Ronald Koeman has been relieved of his duty as manager of Everton football club after their 5-2 loss at home to Arsenal on Super Sunday.
The club made their announcement shortly after 1.30pm on Monday, with Everton chairman Bill Kenwright and CEO Robert Elstone having earlier arrived at the club’s Finch Farm training ground.
Everton spent heavily in the summer on players like Michael Keane, Davy Klaassen, Jordan Pickford, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Wayne Rooney but now lie 18th in the table having made their third worst start to a Premier League campaign.
The loss at Goodison Park on Sunday was Everton’s fifth consecutive match without a victory, with the Toffees having won just two league games this season, while they are also bottom of their Europa League group after two defeats and a draw in their first three matches.
“Everton Football Club can confirm that Ronald Koeman has left the club,” a statement on Twitter said.
“Chairman Bill Kenwright, the board of directors and major shareholder Farhad Moshiri would all like to express their gratitude to Ronald for the service he has given to the club over the past 16 months and for guiding the club to seventh place in last season’s Premier League campaign.”
After the weekend loss, defender Michael Keane, who joined the club from Burnley in the summer, said the Everton players had let Koeman down and insisted they had to shoulder a great deal of responsibility for the side’s poor early season results.
“I think it is down to us at the end of the day, the manager can only do so much,” he told evertontv. “We have 100 per cent belief in the manager – we have done all season – and we hope we can get this right for him.
“We feel like we have let him down as a bunch of players and we are working hard to sort it out. It is not happening at the minute so we have to try different things to sort it out quickly.”
