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“No doubts,” an old ally said to Sean Dyche. “Apart from all the doubts,” the Everton manager replied. In its own way, it summed up their escape. Dyche was brought in to be the guarantee against relegation. Everton stayed up with their lowest points tally in the era of three for a win, with their smallest ever goal total, after spending some of the final day in the drop zone, without centre-forwards or full-backs. But they stayed up, and that felt the promise of Dyche. Everton only took 15 points from 20 games under Frank Lampard. In Dyche’s time in charge, Everton earned five more points than Leicester and eight more than Leeds. The least exciting of managerial appointments had a strange kind of efficiency. Everton have won five games under Dyche, four of them 1-0. But survival has also come from a combination of seemingly freakish incidents: Abdoulaye Doucoure’s first goal from outside the box in five years to beat Bournemouth, a Seamus Coleman winner from a ludicrous angle against Leeds, a spectacular injury-time equaliser by Michael Keane against Tottenham, a 99th-minute leveller from Yerry Mina against Wolves. Perhaps three Everton players have scored the goals of their lives in March, April and May. And then there was the strangest result of the season: a team with 29 goals in their other 37 league games won 5-1 at Brighton. In a sense, Everton have got lucky: not so much Dyche and the core of his team, whether wholehearted performers like James Tarkowski and Alex Iwobi or Jordan Pickford, much the best goalkeeper in the relegation struggle, or the rejuvenated pair of Dwight McNeil and Doucoure, who proved unexpectedly, crucially prolific in the run-in: but the powerbrokers. Everton’s strategy to score this season was to rely on the fitness of the often unfit Dominic Calvert-Lewin. He played barely one-third of minutes, scored two goals and one of those was a penalty. Everton’s specialist strikers only mustered four. It amounted to negligence in the transfer market, created in part by a lack of funds. And that situation may not change, given Financial Fair Play constraints and with the possibility of investment from MSP Sports Capital intended instead to fund their new stadium. Some of Dyche’s predecessors have enjoyed periods of excess, with transfer spending in seven years under Farhad Moshiri approaching £700m. He won’t. “I’ll be very surprised if they say, ‘Here’s another war chest, sign who you like,’” said Dyche. “It’s not going to happen so we have to be wise, recruit wisely and recruit players who, if possible, understand this club.” All of which was eminently sensible but Everton might have to sell in the summer; they are already losing Mina, plus on-loan Conor Coady; they surely need two forwards if Dyche can play his beloved 4-4-2. Everton have spent a fortune under Moshiri, yet look short of both funds and players. There are times when relegation seems a logical end point to the mismanagement of the Moshiri regime. Years of mistakes have started to catch up with them. Escaping relegation 12 months earlier brought scenes of euphoria. Lampard was bouncing on the roof of an executive box. Dyche, more restrained and less emotional, provided fewer indelible images. But a year ago, Everton, who had not finished in the bottom eight since 2003-04, could imagine a scrap to survive was a one-off. Now it is a two-off; there are dangerous parallels with clubs who dodged the drop for season after season until, suddenly, they didn’t. Everton don’t want to be Sunderland. In the short term, they don’t want to be Everton, either: not this version of Everton, anyway. “I’ve just told the players we can’t be in this state. You are only a big club if you are doing big things,” said Dyche. The contrast with Lampard a year earlier may not have been deliberate but it was jarring. “It’s a horrible day for all concerned, there is no joy in it for me other than getting the job done,” said Dyche. His charges echoed his thoughts. “It’s becoming a thing now and we don’t want it to become a thing,” said Coady. Pickford added: “It’s been a tough couple of years but we should never be in this situation anyway.” Doucoure shrugged off his status as the saviour. “I’m not a hero,” the midfielder said. “Nobody is here.” If Everton are now adamant that their 70th consecutive season of top-flight football cannot be a repeat of the last two, there is no easy escape. They have dug themselves into a hole. It will take hard labour to rebuild their fortunes. “I don’t have magic dust, I can only make things happen I think are believable,” said Dyche. “I’m just bereft of giving you nonsense. I’m trying to tell Evertonians the truth of how it is. You can mess about with all the myths about how we are going to play like Man City now we have got over the line and it’s going to be wonderful: it’s not.” Dyche emerged with more authority after succeeding in his salvage job. Everton lost their way in part because of getting starstruck, of pursuing glamour; Moyesian grit fell out of favour. Dyche likes to talk about Peter Reid and Joe Royle, about how he sees earthiness and hard work as central to Everton’s identity. Perhaps he isn’t selling a dream, but a reality. “The problem with realism is not many people want it because it sounds boring,” he said. Rewind a few months and, when Lampard departed, Moshiri wanted Marcelo Bielsa, who had the impractical idea to take