You may well be right. But he'd definitely have been well paid for his efforts. (rightly so btw, lots of players commented on his coaching and how it helped them, most notably Lukaku)
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You may well be right. But he'd definitely have been well paid for his efforts. (rightly so btw, lots of players commented on his coaching and how it helped them, most notably
Good article that, the bit about him being stuck in limbo is spot on.https://www.scotsman.com/author/alan-pattullo
Duncan Ferguson: Everton legend to find a world beyond the Wirral - but mystery surrounds next destination
The last time Duncan Ferguson walked out of Everton, he refused the offer of a handshake from David Moyes and turned his back on football for several years.www.scotsman.com
Duncan Ferguson: Everton legend to find a world beyond the Wirral - but mystery surrounds next destination
The last time Duncan Ferguson walked out of Everton, he refused the offer of a handshake from David Moyes and turned his back on football for several years.
It says much about his new-found drive and commitment that his latest exit from his beloved club is born of a desire to better himself.
In a seven-minute interview, entitled “the farewell interview”, uploaded on Everton’s website on Monday, a dapper-looking Ferguson spoke about wanting to pursue his managerial ambitions. “I need to do it,” he said. “I need to take the next step.” Unlike the wrist watch gifted to him by Howard Kendall’s widow Lily that had stopped at quarter past eight and which he wore when taking caretaker charge of the team, time cannot stand still. There is a world beyond the Wirral.
His prospects certainly seem a lot brighter than they did in May 2006 when he cut such a sullen figure after being told by Moyes he was not being offered another contract.
He had scored just once in another injury and suspension-interrupted season. That goal, his last of 72 in a blue shirt, was scored with his final touch of his career, after his scuffed penalty was saved by West Bromwich Albion keeper Tomasz Kuszczak. Ferguson managed to convert the rebound for a 2-2 draw.
Early the following week, Moyes gave the then 34-year-old the bad news. He was out after ten years and two different spells at the club.
The manager offered him his hand. An offended Ferguson, who later admitted he was bereft of ideas about what to do next, rejected Moyes’ handshake and was next spotted in Majorca, where he moved with his family.
Little was heard of him for five years, although he did make a rare return to be inducted as an Everton Giant at a swanky do before, remarkably, pitching up in a tracksuit in Largs to begin an SFA-run B license coaching course alongside the likes of Paul Hartley.
His surprise willingness to re-start his football career as a coach meant having to put to one side resentment felt at the part the SFA played in his prison sentence for head-butting Jock McStay when with Rangers and the 12-game ban they sought to impose even after he was released.
More pride had to be swallowed with regards to Moyes. He visited him to apologise in the summer of 2011. They belatedly shook hands and Moyes invited him to begin his coaching career.
Eleven years later, Ferguson has emerged as a super-qualified coach but frustrated manager. His decision to leave Everton seems to have been triggered by a realisation – some fear it’s too late – that he was never going to be given the permanent post as manager without proving himself elsewhere. Now the speculation begins. If not at Everton, where does Duncan Ferguson earn his managerial spurs?
When he left Goodison Park as a player that final time, he did have options. Bradford City were one credited with an interest. “With all due respect,” noted former Everton striker Graeme Sharp in his autobiography, “Duncan just isn’t a Bradford player.”
Is he a Bradford manager? Or the manager at a club of similar standing? The Bantams are currently in League Two, the fourth tier of English football. Even though he was heavily linked with a move to Blackburn Rovers earlier this summer, bookmakers Betfred believe the third tier is Ferguson’s most likely destination.
He is priced at 5/2 for any English League One club. He is 10/1 to replace Giovanni van Bronckhorst at Rangers, 14/1 to go to Hearts and 20/1 to be Scotland’s next manager, although a return north of the border seems fanciful given events of the past.
It also is hard to imagine Ferguson slumming it around in the lower reaches of English football but that might be how it needs to be. He wasn’t afraid to start at the bottom at the Everton academy, where he started work – initially unpaid – with the Under-12s. “I did it the hard way,” he repeats a couple of times in the farewell interview. “I’ve no’ cut corners.”
Ferguson will turn 51 halfway through the coming season. His bete noire at first club Dundee United, Jim McLean, retired from management aged only 55. Not many managerial careers start after 50.
