The Inside Story of Everton's bounce back season
Brian Sørensen has brought a new lease of life to the Toffees after a difficult 2021/22 campaign. WFC spent a day at Finch Farm to find out what he's changed to get them back to the top half.
Megan Finnigan describes him as a “really chilled guy”, and that much is evident as Everton head coach Brian Sørensen leads me down a corridor to an office where we sit to discuss his first season in charge of the club.
Relaxed, with his hands planted behind his head, this office was his, but now it belongs to the club’s General Manager, and has all the kinds of whiteboards, notes and pens you’d expect, plus a signed club shirt and a plaque from when the team reached the FA Cup final a couple of years ago.
That final, against this weekend’s opponents Manchester City, appeared to mark a return to the top for the Toffees, but a turbulent season followed which saw the club go through three head coaches, the threat of a relegation battle and a desperate need to find some direction and guidance.
They’ve now found it in the form of Dane Sørensen.
His desire to change things and start a fresh is immediately evident as he talks me through how he changed the setup from day one.
He travelled to England every week at the end of the Danish season to spend Wednesday’s at the training ground, to meet people and observe the culture, before arriving in the summer.
He reflects on how “everyone was in one room. 13 staff in one room, and I was in here all alone”.
The head coach has now moved his primary staff to a different office, with assistants Chris Roberts - who remained at the club - and new hire Australian Stephen Neligan, who he worked with in Denmark.
They’re joined by his analyst Molly and Ian McCaldon his goalkeeper coach. Sørensen also has another analyst who works remotely from Denmark.
“I learned that here in England, the manager is always up on a pedestal, but I didn’t want an office to myself, I’m not that type.”
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Everton scrambled to a tenth-placed finish last season, winning just five of their 22 league games.
After Willie Kirk was dismissed and Roberts had an interim spell in charge, the club turned to former Champions League winner Jean-Luc Vasseur, but things got worse before they got better, leading to another swift dismissal and Roberts returning to his interim role until the end of the season.
For a club which a year previous had invested so much in its on-field talent and a head coach in Scotsman Kirk who bullishly talked of Champions League qualification, an FA Cup final at Wembley was a hint perhaps Everton were getting back to where they used to be, before things spiralled out of control.
“We never set a clear target of ‘we want to finish here’, this season” says defender Finnigan, who has been at Everton all her life through the highs of promotions and lows of relegations. “It would have been unrealistic of us to say we want to get Champions League and from past experiences that put a lot of pressure on us.
“We had a lot of freedom this year to experiment with our playing style. We weren’t worried about relegation, it’s been a free-hit to form relationships and get used to Brian and his playing style.”
“There were good players here, but what mentality do you want?”
As for the head coach, Sørensen made big changes upon arrival, bringing in 10 new players, including several he had worked with in Denmark with Fortuna Hjørring, who at one point he took all the way to the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
When I ask how hard was it to shift the mentality away from last season, he reflects on exactly why he was so radical with his squad decisions.
“That’s why I made 10 changes,” he admits, with a wry smile. “There were good players here, but what mentality do you want? You can only shift mentality and do it quickly by recruiting differently. Some of them were forced, some players came to me and said they wanted to leave and I said ‘fine’.
“The players who were here, we showed them ‘this is how we want to work, how we want to play’, and I felt in the first two or three weeks I had them on board.”
Sørensen points to pre-season games against Manchester United and Aston Villa as key indicators he believed he could implement his philosophy straight away, and wouldn’t have to take a more “pragmatic” approach in his first Women’s Super League season.
“We played United in a friendly and lost 1-0, but we destroyed them with the ball,” he recalls. “We could see it; the players could see it and we believed in it. They hit a long ball from [Maya] Le Tissier to [Lucia] Garcia and scored, and we have to get better at stopping that, but we played around them.
“We played Aston Villa and drew 1-1, had about 80% possession and I don’t know how many times we hit the woodwork. Those games I think the girls saw how we wanted to approach it.”
Off the field though he remained level-headed and admits he had to remind the players “the honeymoon will end”, and points to recent heavy defeats to Arsenal and Chelsea where he wanted his players to stick to his philosophy, even if it meant taking the odd beating along the way.
