Rafa Benítez’s efficient Everton may not be entertainers – but they are working | Jonathan Wilson

Everton manager’s rice-and-vegetables approach is not to all tastes but who better to lead the club to the game’s high table?

What we want and what we need are often very different things. You get home weary in the evening and look around the kitchen. You probably could knock something reasonably tasty together from the vegetables and the brown rice, but you feel the urge of the delivery. Perhaps you go for the familiar pizza, the comfortingly big easy flavours. There’s the greasy satisfaction of feeling full, but in the morning you feel bloated – and then a glimpse at the receipt provokes another wave of regret.

Or maybe you try the fashionable new German or Swiss place everybody’s raving about. It arrives and you don’t really get it. You pretend you’re sophisticated enough to appreciate it, but you don’t enjoy it and it doesn’t fill you up. You’ve wasted your money.