Phil McNulty: This is how Marcel Brands and Marco Silva have been let down at Everton

It’s been a pretty chaotic start to life as Everton manager for Marco Silva. His debut season at Goodison Park certainly hasn’t gone as planned, with the Toffees currently sitting in 9th place in the Premier League.

To make matters worse, a number of players at the club are seriously struggling, whilst Marco Silva’s obvious flaws are already showing, like his inability to set up a team to defend set-pieces.

Naturally in this sort of situation, it’s the manager that is going to take the brunt of the criticism, and certainly, the boss has been at fault.

However BBC pundit Phil McNulty has sought to analyse the situation at Goodison Park, and whilst he recognises that Silva has been problematic; he also notes that the manager – as well as club Director of Football Marcel Brands – have been let down at the club.

McNulty has written: ‘Silva walked into a dysfunctional club along with Brands in June, surrounded by the wreckage of a flawed structure and disastrous transfer policy that saw the pair inherit a bloated, unbalanced squad populated by exorbitantly high earners.’

He continued: ‘England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, a £30m buy from Sunderland, has been an isolated success but Silva is surrounded by too many bad signings and money that has effectively been wasted by previous regimes.’

He goes on to name a number of poor signings, with Sandro Ramirez, Davy Klaassen and the decision to land three “number 10” players – Wayne Rooney, Gylfi Sigurdsson in addition to Klaassen all mentioned specifically.

Certainly, Silva cannot be absolved of any blame, but the manager has had his hands tied, to a point. Despite getting a number of his own signings over the summer, the Portuguese has been given a bad hand with regards to many other recruits.

Whilst some of those have now been moved on, their arrival has impacted upon club finances, and it’s meant that they’ve lost many top talents and replaced them with subpar options. This is obviously seen clearly going forward, but issues are prevalent up and down the pitch for the Toffees.

In fact, Everton’s decision to bring in six signings over the summer highlights the problems that Marcel Brands and Marco Silva were facing, with the club looking to right the wrongs of the previous regime. Brands has come in to head up the recruitment at Goodison Park, and only now has he been able to right the wrongs of previous regimes.

The reality is that Everton have been treading water for years, and Silva can’t be expected to fix all of the issues immediately. He needs to improve, but so does the Everton brass.

Thoughts?