“That’s where you find out what you’re made of. It’s been about learning and putting them in situations to see how they handle it. I’m 200% more prepared than the six weeks I came over last year when they were struggling.
“One of the last games last season against Arsenal, we had 18% possession and lost 3-0. Parking the bus, never getting out, how do you change that?
“We played Arsenal last week and we had 10 opportunities in the first 30 minutes and out of those 10 we should have had big, big chances. It’s about quality, decision making and belief, there’s a lot in that end of things we need to be better at, but those experiences help us.
“Arsenal’s xG was zero in the first 30 minutes or so. If we bring the composure we have in our own half to the final third, that will be a game changer for us. We have to believe we can go and score, we’ve relied too much on Katja [Snoeijs]. She’s a quality player but she’s come from a league where you play weaker opponents and then Lyon and PSG twice a season. Leicester City isn’t a bad team, Tottenham isn’t a bad team, they can hurt you. The top four are a different level in their quality, their resources and their experience.”
“I didn’t look forward to coming into training and nobody wants to feel that…”
Earlier in the day, I watch the team train ahead of their final game this weekend against Manchester City.
Guaranteed a top six finish, the mood is jovial around Finch Farm, despite the threat of a first ever relegation for the men’s team from the Premier League on Sunday.
“Nothing but the best is good enough” reads the slogan on the back wall of the indoor pitch the squad are warming up on, before Sørensen leads the team outside to present the club’s Players’ Player of the Year award.
As the squad laughs and jokes among themselves, the mood is a complete 180 to 12 months ago when players themselves admit they wanted the season to end.
“Last season, everyone will tell you it was difficult,” says Finnigan. “I didn’t look forward to coming into training and nobody wants to feel that, but this year it’s been completely different.
“Outside of football, personally, I’ve had a really tough year and despite all that I’ve always looked forward to coming into the building because I’m surrounded by good people and a good environment. I’ve been here a long time, but hands down this is the nicest bunch of girls I’ve worked with.”
Captain Lucy Hope has had to take on a guiding role during those tough times too, but after arriving at the club under Kirk, she has also become a key part of Sorensen’s team and his new leadership group this season.
“I try to focus on the things you can control,” says the Scotland international. “It’s a fickle sport sometimes and you don’t always have a grasp on decisions, you’re just a cog in the wheel that goes around.
“I play football and that’s what we can control. Your effort, your approach, so I try to set examples in turning up and give 100%. What happens on the pitch is in our hands.
“For me, it’s just making sure everyone’s on the same wavelength. If someone’s having a bad day, help them up. If someone’s having a good day, feed off that energy. It’s football, you get paid to turn up and do your job, not every day will be rosy.”
On her first meetings with the new head coach, she adds “There were a few conversations. He set up a leadership group for his way of communicating with the team, seeing what was going on. He’s a very approachable, open and transparent person.
“He didn’t come in with the persona of being hard to talk to. He set his stall quite early and I think that helped with the girls not being too intimidated by another new manager coming in. We’d had three or four other managers that never particularly worked, so I’m glad it has this time.”
Sørensen watches on as coaches Roberts and Neligan lead the session, but he’s happy to get involved no matter what, even helping his analyst tie down the camera mast in the windy conditions of the exposed outdoor pitch.
Elena Sadiku, a former player in Sweden recently appointed to lead the club’s academy side, is also watching on.
To the naked eye, it feels like all is well. The club photographer takes her snaps, goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan barks instructions from her goal and several youngsters are involved, including Kenzie Weir after returning from her loan at Lewes.
“Very good, very sharp,” says Sørensen to his team during a mid-session break. The coaches go over some ploys to try and harness Manchester City’s attacking threats, who Sørensen jokes “need to score 11 past us” to have a chance of the Champions League this weekend.
Finnigan poses for a snap with fellow defender Rikke Sevecke, who has just been announced as leaving the club, but Sørensen admits he is already well on with his recruitment and speaks with an assurance which suggests he already knows which players will be joining the club this summer.
Finnigan has committed another three years of her career to the club, taking her association with the Toffees to almost 20 years when the deal runs out in 2026 and admits it was an “easy decision” to stay now things are picking up again under Sørensen.