charge of the Under-21s for the rest of the season. The rest of Everton’s board preferred the pragmatist Dyche and, for all the errors made by the directors in recent years, it proved the right call. Any revival may not be fast or pretty. Simplistic solutions have taken them to this point. “It is not just a quick fix: buy a player, hurrah. They have tried that in the past. It is not that easy,” said Dyche. “We need to realign it and [there will be] another day when a fashionista can come in here and we will have a beautiful product.” In the modern Everton, it isn’t about beauty but avoiding the ugliness of relegation and relegation battles. Read More Premier League 2022/23 season awards: Best player, manager, transfer flop and breakthrough act James Ward-Prowse, James Maddison and 16 Premier League transfer targets after relegation Everton fans storm pitch after beating relegation before chants to ‘sack the board’ Sean Dyche outlines vision for Everton’s future and calls for realism Sean Dyche planning major changes at Everton after avoiding relegation ‘It is theatre’: Inside the chaos of a final-day Premier League relegation battle

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Alexis Mac Allister was overcome with emotion after a potential farewell to Brighton on the final day of the Premier League season. Brighton secured sixth spot and a place in next season’s Europa League despite a defeat to Aston Villa as they closed an excellent season. The club overcame significant upheaval early in the campaign after Graham Potter was lured to Chelsea, with Roberto De Zerbi’s installation as manager proving inspired as he led the club into Europe for the first time. Mac Allister, also a key part of Argentina’s World Cup triumph in December, has proved influential in midfield, and has now been heavily linked with a move away from the club. And the midfielder was left in tears after featuring for perhaps the final time in a Brighton shirt, embracing his manager De Zerbi and saluting the supporters. The 24-year-old has been particularly connected with a switch to Liverpool, who are on the hunt for a midfield refresh with Naby Keita, James Milner and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain among those leaving the Merseyside club this summer. Manchester United and Chelsea are also said to be monitoring the talented Mac Allister. De Zerbi indicated after the Aston Villa defeat that he expected to lose both the Argentinian and his midfield colleague Moises Caicedo. “I think that can be the last game of Alexis and Moises, I’m really sorry,” said De Zerbi. “They are two great people and two great players. “The policy of Brighton is like this,” added De Zerbi. “I think it’s right they can leave, can change teams and play in a level higher. “We are ready. We have to find others big players to play without Alexis and Moises.” Read More Everton’s season – and future – was saved by Sean Dyche’s own brand of creativity James Ward-Prowse, James Maddison and 16 Premier League transfer targets after relegation Premier League 2022/23 season awards: Best player, manager, transfer flop and breakthrough act Unai Emery toasts ‘champagne moment’ as Aston Villa book European adventure Aston Villa end European exile as victory over Brighton secures seventh place Roberto De Zerbi preparing for busy summer building competitive Brighton squad

Napoli manager Luciano Spalletti is set to leave the club after guiding them to their first Serie A title in 33 years. President Aurelio De Laurentiis said that the 64-year-old, who took over the Partenopei in 2021, has asked to take a sabbatical and will leave the club with a year left on his contract. “He’s a free man, now it’s right that he continues to do what he wants. I thank him,” De Laurentiis told Italian broadcaster Rai as reported by Sky Italy. Napoli clinched their first title since 1990, when Diego Maradona led them to the Scudetto, with five games to spare. Spalletti’s final game in charge is set to be at home to Sampdoria next Sunday. Reports in Italy suggest Napoli will attempt to bring in former Barcelona and Spain head coach Luis Enrique to replace Spalletti. A number of their star players such as top scorer Victor Osimhen and centre-back Kim Min-jae have been linked with moves away from Naples this summer, with a host of Premier League clubs among those reportedly interested. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

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On the day that one of the most sensational spells in any club’s history ended, many of the Leicester City squad and staff inevitably discussed “how it had come to this”. There was a general feeling that a wider malaise had afflicted the team, affecting “confidence and belief”. Some were more direct. “Brendan.” Questions can be asked of Brendan Rodgers but it still feels wrong to put so much on a manager who lifted the club to the first FA Cup win in their history and successive fifth-place finishes. That really just illustrates how thin the margins can end up being for those outside the mega elite, and how even “model clubs” can quickly become examples of something else entirely. There is even a lesson here for a club as brilliantly run as Brighton. Both of Leicester’s fifth-place finishes came in Covid seasons, as the wider game itself lost so much money, and the club’s owners suffered huge losses from the immense impact on their duty-free business. Had either