Everton Discussion

[RandoEFC+]

21 minutes ago, Stan said:

A relegation is never actually desirable but is there a part of you/any Everton fans that feel it could be a case of 1 step back, 2 steps forwards?

Of course, there's never a guarantee you come straight back up. But there's plenty of clubs that have suffered a dreaded relegation and come back stronger. A chance to cut out a lot of deadwood, seek investment, bring through that youth again and go back to a model which became successful. 

I don't know specifics of what Everton's finances are like - would a relegation actually break you?

I can see why some clubs have managed to turn relegation into a "big reset" but I don't think that really applies to us. The owner is already looking to sell the club and moving into the new stadium will transform the club's financial profile because there'll be a huge boost in revenue and there'll no longer be hundreds of millions of outgoings each year in terms of building costs. We should already have a big reset and break the cycle in the summer with a new owner and stadium, even if we end up grinding our way to 16th/17th in a similar manner to the previous two seasons.

Financially, we have a large debt problem. That's historical debt, plus money owed back to 777 Partners that they invested during their failed takeover, and £200m or so owed to the Friedkin Group who paid off the rest of our stadium costs for us and another debt we owed to MSP from their failed takeover. The debt is hundreds of millions and I don't know if anyone even has a reliable estimate of how bad it is, which is why MSP and Friedkin have both entered negotiations to take over, and then walked away once they were granted access to the books. However bad it is, it's bad, and the only parties that are currently interested can just about justify taking over a project saddled with that much debt, because you're buying a Premier League team with a brand new stadium and a reasonably high ceiling. I don't think any of them would be interested in buying a Championship club with hundreds of millions of debt, and I don't know where it would end up leading us if Moshiri couldn't find any buyer at all. So on that front as well, the "maybe relegation would be a good chance to wipe the slate clean and rebuild" doesn't really apply to us.

[Stan]

1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

I can see why some clubs have managed to turn relegation into a "big reset" but I don't think that really applies to us. The owner is already looking to sell the club and moving into the new stadium will transform the club's financial profile because there'll be a huge boost in revenue and there'll no longer be hundreds of millions of outgoings each year in terms of building costs. We should already have a big reset and break the cycle in the summer with a new owner and stadium, even if we end up grinding our way to 16th/17th in a similar manner to the previous two seasons.

Financially, we have a large debt problem. That's historical debt, plus money owed back to 777 Partners that they invested during their failed takeover, and £200m or so owed to the Friedkin Group who paid off the rest of our stadium costs for us and another debt we owed to MSP from their failed takeover. The debt is hundreds of millions and I don't know if anyone even has a reliable estimate of how bad it is, which is why MSP and Friedkin have both entered negotiations to take over, and then walked away once they were granted access to the books. However bad it is, it's bad, and the only parties that are currently interested can just about justify taking over a project saddled with that much debt, because you're buying a Premier League team with a brand new stadium and a reasonably high ceiling. I don't think any of them would be interested in buying a Championship club with hundreds of millions of debt, and I don't know where it would end up leading us if Moshiri couldn't find any buyer at all. So on that front as well, the "maybe relegation would be a good chance to wipe the slate clean and rebuild" doesn't really apply to us.

Fair enough.

Have Kevin Maguire or Swiss Ramble ever done anything on Everton regarding the finances, and the supposed abyss of debt?

They've always seemed knowledgeable enough when delving into clubs or specific ownership/spending of clubs and comparisons within a league. 

[RandoEFC+]

7 minutes ago, Stan said:

Fair enough.

Have Kevin Maguire or Swiss Ramble ever done anything on Everton regarding the finances, and the supposed abyss of debt?

They've always seemed knowledgeable enough when delving into clubs or specific ownership/spending of clubs and comparisons within a league. 

Not recently that I've seen. I know that the figure owed to Friedkin is £200m, 777 I think is slightly more than that, and then we have other debts, some of which are owed to lenders dating back to before Moshiri even bought the club off Kenwright. The debt was bad enough pre-777 and Friedkin that it scared MSP off from a full purchase so I expect the total is in the region of £600m-£800m.