“The foundation is there,” she states. “We have things to improve on, that’s been evident lately and a lot of that is mentality. I think it was Chelsea at Walton Hall Park at the start of the season where we actually had more possession than them, which was crazy.
“I’ve played in a lot of Everton teams where we sit back and that’s not how we want to play. Everyone knows how much I love the club, but I believe in what Brian’s doing and I always said I’d stay at Everton as long as I feel it’s the right place for me.
“People always question if I’m ever going to leave, but I don’t regret being here my whole life. This club has been there for me in ways I can’t thank them enough for.”
“He’s brought us more together, galvanised us and made us believe we can play good football…”
Before they head off to finish their day in the gym, Hope too praises the mindset change under Sørensen and for keeping things simple, or not “biting off more than he can chew” as she puts it, admitting the team needed a steady season after a difficult 12 months.
“He’s steadied the ship. He’s been very methodical in how he’s gone about his business, looked at the team and where we were confidence-wise and taken that on. There’s always teething issues when a new manager comes in, but he’s set his foundations for his philosophy and I think we can be happy with where we are.
“It’s been like night and day. Football is a sport that when you play with confidence you play freely and can do things you never imagine. When you’re struggling, there’s inconsistencies, you play within yourself, you don’t express yourself. He’s brought us more together, galvanised us and made us believe we can play good football.
“Other managers we’ve had have maybe adapted to other teams we play against, but he has this way of playing, we believe in it and he takes things on the chin if it goes wrong. If we’re trying to play out and give the ball away, it is what it is. With risk comes reward, so instead of ignoring it, he encourages us to play a little bit on the edge.”
That much was evident in the aforementioned defeats to Arsenal and Chelsea, which saw the Toffees start brightly in both before collapsing to two heavy defeats.
Against Chelsea, they ended up 5-0 down at half-time despite containing them well early on, and Hope admits while it may not have looked good to the outside world, it was part of a learning process to not revert to old ways even in difficult moments.
“That’s essentially the angle we’re looking at it from. If we ignore those passes and go long we’ll never be the team we want to be. As players, it’s up to us execute it the best we can and he’s trying to encourage us to do that, regardless of those mistakes. If we do make them, it’s how we react to it and improve on it next time.”
Back in the office, Sørensen is now sat more upright as he gets into the tactical intricacies behind his current style of play as I put some of the comments from his players to him.
He reaffirms he believes the team is where he expected them to be positionally. No higher, but no lower. He praises Aston Villa for an “amazing season” and will go on to dissect how he perceives the strengths and weaknesses of the top four sides he is chasing.
Because this is Sørensen. Football through and through and a burning passion to make a team play his brand of possession-based football, with an analytical eye with stands him alongside his peers in one of the world’s most competitive leagues.
“When you bring in 10 new players and don’t play the simplest football, it takes time and I know that,” he says. “Going in I thought ‘should I be a bit more pragmatic?’, defensively strong and play on transition, but when I saw in pre-season what we could do I knew it wasn’t the route to go down.
“We can recruit playing this kind of football. To recruit playing football some of the other teams play in this league, it’s tough, what do you explain to them? Play long balls and get stuck in? I don’t really get that, you have to build a style and a philosophy for your players. I know some people will say it’s naïve, but for me it’s the only way if we want to compete long-term we can improve and be better.”
He continues, looking at recent league games “For example against Arsenal, we played almost 300 passes in the first 30 minutes and we played through them. Not even Wolfsburg did that. Our problem is we didn’t get the goals. If we work hard on that, we can hurt them and that’s our next step, to recruit in that area of the pitch, but also work on our decision making.
“I don’t hate a long ball,” he says with a smile. “I love it, in the right moments, but you choose your moments.”
He rifles through the club’s current injury list, particularly lamenting the absence of Elise Stenevik, one of the club’s more under the radar additions from Norway, someone he says “will be a really good player” but has been nursing a long-standing achilles issue.
Sara Holmgaard has just returned from Denmark, while Katrine Veje who was “one our best players” has been out for the long-term and Jess Park’s shoulder injury means her loan is over. The impressive Gabby George has also been ruled out for the foreseeable.