But that shouldn’t count against Ferguson, who must have learned so much from working with a succession of top class managers, including Roberto Martinez and Carlo Ancelotti.
Not one of them felt the need to oust him – or were emboldened enough to consider calling time on Ferguson’s love affair with the club.
It dawned on the Scot that he had to be the one who severed ties, otherwise it might never happen. He risked wandering the corridors at Finch Farm in limbo forever because, it seemed, no new manager had the balls to let him go and Everton did not have the balls to appoint him permanent manager, as they surely should have done last summer rather than turn to Rafael Benitez.
It’s understood Bill Kenwright, the Everton chairman, was heavily in favour of naming Ferguson manager but owner Farhad Moshiri pushed for the unpopular Benitez.
This might be when it struck Ferguson that his chance will probably never come if a Liverpool legend, albeit one with an impressive CV, is being preferred over someone with his Evertonian credentials.
He has surely earned his chance – at Everton or elsewhere. Now, of course, it will have to be elsewhere, although it seems inconceivable that he won’t return to Everton again in some capacity.
He admits being anguished as recently as last weekend, when, after attending an Everton in the Community dinner, he panicked: “My god, I cannae give this up!” But he can and he has – for now. Now it gets interesting. Save me a place in the front row for his managerial unveiling, wherever that may be.
Good luck to him, wherever he ends up.
Toffeeforme
Player Valuation: £750k
When he left to go to Newcastle he always say how he was told he was being sold to them. He had a long contract left and could of easily said no.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Walter Smith was key to that decision. He feigned surprise that the Galloot was sold 'from under him', but the word at the time was that he was onboard with it. He used the situation to strengthen his hold on the manager's job as Johnson got all the blame from the sale and the Kenwright influenced local media went to work on Johnson after that and never let up until he was bought out the following winter.
A very murky episode.
toffee-L
Player Valuation: £20m
I feel sorry for Duncan that it's fizzled out this way, but he had an audition last season that he, and we, really couldn't afford to lose at home against Villa. What was particularly galling is that we lost with the same lethargy and passiveness that we he had hoped would follow Benitez out of the door. His failure to galvanise the team that day I think effectively torpedoed his ambitions for the job.
It's unfair that so much hinged on one game for Duncan but that's the cruel reality of football sometimes. I wish him all the best.
It's unfair that so much hinged on one game for Duncan but that's the cruel reality of football sometimes. I wish him all the best.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Did all th right things: bribed punters with a pint before the game. Just didn;t have the smarts to organise a PL team.
Gerrard walking off Goodison park with a snide smile on his face after Villa had bossed us for the bulk of the game was the final nail in his Everton managerial punt.
toffee-L
Player Valuation: £20m
Lampard brought an army of coaches with him, there was probably just too many of them there. I think he was probably far more valuable in Ancelotti's staff.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
He's always been window dressing. I cant see what prsactical use he was, tbh.
Managers just didn't have the bottle or nerve to get him out the door.
I think straitened finances at the club have done that job.
toffee-L
Player Valuation: £20m
It was sadly the game where all our fears were realised that we would be in a relegation battle right up until the end of the season and simply taking Benitez out wasn't the quick fix many of us hoped it would be.
That being said, I had hoped to see more life injected into the team and crowd and what we got was a continuation of what we'd been seeing so it was right that he wasn't given the job full time.
toffee-L
Player Valuation: £20m
I think many managers were probably told by Kenwright that he had to be kept around.
I'm sure Benitez probably hated having him on his staff but thought it would be a PR disaster if the first thing he did was bin a former Everton player from his coaching staff when he always up against it to connect with the fans as it was. Ancelotti probably wasn't arsed about having him as this was never a long term thing for him anyway. Carlo has said good things about Duncan as well and it would be wrong to dismiss those comments entirely out of hand.
AsiaAsia82
Player Valuation: £35m
But what Carlo Ancellotti, the most successful manager in European football thought is irrelevant, we have experts in coaching on here who know Big Dunc was useless
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Carlo is a diplomat.
evertonfandevon
Player Valuation: £225k
Gerrard is the most sniddey person Ive ever seen. I never get bored of watching him slip over costing liverpool the league. Lets hope Frank can get one over the cocky sniddey man
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