[LFCMike]

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

2 hours ago, LFCMike said:

 

In all seriousness, the fella saying "Chris Wilder, fuck off" and "who the fucks he?" is absolutely right

[Stan]

16 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

In all seriousness, the fella saying "Chris Wilder, fuck off" and "who the fucks he?" is absolutely right

It is the correct response. 

[RandoEFC+]

Thankfully we've reached the point where Evertonians find our fanbase as funny as Liverpool fans do when things are going badly.

[OrangeKhrush]

I thought Everton had a decent summer window,  but it has gone a bit tits up.   If I recall they started shit last season as well then hit a purple patch. 

[RandoEFC+]

9 hours ago, OrangeKhrush said:

I thought Everton had a decent summer window,  but it has gone a bit tits up.   If I recall they started shit last season as well then hit a purple patch. 

1 point from the first five last season with arguably easier fixtures (Fulham and Wolves at home and Sheff Utd away) before we won at Brentford.

The problem is last season we were unlucky in some of those defeats and just couldn't finish chances. This season you can only really point to Bournemouth as the game we should have won on balance. Brighton and Spurs battered us pretty easily and Villa could have put 4 or 5 past us, it was a freak incident for us to get a 2 goal lead there.

We have a good run of fixtures coming up so Dyche has to show marked improvement in the next two games or we need to cash in a new manager bounce to get some points on the board.

[RandoEFC+]

 

The latest twist.

It's not Moshiri .

It's not Textor .

Multi-club ownership model .

[RandoEFC+]

It sounds like this is actually "it" this time, at long last. A lot of damage to undo first but the amount of equity they're reportedly putting into the club should go some way to dealing with the debt problems which have strangled our cash flow in recent years.

Pretty funny to be honest how John Textor sent Mangala our way when he was due to join Fiorentina, and tried to push Nuamah in our direction too, and he's not even going to end up owning the club.

Nobody has a crystal ball but the Friedkin Group seem to be a much better proposition than John Textor. The only thing I don't like is that I've already seen a rumour that they fancy Southgate as an option if they remove Dyche .

[Dr. Gonzo]

These are the ones who own AS Roma right?

[RandoEFC+]

1 hour ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

These are the ones who own AS Roma right?

Yeah though apparently they may be braced for an Arab bid to take Roma off them. They've done a lot of good there by the sounds of it.

[Dr. Gonzo]

3 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

Yeah though apparently they may be braced for an Arab bid to take Roma off them. They've done a lot of good there by the sounds of it.

I know some Roma fans who absolutely hate their current owners. Biggest complaint I’ve heard has been: they think they know football better than the people with football experience they’ve hired.

I think they’re mostly just hated for how they shunned Totti though.

[Dave]

John Textor looks like an absolute idiot.

[Dave]

20 hours ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I know some Roma fans who absolutely hate their current owners. Biggest complaint I’ve heard has been: they think they know football better than the people with football experience they’ve hired.

I think they’re mostly just hated for how they shunned Totti though.

I don't think the fans are really helping the situation out there in all honesty. Dybala's wage hike is unsustainable for a side without Champions League football, they brokered a Saudi deal and signed a good replacement in Soule. Then Dybala decides to stay.

Now Roma have had to sell several other players, have to play 3-5-2 to suit Dybala, there's no room for Soule in that system. But the fans love Dybala because he says the right things.

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, Dave said:

I don't think the fans are really helping the situation out there in all honesty. Dybala's wage hike is unsustainable for a side without Champions League football, they brokered a Saudi deal and signed a good replacement in Soule. Then Dybala decides to stay.

Now Roma have had to sell several other players, have to play 3-5-2 to suit Dybala, there's no room for Soule in that system. But the fans love Dybala because he says the right things.

I don’t think it’s the fans fault Roma have been financially mismanaged & that the Serie A has really struggled to bring money back to their league, though?

It certainly wasn’t the fans who sacked Mourinho after he’d taken them to multiple European finals, or who sacked De Rossi after 4 matches.

