Sean Dyche Burnley
Sean Dyche has revealed his ‘wheel of fortune’ will be making a return at Everton after proving successful at former club Burnley. Since taking charge of the Blues, the 51-year-old has wasted little time to set the standards he expects from players. He has introduced a ban on snoods and hats in training after insisting it was ‘common sense’ items that cannot be worn in matches be worn during the week. Next on the agenda of changes will be the implementation of a light-hearted spin the wheel game, which sees players forced into paying financial penalties or completing tasks likely to encourage camaraderie among the group. Explaining how this idea first came about at Burnley,
Sean 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.”
Asked to confirm whether the Everton players will soon be experiencing this unique approach to boosting team spirit,
Sean Dyche said: “The spin wheel, yeah. It’s an unfortunate wheel. We will introduce 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.”
