Things Keep Getting WORSE For Everton

What does Everton have in common with Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelsea?

That’s right, since the inception of the Premier League in 1992, they’ve never played outside the first tier. In fact, the last time Everton played in the second tier of the English league system was in the 1953/1954 season. Out of 134 years playing in English league football, Everton have spent only four seasons in the second division. And 130 in the first tier.

Out of those teams all but Tottenham have won the league in the Premier League era. The last time Everton won the league was all the way back in 1987, 35 years ago. And recently, performances have gotten even worse. Last year they placed 17th in the league narrowly avoiding the drop. Mid-season, Sean Dyche took over from Frank Lampard who’d gone 10 games without a win and had the team in 19th. The season before that, they finished 16th.

Now Everton are 19th again. The former Burnley manager managed to get the team on safe ground last year but can he do it again? What’s going on at Everton?

Managers

Since 2013, when long time manager David Moyes was appointed successor by Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, Everton have employed some of the best managers in the game. 

However, after David Moyes, the successful ones have been lured away to better opportunities, such as Ancelotti to Real Madrid, and the rest have been sacked after slipping into the relegation zone.

Under the two managers before Dyche, performances fell off a cliff. Benitez and Lampard only managed to get 32% and 28% respectively. While this is partly a reflection of their capacity as managers, it must be recognized that the investments into the team have tapered off significantly since then.

Investments and Debts

When Farhad Moshiri first came to the club they spent a lot. In the first five seasons they bought players for an average of more than 100 million pounds per season. Looking at this table and the manager table together, it’s pretty obvious where the investments started going down.

With COVID the revenues went down by a lot, and Moshiri who had already invested a lot was unable and unwilling to spend more. Unwilling because even though he’d spent £100 million per season, the team hadn’t improved. Their best season since his take over they finished seventh.

Unable because not only had they invested in players, they’re also building an expensive new stadium and part of the funds came from Alisher Usmanov, the Russian oligarch who’s no longer allowed to do business in the UK.

In short, the investments they made into players wasn’t good enough and combined with big off the field investments the deficits became too big.

Selling the Club

So that’s where we were at the start of this season when Moshiri announced his intention to sell the club. The intended buyer was the American investment company 777 Partners. It looked like it would work out well as they would take on all of Moshiri’s stake, 94,1%. But then started the issues.

First, as every club sale is in England, it was to be vetted by the FA. Part of that process is to make sure that it is a sustainable owner that takes over and that’s done by providing audited financial statements, which 777 Partners failed to do.

Adding to the mystery surrounding the buying company is that as they were going through a similar process in Belgium last year, they were unable to provide proof of where their funds originated from.

Then, the next problem. With all the investments that Moshiri has made into the club, and with the results not going their way, they broke the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) that the EFL has imposed. The club had big losses, amounting to £371.8 million over three years whereas the maximum allowed is £105 million per season.

On November 17th it was decided that Everton would get a ten points deduction, the biggest punishment ever given in the Premier League, taking their total tally for the year from 14 to just four. The big question now is, will other teams in breach of PSR get the same punishment? Manchester City for example has been operating at a loss for many years.

Finally, as icing on the cake, some of the relegated teams from the years that Everton were in breach of the PSR decided to sue the club for £300 million.

777 Partners now, understandably, claim that the points deduction and the lawsuit against the club has affected price to such an extent that the agreement needs to be revisited. 

In short, it’s an absolute mess.

What happens now?

Well, despite the points deduction, if Everton keep playing the way they’d end up at 35 points . The accepted “safe” points total is 38 points but 35 would have kept them up about half the time. 

777 Partners seem confident in being able to acquire the club but it’s one of the first prospective owners that is affected by the Premier Leagues new and improved owners tests and many are looking to this process to see if it actually has teeth. 

If the sale doesn’t go through, there’s a very real possibility that Everton have to go into administration. Funnily, the points deduction for going into administration is just nine points, something Everton has used as an argument against the ten they got deducted for breaching PSR.

However you feel about Everton, off the field problems affecting the fans, players and staff is just sad. That’s the beauty of football, it’s played between 22 men on a field. Let’s hope football wins over finance.

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