I will say I think the Roma fans I know personally are a bit mental and a little over the top and probably some of their criticism of their owners is over the top. But they certainly feel a disconnect between the fans and the club’s owners.

Although in 2024… probably most fans of top flight clubs can say something similar.

[Dave]

1 hour ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I don’t think it’s the fans fault Roma have been financially mismanaged & that the Serie A has really struggled to bring money back to their league, though?

It certainly wasn’t the fans who sacked Mourinho after he’d taken them to multiple European finals, or who sacked De Rossi after 4 matches.

I will say I think the Roma fans I know personally are a bit mental and a little over the top and probably some of their criticism of their owners is over the top. But they certainly feel a disconnect between the fans and the club’s owners.

Although in 2024… probably most fans of top flight clubs can say something similar.

I mean in regards to the financial mismanagement of Roma in particular, it's all been pretty much down to the previous regime. We haven't really seen what The Friedkin Group are capable of because they're still clearing up the mess they've inherited. The Dybala wage hike clause just set them another two steps backwards.

In regards to the wider problem of money coming in, I have found the Italian people to be naive this summer. There's been no talk over there about the international TV rights clusterfuck because the national TV deal is a good one. Yet as we've grasped in England it's the international rights that are the major money maker. The deals they got at the last minute across the globe are pretty terrible. Napoli in particular could be in be in a real tough situation once Conte leaves (shock) especially after failing to sell Osimhen for major money.

I find the defence that Mourinho is still a draw because he took Roma to the final of a C rate tournament that didn't exist five years ago weak to be honest but each to there own. I did feel sorry for De Rossi though. Not sure what more he could have done to be honest.

[RandoEFC+]

Roma were only half-filling their stadium before Friedkin took over and are now back to selling every ticket. They've won the Conference League and made the Europa League final in that era as well. I'm no expert and I'm not going to go believing Friedkin will be perfect and turn us into world beaters overnight but even if they've got decent nous and little more, that's a colossal improvement on what Everton fans have had to put up with for literally 30 years.

Moshiri has ended up selling the club for almost nothing and walks away having made a £750m loss or something close. Everton's debt problems are decimated by this deal. The £200m we owed to The Friedkin Group is now irrelevant, the £225m debt we owed to Right and Media Funding which was costing us £30m interest per year is being paid off. They've reached an agreement with 777/Leadenhall over the money owed to 777 which was a sticking point previously. The expenses of building the new stadium will go away before Christmas. This is a huge deal for the football club before you even get into assessing how good they'll be at football operations. Moving into the new stadium will transform the balance sheets as well next season. Sponsorship and commercial deals have already started rolling in over the past couple of months and we still have a naming rights deal to make for the new ground as well.

And I can state with absolute certainty that they'll be better at football operations than Bill Kenwright and Farhad Moshiri have been. I've been worried for years that relegation would ruin Everton FC in their hands and we'd be gone for a long time. With the circus finally moving out of town, I actually think we could take it on the chin and rebuild effectively. Not that I want that to happen but seeing an ownership with a disastrous track record leaving the club finally gives you hope again that you'll be able to be proud of your football club on the pitch again at some point in your lifetime.

[Dave]

32 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

Roma were only half-filling their stadium before Friedkin took over and are now back to selling every ticket. They've won the Conference League and made the Europa League final in that era as well. I'm no expert and I'm not going to go believing Friedkin will be perfect and turn us into world beaters overnight but even if they've got decent nous and little more, that's a colossal improvement on what Everton fans have had to put up with for literally 30 years

The only warning flag which is probably more yellow than red is the harsh treatment of De Rossi. It may be that as American Businessmen they'll be better suited to English football as we're not as protective over club legends as Italians are. But to make De Rossi manager in the summer and then sack him in September isn't a popular decision. There were protests this weekend over it.

[RandoEFC+]

1 hour ago, Dave said:

The only warning flag which is probably more yellow than red is the harsh treatment of De Rossi. It may be that as American Businessmen they'll be better suited to English football as we're not as protective over club legends as Italians are. But to make De Rossi manager in the summer and then sack him in September isn't a popular decision. There were protests this weekend over it.

