Sean Dyche is putting his foot down at Everton as he looks to create a winning culture at the club
Sean Dyche has revealed that his ‘wheel of fortune’ will return to Everton after a successful stint at former club Burnley.
Since taking over as coach of the Blues, the 51-year-old has wasted no time in establishing the standards he expects from his players. He has banned snoods and hats in training after insisting that items that cannot be worn in matches be worn during the week.
The implementation of a lighthearted spin the wheel game, in which players are forced to pay financial penalties or complete tasks likely to encourage group camaraderie, is next on the agenda of changes.
Explaining how this idea first came about at Burnley, Dyche said: “When I first got to Burnley as a new manager, you’re trying to impose yourself. Some of that worked until around Christmas. Mark Howard, our head of sports science, had heard this rumour about this wheel in rugby, so we got a literal wheel and put numbers and letters on it.
“The numbers were the squad numbers and the letters corresponded with a form of a fine. Some were financial, not many actually, and through seven years of this we’ve had all sorts of things like, ‘if I spin for you and get your number, I have to pay to get your car valeted’. We’ve had sing like Elvis, we’ve had lap dances and there are all these different things.
“To be honest, behind what you think is just the simplicity of fining people or keeping some kind of order, actually we used it to strip people down on their ego and make them realise it is okay for us all to laugh at each other.”
When asked if the Everton players would soon be exposed to this novel approach to team building, Dyche told Soccer AM, “The spin wheel, yeah. It’s a bad turn of the wheel. We will discuss it.
“It’s a bit of fun with the players, keeping some professional standards in a way they can buy into. It’s not for the heavy stuff. If there are heavy situations, I deal with that. We use it to keep everyone aligned and to add some twists for things they have to do.
“Luckily we’ve got a few here who have worked with us before so they can tell them. It’s pretty soft starting, we’re not going to go in with the heavy stuff. That will come. There’s nothing too uncomfortable on it yet, but we do change it every four or five weeks and put new stuff on it.”
