The inevitable turned into a reality on Monday afternoon as Everton announced the sacking of manager Ronald Koeman following a turgid start to the season both on a domestic and a European front.

The Toffees slipped into the relegation zone on Sunday afternoon after their latest defeat, a 5-2 thrashing at the hands of Arsenal, and it proved to be the final straw after 16 months at the helm.

Their first European adventure for three years has gone equally awry, currently sitting rock bottom of Group E after losing to Atalanta and Lyon and being held at home by Cypriot minnows Apollon Limassol.

The Dutchman has paid the price for some poor results, winning just two of the opening nine matches in the league – despite investing over £150 million into his squad over the summer – and he has become the second Premier League managerial casualty of the past week after Craig Shakespeare was relieved of his Leicester City duties.

But when one door opens, the old saying goes that another one opens and a new managerial appointment will offer a number of players a second opportunity to impress – and here are three worth considering.

Gylfi Sigurdsson

For a player of Gylfi Sigurdsson’s quality, it’s amazing to see him struggling.

He was always the catalyst for anything positive to come from a relatively poor Swansea City outfit, managing to stand out and put in eye-catching displays that defied the perilous positions that the Swans found themselves in, and his name has been up with the Premier League’s best for a reason.

When the opportunity to join Koeman’s burgeoning project at Goodison Park arose it was almost a no-brainer for the Icelandic international but, after seven league appearances, he’s yet to have any real impact.

He’s looked a shadow of the player that scored nine goals, earnt 13 assists and created 72 chances last season for Swansea, failing to be involved in any of Everton’s seven league goals in 570 minutes of football.

But that’s partially due to Koeman’s misuse of Sigurdsson, trying to utilise him in a right-wing role when everybody would say that he’s more comfortable – and at his sublime best – as a number ten.

Whoever the new manager may be will surely have more nous than to continue playing him out of his natural position, and if Sigurdsson can get a consistent run of games under his belt back in his favoured role then it surely won’t be long before he’s back at his fluent best, influencing games and earning points.

Kevin Mirallas

Kevin Mirallas has endured an extremely frustrating few seasons at Everton since breaking into the first-team under David Moyes, going from one of the first names on the team-sheet to battling it out for any football at all.

He was never really a player that Koeman deemed as important to his long-term plans on Merseyside, despite the fact that that Dutchman denied him a deadline day move back to former side Olympiakos in the recent transfer window, and 17 of Mirallas’ 35 Premier League appearances last year came from the bench.

This sense of being out of favour has continued into the early part of 2017-18 too, playing just 37 minutes of top-flight football and being awarded his only start of the season in the 2-1 Europa League defeat to Lyon.

But in spite of his recent woes at Goodison Park, the width and the pace that Mirallas could offer Everton in attack could yet prove to be a catalyst in turning around their poor start to the campaign.

Koeman experimented with too many people on the wings that aren’t comfortable there – such as Sigurdsson – when, in reality, he had a ready-made international winger at his disposal in the Belgian.

There is a severe lack of confidence in the 30-year-old, perhaps understandably so after the way Koeman froze him out, but he’s one squad player who could revel under a new managerial style.

Oumar Niasse

One of the reasons why Koeman’s reign at Everton came to a sorry end so early in the season is partly down to the fact that he never knew his best team, making too many changes each match.

It never allowed the Toffees to gain any sense of consistency, or build an on-field relationship as a solid starting eleven, and one man who didn’t benefit from constant alterations was Oumar Niasse.

It seemed that the 27-year-old’s Everton career was over before it began when he wasn’t awarded a squad number in the summer that Koeman arrived at Goodison, with it then transpiring that he didn’t have a locker at Everton, before he secured a loan deal to Hull City for the remainder of 2016.

But due to Koeman’s failure to replace the outgoing Romelu Lukaku he was left with little choice but to re-instate Niasse into his plans and give him a second chance of redemption, and it’s a chance Niasse grasped with both hands when he turned saviour with a double in victory over Bournemouth.

It was almost expected that he would become the key target-man of Koeman’s Everton side, or at least until January came around, but instead he was promptly dropped for the trip down to Brighton.

It’s more than likely that Niasse will be happy to see the back of the Dutchman after his treatment over the past 16 months, and his prolific displays this season should now warrant him a decent run of starts.