Lee Hendrie urges Everton to stick with Marco Silva, compares them with Aston Villa

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Former Aston Villa midfielder Lee Hendrie has had his say on Everton and their manager Marco Silva.

Lee Hendrie has lauded Everton as a ‘special place’ and urged the struggling Premier League club to stick with under-fire manager Marco Silva.

Hendrie compared the Toffees to his former side Aston Villa and pointed out that they can’t continuously keep ‘chopping and changing’ managers.

Silva was appointed Everton manager in the summer after he replaced the sacked Sam Allardyce – previously before that Ronald Koeman and Roberto Martinez were in the dugout.

Nonetheless, former Villa man Hendrie waxed-lyrical about the ‘potential’ Everton has as a club and spoke about how he loved playing at Goodison.

“I loved going to Goodison,” Hendrie told Sky Sports News on 06/02/2019. “It was such a special place. They do deserve it [success]. It’s such a big club with such big potential, they have just struggled to find that manager that’s going to fulfil that.

“I’ve seen it at Aston Villa. They chop and change managers and it doesn’t suit. Certain managers have different styles of play and I think you have got to give a manager a bit more time.”

Villa were relegated to the second tier of English football in 2016 and since then they have had three permanent managers in the hot seat as they crave a return to the promised land.

Prior to dropping down to the Championship for the first time in nearly 30 years, Villa, under the stewardship of Martin O’Neill were battling with David Moyes’s Everton for a top-four spot during the mid-to-late noughties.

There were a number of great contests between both sides as they possessed some high-quality players from the likes of Gareth Barry, James Milner, Steven Pienaar, Mikel Arteta, Ashley Young and Joleon Lescott to name a few.

But since the departures of those managers, for their own respective reasons, both clubs have not been able to reach those heights again – more so for Villa who are no longer playing in the top-flight.

Many neutral supporters may argue that considering the stature of those two clubs they should, at the very least, be competing for European football – at this moment it looks more likely Everton will return to those days.