of those campaigns brought Champions League football, and the greater prize money it produces, they might well have had enough to prevent the deep drop-off that has now seen them drop down to the Championship. Many with knowledge of the club ultimately put it down to a lack of investment to build on the fine team they had. Uefa’s new financial sustainability regulations actually meant they had to go in the opposite direction, to bring down a huge expenditure-to-revenue ratio. Others from the industry argue that it goes even deeper, and beyond the money spent. It was how it was spent. The recruitment that had served them so well for half a decade has actually been “woefully inadequate” for at least five windows. As an example of that, Rodgers badly needed a ball-playing centre-half after winning the FA Cup, in order to pin his tactical idea together but also bring the team on. Leicester instead signed Jannik Vestergaard for a fee understood to be around £16m, even though he had one year left on his Southampton contract. The Dane was just never a fit, and it meant that Leicester couldn’t go back into the market in the same way. It was quite a difference from so seamlessly replacing Harry Maguire and shows why Leicester have now fallen so far. It also proves something else, separate from the club. The idea of buying low and selling high is the obvious model for so many of those outside the elite due to the economic stratification of the game, but it is still asking so much to get it right continuously. In some cases, one slip can cause you to fall much more quickly. Leicester were wealthy enough to be insulated from that but not from the reality that it is statistically impossible to keep that going indefinitely. It was this that deepened the concerning mood within the club in the summer, even if there is a fair argument that the Rodgers era was already going “stale”. That does happen, but what happened here was that the effect got worse. Leicester needed a change. The club instead hung on, in part due to the finances. Rodgers himself didn’t have the same brightness about him. It all got rather dull, and began to cascade. The brutal truth for the players is that none of this is a sufficient excuse for where they are. Their starting line-up was stronger than half the teams in the Premier League. That will be emphasised by so many top-six clubs coming in for their players. James Maddison is expected to go to Newcastle United. Aston Villa look favourites for Harvey Barnes, but they will now have considerable competition. Youri Tielemans has been looked at by almost every one of the wealthiest seven clubs. None of these players should have been in this situation, no matter how bad it was getting. That is summed up by the fact that, before you even get to the fees that will be paid this summer, this is one of the best-paid squads to ever be relegated. The wage bill was one of the highest in the Premier League. In going down, Leicester have actually defied the economic realities of the sport in the same way they did in enjoying one of the sport’s greatest peaks. The dream they have lived has had the most abrupt wake-up. Appropriately, there remains the sense they just “sleepwalked” into this situation, “too good to go down”, all of that. In some ways, the speed with which it all unravelled ensured no one really grasped what was actually happening until it was too late. If an era has now been consigned to history, though, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is entirely negative for the future. Leicester have to sell but still have so many advantages over the rest of the Championship. They did use the sensational Premier League success of 2016 to build a new infrastructure, landmarked in their hugely impressive Seagrave training ground. They could well come straight back up. There is also something else to be recognised here. Over the last seven years, Leicester have enjoyed more glory and deeper emotion than most clubs have in their entire history. They had the most sensational title win of all. They then won the FA Cup at last, having previously lost four finals and had that heavy weight over the club. And that’s only when you consider the successes. This is also a club that had that great escape, the nature of Nigel Pearson’s departure, Claudio Ranieri’s surprise appointment and shock sacking and their club legend’s wife getting involved in a media circus. Tragically in the true sense of the word, and in something that really warrants a solemn separate recognition, there was the death of the owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and those who were travelling with him. That is almost too much to even register. It is little wonder that Dean Smith said after this game he couldn’t explain how this happened. And yet it is traceable. It’s also something other clubs can look at. One of the most remarkable Premier League stories of all naturally has a few lessons. Read More Leicester’s unexpected twist provides reminder of football’s new reality How the final day played out as Everton survive and Leicester relegated with Leeds Gary Lineker congratulates Everton but ‘gutted’ as Leicester suffer relegation Doucoure the saviour, Spurs at a crossroads: 6 final day talking points Leicester’s unexpected twist provides reminder of football’s new reality How the final day played out with Everton surviving relegation fight

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