“Not big, big injuries like maybe other clubs, but to me they count because they’re not available. I had to adjust, adapt, play people out of position, but the football we play remains the same. It has to. Our principles are the same.”
So, how to build on it? I put to him that with the Champions League spots being remarkably difficult for anyone outside the top four even if one of them has a bad season and no Europa League to fall back on and the lack of significant financial disparity between the remaining positions, what is the next target for Everton?
“I think it’s building on what we’ve done,” he responds. “Not a draw against Liverpool, not a last-minute winner vs Brighton when it wasn’t a 2-1 game. That’s our next step, to beat those teams consistently and get us closer to the top teams. Over a season, if you really want to take that next step you need your best players. I think Arsenal would be in a good position to win the league if they’d not had those injuries.”
He goes on to give his view on those four sides currently dominating the landscape of the WSL. Not through arrogance, through a belief in his own style and system, he thinks they can start to pick results up against them, and actually picks out Saturday’s opponents as the “best football team” despite being the ones who will miss out on a European spot.
“Chelsea have really smart recruitment. Pernille [Harder, who he worked with in Denmark when she was a teenager] comes in, a top three player in the world, she’s not even been a part of this season and then comes on and destroys people. It will be extremely hard to bridge that gap.
“United’s foundation is perhaps not as strong. We drew 0-0 with them and I feel we could get them if we get it right. They can go out through and recruit the best players in the world and then it’s a different story. City I actually think are the best football team at their peak. For whatever reason though they have these drops, maybe it was all the changes last summer.
“I’m not inside, so I don’t know, and I’ll be interested to see where we are at on Saturday because they are the by far the best team we’ve played against. Their composure on the ball, how they pass and play. I think Arsenal and Chelsea, on your very best day you can contain them. City have patterns of play and principles they stick to and believe in it. Maybe they are a bit one-dimensional, I haven’t really seen a formation change.
“I train my team in two formations. We change all the time depending on what we face and if you go down that route you have to the best at it. With Chelsea, you have no idea how they’ll line up, but the football is maybe not as exciting as City. When City played at Arsenal, it was some of the best football I’ve seen in this league this season, yet they’ve lost 2-1!”
“At the end of the day, we know our spot in the food chain…”
The Everton receptionist, Mo, is retiring, hence why the desk is filled with various cards and bouquets of flowers. The Everton press woman tells me she has been at the club for 48 years, and is a reminder the end of another season is nigh.
But there’s another bombshell, because Everton player herself and former England international Izzy Christiansen is also retiring, telling the squad only on the morning of my visit she is hanging up her boots, with an announcement planned for the following morning.
Along with Sevecke, it means Sørensen is losing two vastly experienced internationals this summer, and he admits that is a key area he will look to invest in when we move on to the topic of recruitment.
“Not necessarily players who are in their thirties, but players with a little more experience than 18 or 19-year-olds,” he says. “Players with national team experience who can see it’s a good step for consistent playing time and players who want to be a part of it.
“At the end of the day, we know our spot in the food chain. We can build over one, two or three years and if we do well clubs will take our best players and we restart, I think that’s where we are at.
“My motivation is if we succeed, some of these players will go to some of the best teams in Europe. The way we play, it’s not about one player. I think other teams in this league rely on one or two key players. I don’t want to be that vulnerable.”
That is a big part of who Sørensen is at heart. He is a developer. He does admit he wants to win, but also knows the reality of the challenge at Everton is different to that of Fortuna Hjørring, where trophies were in reach year after year, and he’s proud of the players he has discovered over the years.
“I can see I can build something here. That’s my motivation, that’s what drives me. I want to win, of course, I won a lot in Fortuna, but I also developed players for the national team, took us to Europe in a place where really, we didn’t belong.
“We were an amateur team in a quarter-final. Our budget was probably what Carli Lloyd got for a few months at Man City. We lost to a goal from Carli and Lucy Bronze. Away, we should actually have won it, with totally unknown players. They had everyone, they went and beat Lyon and had players good enough that Lyon wanted to sign them.
“We brought in players no one knew about. Tamires is now the vice-captain of Brazil, but nobody knew her. Nevena Damnjanovic, a big player in Portugal and now Russia. Florentina Olar, Romania captain, an excellent player.
