for an old player is to criticise.

“Everybody does that from the big Manchester United to Liverpool, that’s the easiest thing. But if you look at it from a professional point of view, there’s something wrong in the dressing room if you can’t play better football with these players.

“They are unreally good. But for some reason we don’t get the results that we want.

“That hurts everybody and it hurts me as a supporter. I can’t tell you what’s wrong because I’m not a good manager and I can’t see the team on a daily basis.”