It always felt like Fabian Delph needed a miracle if he wanted to keep his seemingly doomed Everton career alive.
And that moment of divine intervention might have just arrived in the shape of a 67-year-old Chilean who may be about to ‘engineer’ a return from the Goodison Park fringes for Everton’s £80,000-a-week forgotten man.
According to the Mail, Manuel Pellegrini is the latest name in the frame to take over from Carlo Ancelotti on the blue half of Merseyside.
A miserable spell at West Ham United will undoubtedly cast doubt on whether Pellegrini is the right man for the job – given that he struggled to put his stamp on a Hammers side who flopped with an expensively assembled and underachieving squad not too dissimilar to the one that finished tenth in the Premier League under Ancelotti last term.
But the rest of Pellegrini’s CV makes for thrilling reading, especially if you are an Everton fan who has lived through every single one of those 26 trophy-less years.
The kindly tactician famously guided Villarreal to the Champions League semi-finals, won 96 points in the 2009/10 season at Real Madrid, and dragged Real Betis to sixth place in La Liga last term.
Can Manuel Pellegrini save one player’s Everton career?
Furthermore, one of the ten trophies on Pellegrini’s mantelpiece was secured during his time alongside Delph at Manchester City.
The former England international was never a regular starter in City’s star-studded engine room, but that doesn’t mean Pellegrini was not a fan of a player whose energy, determination and character earned him the admiration of the former Los Blancos boss.
“I’m very happy with his performance,” Pellegrini said after Delph scored in a 4-0 win against Crystal Palace in January 2016.
“He had bad luck at the start of the season with different injuries. He has settled down now and he makes a good work ethic and gives us good build up.”
That ‘bad luck’ followed Delph to Everton too, a variety of fitness problems restricting the 31-year-old to just eight Premier League apeareances last season.
But if anyone can stop Delph descending even further into Evertonian obscurity, it may just be Pellegrini.
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