Yeah I can imagine. I wouldn't have thought we'd have that problem ourselves though. We don't exactly have many "club legends" which are ever likely to manage us. Duncan Ferguson is managing in the second tier in Scotland after failing at Forest Green and Tim Cahill has chosen to pursue a career tarting himself to the Qataris over management. David Unsworth I'm not even aware of anymore. If Arteta started to lose his way at Arsenal and started tumbling down the ladder then maybe but he's not beloved of the fanbase like De Rossi at Roma.

Everton fans aren't shy about cutting loose an under-performing manager regardless of how popular. Nobody really wanted Duncan Ferguson appointed permanently after either of his interim periods and everyone wanted Lampard out despite him being very popular on a personal level.

I'm happy for owners to be cut-throat although I hope they don't act in a manner totally deaf to the fanbase. The best example of that at Everton was when Moshiri appointed Benitez as manager. Just a terrible appointment of a manager whose merits were lacking at that point in his career regardless of his history with Liverpool, that was always going to get ugly with the fanbase at the first sign of trouble.

[RandoEFC+]

Finally some decent analysis from a national journalist.

[RandoEFC+]

People putting their tickets up for resale for the home game with Wolves on Wednesday in much greater numbers than usual. Such a sad situation now. Everton have among the most loyal followings in the country home and away and you'd have to go back years and years to find a home league fixture with the attendance far below a sell-out. Absolutely horrific that it's happening in the last season of Goodison Park.

You can't blame them. Best case scenario in any game when Dyche is manager is you nick a set-piece goal and then your heart rate spirals out of control for the rest of the game as we sit back and hold on for dear life. We've had worse teams than what we've got right now but the match-day experience as a combination of likeliness to enjoy the result and likeliness to enjoy the spectacle cannot have ever been worse than this.

The new owners are long overdue but they're coming in at a historically low ebb for this football club.

[RandoEFC+]

 

Exactly what I and other Everton fans have been saying about Dyche for a few weeks now. He's in his Allardyce era. Every press conference now is his chance to remind everyone of how hard his job has been here in preparation for the next time a suitable club is in need of a firefighter.

This squad with a few small personnel changes that haven't had a large impact on its net quality got 48 points last season on the pitch. There is absolutely no excuse for what's been served up so far this season.

Eugh. Takeover by the end of next week by all accounts. Hopefully this is Dyche's penultimate pre-match presser.

[Dr. Gonzo]

3 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

 

Exactly what I and other Everton fans have been saying about Dyche for a few weeks now. He's in his Allardyce era. Every press conference now is his chance to remind everyone of how hard his job has been here in preparation for the next time a suitable club is in need of a firefighter.

This squad with a few small personnel changes that haven't had a large impact on its net quality got 48 points last season on the pitch. There is absolutely no excuse for what's been served up so far this season.

Eugh. Takeover by the end of next week by all accounts. Hopefully this is Dyche's penultimate pre-match presser.

Re: the bit in bold, doesn't it seem like part of what spurred Everton going up several gears last season was the reaction to the bullshit points deductions?

I genuinely believe the mentality of players makes more than a razors edge of a difference between how top flight players turn up to play. And I'm not discounting anything you're saying about Dyche at all... if anything, I think it reaffirms what you say about him.

It's like he can't get his side up for being competitive consistently without the genuine feeling like they've got their backs against the wall and fighting for his lives.

But in fairness to Dyche, I think it does say a lot about the players too. As far as the quality of the side and the attitude, I think Dyche plays a part. But it's the players too that are a big part of the way Everton in 2024 are the way they are.

Everton on the pitch though are really just a reflection of where Moshiri's leadership has taken the club. No long term vision, no long term plan, a lot of ego for some reason. As a Liverpool fan, do I want the meme era of Everton to end? Not really, no. But as someone who's worried about the future of football generally... I hope the next owners are better at least.