Marcel Brands has done what Steve Walsh failed to do but Everton plan just getting started

In the fullness of time, Steve Walsh's spell at Everton may come to be looked upon more generously.

The players he helped bring to Goodison may go on to achieve success with the club, win silverware and be key to a return to European competition.

Walsh, who was last seen taking the job of special advisor for emerging Major League Soccer side Charlotte FC, may yet return to the Premier League and repeat what he did with Leicester City.

But for now, many view Walsh's near two-year spell as the club's first ever director of football, as an unmitigated failure.

Together with Ronald Koeman, and often separately to Koeman which was part of the problem, and then in cahoots with Sam Allardyce, Walsh spent an awful lot of the club's money on players they are now desperate to get rid of.

He also spent money on players who have been central to this season, but his legacy is not viewed favourably by the majority of supporters.

And Walsh's sacking was acrimonious and bitter. His departure was, almost literally, a footnote in Everton's press release when they confirmed there would be a change of director of football.

"Marcel replaces Steve Walsh who joined the Club in July 2016" came right at the bottom of the statement.

Walsh had gone with the briefest of mentions. Everton's experience with Walsh may have put them off the director of football model. It could have seen them abandon the experiment and return to a model where the manager was in total control.

But, today, they showed they still believe, fully, in what they introduced almost five years ago, despite the ups and downs and the hiring and firing.

By the time Marcel Brands has finished his new contract, Everton will have been operating with a director of football for eight years and it is clear the model is here to stay.

But it is Brands who has shown the club that it can work and while he still has to fully convince some sections of the fan-base at Goodison, the general reaction to today's news of his new contract spoke volumes for the belief in his ability.

And what Brands made clear from the off, which Walsh failed to do, was that the job of director of football goes beyond recruitment. It is about improving all areas of the club, from Academy to the first-team.

Brands is half-way through a grand plan and is now going to be given the platform to see those plans through to completion and prove, further, that the decision to introduce the job into the club's footballing structure, was the correct one, even if the first appointment didn't work out.

Would Walsh have gone onto to make similar changes had he been given another three year deal? Who knows, but he made too many mistakes inside his first two years that meant Everton were not willing to wait and see.