Nottingham Forest takeover prompts Everton questions — but it’s not so simple

It seems to me that plenty of investment would be required to get Forest to Everton's position. Once you've bought the club, you need playing staff, management, and - I don't know their training facilities - presumably more infrastructure. None of which to quote the Post would bring no guaranteed return.

The Post implies that fans etc would be unimpressed if Everton stayed around 6th-8th. But why should that bother the investor. Those fans won't run away and, if investment has been made, are hardly going to blame the board.

I can only imagine the old chestnut of old stadium stands in the way. That, and the cheapest real estate in the country if they wanted to sell the ground before moving elswhere.

The reasons given by the Post seem warped.

"[T]o move on from there means breaking into the top four and regular Champions League qualification, which would take a mammoth investment for which there is no guaranteed return".

Not following Doyle's reasoning here. We finish 4th-8th with either no money or money funded by selling one good player (Arteta), an exceptional player (Lescott), and an immeasureable one (Rooney).

Why "mammoth investment? I think we just need our rich owners to shake a little loose for Moyes to spend so we can jump up into Top 4 contention. That's money they'd get back.

There is nothing warped or inaccurate about what is written in the article. The club's wage bill has been pegged to the stops for seasons. Before we can add more depth and quality we have to make the money to pay the wages and there is no magic wand or mythical 'better business model' that suddenly pours millions into the coffers every year.

Getting us the infrastructure to make more money will require several tens of millions invested in new stands with quality corporate facilities. Given that extra revenue generated from these new facilities will need to go towards the playing staff it will be a long time before the investor will see anything back on his investment.

It's all very simple and easy to understand really. Buy a cheap club like Reading (£35mn) or QPR (£40mn) with a low wage bill and modest expectations, get them to the Prem with £10mn or so investment. Spend a few million developing youth and pick up castoffs and the odd bit of quality and set the target to be regular mid-table in 5 seasons (ie, Fulham). Get the odd lucky draw sequence in one of the cups and give the fans something to cheer about and watch the Sky money roll in. Everyone's a winner. After 5 years, sell the club on if you can find an idiot willing to put the investment in to take the club up to regular Euro contention level.

Buying a cheap club and doing it up has a lot of benefits. Raising fans expectation and delivering against it is one of them.

The marginal benefit of buying everton and spending money is one of them. Perhaps the mob are right - 10 wasted years. If Moyes had got the side relegated instead of flirting 5th to 8th, we'd have our new board in place. Bloody Moyes.

Winning the playoff final.

It's worth £100m to get in the Premier League, so for an investment of £50-60m you add £100m to the value of your business without very much trouble.

How much would you have to invest in Everton to achieve the £40m (last time I checked) for reaching the group stages of the Champions League? £100m? £200m? Including wages of the mercenaries to get you there? Consider who you have to outspend to displace someone.

Slightly OT, does anyone remember in the late 80s (?) when they had a play-off between a team in the old first division and the second division over 2 legs? I think Middlesborough beat Chelsea to take their place in the top flight.

The most likely cause as to why we haven't been bought out is that the club isn't even for sale, or is priced so ludicrously that it may as well not be.

Where is your evidence to support the hypothesis that EFC isn't for sale? I don't accept that anybody "expects" Everton to finish in 5-8th place.

Colin Fitzpatrick said the following on the 'Clubs for Sale' thread: "I understand that BarCap, Rothschilds, Inner Circle and others are searching for a new owner with little success".

If the club is not for sale they seem to have done a fair job of engaging people to sell it for them. Then, if you believe Colin's comment, ask yourself the question why none of those professional outfits has come back to the board and said 'you are making yourselves unsaleable... drop your price' if that was the real problem?

Doyle has it right in that the kind of buyer who would come in for us, where we are at in our development, is a very rare find. Dictating the schedule of when another may come along is a mug's game.

Didn't an old saying go something along the lines of " You can make a small fortune out of buying a football club - as long as you start out with a large one. "

To many mega-rich individuals, football clubs or sports franchises are the ultimate status symbol. Look at Abromovich when Chelsea won the C.L.

Where else in business can you be adored by 100,000 people ?

If anyone is interested in buying the club, they would have to be a total idiot to pay £100m plus the debt for a loss-making operation. And there are not many idiots with that sort of money.

As far as buying the club to win the League or create C.L. football - why ?

Why can't a new owner break even with the right business plan, and not have to sell our players to operate ?

Why can't a new owner come in and clear the debt, or not have to go to shady companies in the BVI for pay-day loans ?

More importantly - we are an excellent asset to own, 30 odd thousand every week, selling out our away allocation every game, one of only seven ever present clubs in th P.L. So don't compare us to fucking Bolton or Portsmouth.

You don't have to buy us and spend £600m like some half-wits would have you believe, cut out the debt and stabilise the finances is what's required at E.F.C.

Don't fall for the spin so this board can keep their vanity project afloat, because they will not invest one penny in this club. THAT is what journo's should be concentrating on - not how mant millions a mythical Sheik would need. They make me sick.