“I was finding players. I went to Serbia, went to two hours outside Belgrade to watch players. I went to Romania, to Slovenia, I was the only guy there, with no money – it was super exciting!”
There is a dose of reality though as we remark on the issues of Brexit and how hard it is now to bring those type of players to the league, and privately he laments many names he wanted to sign for Everton who have joined big teams in other leagues because bringing them to the WSL wasn’t an option.
***
“You go from one season having three managers to just Brian,” says Finnigan, as players start to make their way past the door to the gym. “He has put us at ease, he’s really honest. He has honest conversations and I’ve never played under someone who focuses so much on the tactical side of the game.
“That’s been a real challenge for me, but also something I’ve enjoyed. We’re athletes. We like routines, we like to know what’s happening and last year under whoever it was, we didn’t have a clear identity. That’s been the big change, that’s what we’ve had. Everyone wants something to buy into, it doesn’t matter who you are, for us it was buying into this project as a team of where we can go and that is how a team succeeds.”
Hope echoes the sentiment, and the reality of how last season affected the team, and how hard Sorensen has probably had to work to change that is evident.
“Football is a mental sport,” says the club captain. “You have to think sharply, if you’re not in a good mood you’d be surprised how much that impacts your decisions and taking in information.
“I think it can be overlooked and there were certain stages last year it was tough to come through the gates. It was very bitty, there was no structure. Humans are a creature of habit, especially footballers, we like our routines.”
Sørensen though is not averse to hard work, it’s half the reason he took the job, when I ask what motivated him to move away from home, family and come out of his comfort zone to the north west of England and a dressing room in desperate need of a pick me up.
“I was raised on a farm, grew up in a rural area where it was about hard-work. I like to be the underdog…”
“I needed a new challenge,” he admits. “That’s why I took the Nordsjælland job before going back to Fortuna. They didn’t have the best players or the biggest budget, but I wanted to see if I could do the football I wanted to do.
“I was fascinated because a lot of players I coached in Denmark were in the WSL. I signed up with an English agent and said I wanted to come here. I had some interviews before this one with other clubs, but this one matched with my values. I was raised on a farm, grew up in a rural area where it was about hard-work. I like to be the underdog. I don’t need the biggest budget, I focus on developing people and I could see I could do that here.
“It wasn’t a quick fix, but I could see quickly I could get them on the right path. If you go and take over Arsenal, it’s you win or you lose, do you have time to put your stamp on it? It had to be somewhere I could see myself more than one year and they’d stick with me even in the tough periods. I saw everything here. Maybe some places have it better, but for me everything we need is here, and coming from Denmark, I’m not complaining!”
Has it surprised him how quick he was able to turn things around? Early season performances and results were positive, including an impressive 3-0 win at Anfield against local rivals Liverpool, while his squad appeared to slip into his way of playing seamlessly, if his recollections of pre-season are anything to go by.
“No, not really,” he chuckles. “I’ve been in this for many, many years. I built three teams at Fortuna across two periods. The principles are pretty simple, there’s nothing new, it’s just the experience I have to put it together.
“At Anfield, we were unhappy with our performance at West Ham where we’d played well but didn’t put the chances away, they had two shots and scored. We were down about that after such a good pre-season and everything came together at Anfield, but I also think Liverpool showed us a bit too much respect for where we were at the time, which played a part.
“Results haven’t been as good lately, but we’ve picked up the same points as the first half. But the football level is a level above and maybe people don’t see that with the eye because of the results and that’s the highlight for people, but I focus on parts of the performance. Watching Chelsea back, it was unreal for the first half hour, Emma [Hayes] was so frustrated on the side.
“Then they have five shots and score five goals because they have unbelievable quality. I think we contained them, then Pernille comes in and you don’t know what the hell she’s doing. Is she coming deep? Is she laying it off? Is she going in behind? She destroyed us. Our performance, we played through them at times, but we just don’t execute it yet because of quality, belief and decisions.”
And has anything surprised him?
“Maybe some teams with quick fixes, how do you build something?
“I’m a carpenter, I like to build,” he laughs.