Sean Dyche slaps Everton player during morale boosting trip to Portugal – report

Liverpool fans are experiencing stressful games every week ahead of an excruciating end to the season where we hope to achieve our biggest dreams in three different competitions, whilst Everton experience something very different.

Sean Dyche’s side are once again battling relegation and with this season being marred by points deductions and financial breaches, the last thing the manager needed was disharmony within his squad.

However, as reported by CaughtOffside (via the Daily Mail): ‘Dyche is alleged to have playfully slapped right-back Nathan Patterson around the back of the head. The 52-year-old connected more forcefully than he intended though and that sparked an angry reaction from other senior players.’

The report goes onto suggest that James Tarkowski had to step in and settle the camp, whilst Nathan Patterson was left embarrassed by the whole situation.

There are several key worries for the Goodison club to come from this, not only does it suggest that the former Burnley boss may have caused a rift between players and staff but that there’s also someone leaking information.

In a trip to Portugal that should have been used to to bring everyone together, it feels now like their return to Merseyside could end in the club being ripped apart.

Whatever your thoughts on whether you want the Toffees to find themselves in the Championship next season, with our game on the blue half of the city being one of the harder ones we have remaining – the weaker they are for that match would only give Jurgen Klopp’s squad a greater chance.

It’ll be interesting to see whether this is an incident that can have catastrophic ramifications on our neighbours’ position as a top tier club.