The reason Everton are finishing in the top eight is because we don't change the manager every time there is a bit of a downturn, which means we run a stable club and keep the majority of our better players.

A club like Liverpool for instance, waste millions on donkeys such as Carroll, Downing and Adam etc. They're now just an ordinary mid-table club. Changing their manager each year if things don't go right. Does this mean they're "punching below their weight"?

Following the article to its logical conclusion would imply that hardly any Premier League club would ever be bought as 'it would take too much investment to get to the next level'. Given that virtually every Premier League club has been bought & sold (some more than once) since Blue Bill took over, would seem to point to something else being the reason why we have not changed ownership, and will probably have to pry the shares out of Blue Bill's cold dead fingers before any change happens!

Please don't anyone start coming out with the "look what happened to Pompey or West Ham, better the devil you know" rubbish etc. Some takeovers have been a success and others have not; fact is we are one of only 2-3 clubs to have not changeed ownership despite our chairman apparently working 24/7 for about a decade to find a buyer. Remember the famous "We don't really need a new owner, we're looking for investment" line?

The Sky TV money is a pot of gold and if the club was being run better, there is no reason why we could not turn a small profit on a regular basis. We have 30-35k plus attendances and our commercial income is a joke when compared to clubs like Spurs and Villa. There is clearly room to imrove the revenue front.

How many times have EFC screwed basic things up which a more professionally run club would not do?!? The latest example being the shambles of the live feeds for the friendlies, where the excuse was 'due to unprecedented volume'. Given that people have to pay in advance for the live feed access, it should not really be too difficult to figure out roughly how many people are going to log on! Also it's not like we have hundreds of thousands of fans who are going to log in to watch a friendly against Dundee United!

An established Premier League club, with a decent first team squad, a large regular (almost fanatic) following, a supposedly world class youth academy with many promising youngsters, regularly earning huge amounts of Sky cash, .... not an attractive investment?

Give me a fucking break!

Lower the fucking price bill!

If EFC was at a decent price like City we'd be sold, obviously success would relate to the funds available but let's be honest it could hardly be worse than ZERO!!

Some people fall for the 3 card trick every time over "jam tomorrow" schemes anyone watching the QPR tv documentary would see it ain't shelling peas getting to and staying in the Prem.

Of course we need a big hitter to do a City but half the reason is the debt hung round our neck by the chuckle bros.

This piece echoes Kenwright's "they're not around anymore" in a thinly disguised support for what's gone on. Not a pertinent question as to what's gone on – just the usual whitewash unfortunately lapped up by the unthinking.

This is exactly what is so galling about reading the utter crap that passes for 'journalism" in the the local rags. We patch up the side in January and then they play football that would have earned Everton 3rd place over the season... Yet getting into the top four is deemed – by those 'in the know' – to be too tall of an order?!!?

It certainly will be with this kind of half-arsed defeatist analysis. But that's what comes by this pathetic claim that Moyes and his teams have been performing "above expectations". Certainly not mine!

What 'utter shite', to quote the first comment made on this thread (now deleted by Lyndon). With consistent application and diligence from the START of the season, anything is possible. But this dour, down-in-the-mouth manager who comes out with shit like "Everton were not worth watching" and "knife to a gunfight" — an is then allowed to get away with it by his legions of apologists... That's the fundamental reason why a top four place could well be beyond us.

Forest fans may see that as success. I question only if the buyers would see it that way. Their % returns may be better at Forest, but really, who goes into football to make money? Very few if any, I imagine. I doubt very much that either City or Chelsea will ever make money for their owners. They will only bring prestige.

Abramovic bought Chelsea as a very expensive toy. It is and never has been as an investment.

You have seized on a comment and fitted it to your own agenda.

I was expecting something relevant but it just got increasingly warped.

It's worth £100m to get in the Premier League, so for an investment of £50-60m you add £100m to the value of your business without very much trouble.
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True, but it then all goes in wages. Prem League doubles your revenues, and doubles your costs.

I honestly do not believe there is any money to be made in football. Give us an example of a profitable club?

I can only think of Arsenal. And what press and fans' reaction does this "success" bring? And yes, that is a rhetorical question.

Forest may bring a much greater move upwards in terms of prestige from any investment.

But 1, the prestige is not guaranteed to follow, no gurantee of even Prem League football: check out how much the last owner ploughed into the club, a cool £100 million. All gone! And 2, it won't - whether successful or not - bring any profits.

The players and their agents make a lot of money in football. No-one else.

Maybe I'm wrong but I believe league form is down to the manager, how he inspires the team (or not!), how he has them playing, and what results they get.

Let's give Doyle the benefit of the doubt and say he wrote the article in such a way as to stimulate discussion, get people talking/arguing, etc. Nothing wrong with that, right? I just went into Doyle's article. There are 4 respondents, 2 of whom were KEIOC (Good stuff, by the way, but nothing that would surprise a TWer). Doyle has yet to respond to any of them.

And the traditional news-media wonders why its circulation keeps dropping.

