5 managers who could be under pressure right now

#3 Marco Silva

Marco Silva's Everton have slipped back into their old, inconsistent habits

As the 2019/20 Premier League season began, a lot of focus was placed on the so-called chasing pack behind the league’s traditional ‘Big Six’. Many fans felt that this could be the season in which one of Leicester City, Everton, Wolves or West Ham could break into that elite group, but while Leicester and West Ham are certainly making a fair go of it, the same cannot be said for the other two sides.

Wolves can blame their Europa League exploits for their current funk, but what about Everton? For Marco Silva and his Toffees, it’s harder to find a reason for what exactly has been going wrong thus far. Everton have picked up a couple of wins – a 3-2 victory over Wolves and a 1-0 win over Watford – but they’ve also slumped to 3 disappointing defeats, two of which came at the hands of newly promoted sides Sheffield United and Aston Villa.

Basically, after the latter part of last season appeared to suggest that Silva finally had a handle on the job at Goodison Park – they lost just once in their final 8 games – the early part of 2019/20 has seen them slip back into their old, inconsistent ways.

The most likely explanation appears to be that Silva is in charge of a somewhat unbalanced squad. Powerful midfielder Idrissa Gueye was sold to Paris St. Germain in the summer, and while Silva strengthened by buying the likes of Fabian Delph, Moise Kean and Alex Iwobi, there’s been little evidence thus far to suggest that those players are really upgrades on what the Portuguese boss already had.

An unsettled team is always a tricky thing to handle – and of Silva’s squad, only a handful of players have started every league game thus far despite no real injury headaches. Unless he can solve this issue soon, Everton’s slump could well continue, and Silva could well find his job on the line.