The poor form in the early part of last season notwithstanding, I defy any club with a squad as small as ours and lacking the goalscorer it was before January to sustain any kind of challenge for fourth over 38 games.

With all their resources, Chelsea didn't make it; Newcastle flagged at the end and Spurs limped over the finish line.

I can see what Ian Doyle is getting at even if I don't necessarily agree but it's dangerous to conflate form on the pitch with the larger picture of a fundamental lack of financial resources.

The first part is to identify and buy a club with a decent stadium and fan base, with a minimum amount of debt. The likes of Forest fits the bill perfectly. I think Wolves are another club that would be a decent punt.

The second part is to have a proper business plan at the start and to then be patient as you implement it.

Have your seed money and a specific budget at the start. Don't spend huge amounts of cash trying to get to the Premier League in a rush. Don't panic if you spend a couple of seasons being a yo yo club, up and down from the Premier League.

Between seasons spent in the Premier League, plus the parachute payments, you will still have a lot of cash coming into the club. Keep to the plan, keep spending the cash wisely and you should have to spend little or none of your own money as time goes on. All you need to do then have a couple of years of stability in the Premier League and then you should be making a profit.

There's no chance in this day and age that a club like Everton with a paper-thin squad can challenge the CL clubs over a WHOLE season. What happens when Jelavic is injured/out of form? Who's going to score goals then?

To get above our level takes million and millions of pounds. Look at City for proof.

But, there is a big difference between having the squad do it over a season to finish in the top 4 and turning on the style at Goodison against a Newcastle team mentally on the beach. I presume you will be expecting us to have the squad to have good cup runs along this top 4 challenge as well? We died late on in Moyes first season after not being able to sustain it till the finish, as rightly pointed out above Newcastle and Spurs tailed off last season. It’s not easy!!!

You have taken a comment there, I think it's a possibility you have used it out of context, to highlight the fact you believe that our manager is under-performing and should be attaining Champions League place!! We just don't have the squad or the players. But the ownership issue is one much more complicated than Doyle presents it as, as the comment you highlighted states. It has little to do with Moyes. Moyes could actually be considered a bonus to any potential owner considering his reputation for working on a budget, therefore having the ability to achieve uplift to challenging for Champions League status with a reasonably conservative outlay on new players. Moyes has previously built a team that challenged/qualified for Europe consistently and was gearing up for a go at the top 4 before, in the season I was hoping we could have a dart, injuries did us. And he did that on nish compared with the teams who knock around the top 4 places now, and the Shite, who have mis-managed their way out of contention and should be finishing way above us on outlay.

Even with investment, I personally consider any of this Champions League talk fantasy and consider season upon season of Europa League football much more realistic, and necessary, to get the club used to consistent European football and prepare for the Champions League.

I think the club needs building up. But the ownership issue is, amongst other things, one of prohibitive price and the prohibitive subsequent outlay required upon acquiring the club: namely, ground issue and the boards failure to grease the wheels of any sale of the club by a historic inability to move that issue forward.

The ground is a money generator; to consider attaining an acceptable facility that could generate money on a matchday basis on the same level as say, Spurs, Villa or Newcastle – any owner, putting it bluntly, will have to spend shitloads.

Moyes failing to reach your standards of breaking the big 4 on nothing, in your perceived under performance, has little to do with this. I found the comment, in terms of a general ownership discussion a bit bizarre and I don't think the quote you used in support of your comments was referring to that topic. It just looks like you took a comment and used it to make a point that suited your agenda. Just calling it how I see it Michael, nothing more btw.

This continual pining for investment or takeover has always been a pipe-dream... meanwhile, on the field, seasons come and go, and Everton slide from finishing among the top four to finishing among the top eight. Many seem a little too willing to accept that's the way it has to be.

I don't.

All other seasons we have been a fair gap off. We are a Europa League qualifying side that use to finish 5th, but is probably knocked down to 6th with Liverpool getting worse, but City and Spurs upping the ante.

It pains me to say this but if we sell Fellaini and Baines and get roughly £40m - we should pay off all the debt, this way we're not paying ridiculous interest payments, we then become more attractive to any buyer and yes we will stuggle more in the league but in the long run we may then get investment. Bill needs to seriously lower his asking price if the rumoured £120m price tag is correct.

We have some terrific youngsters coming through and maybe this way they will be given a chance... just a thought. This debt has been lingering on for years now – it's crippling us... so let's sort the debt out first – simples!

Their are those on the site who take the view,supported by the media, that Moyes has achieved the maximum possible with the resources at his disposal. I believe that our perennial slow starts, for which Moyes must bear at least some responsibility, have meant we have not reached maximum potential on the field. This has to change this season.

We finished so strongly last season, yet you had no problem referring to us with the relegation word. While "Newcastle may have 'flagged' at the end of the season", leads you to the conclusion "I see them moving forward".

Now that's convoluted, no doubt mischeviously intended.

I removed the post because, as our guidelines suggest, one-line responses that do nothing to add to the discussion will be removed. Your more expansive response later, on the other hand, was precisely in line with the spirit of the forum. (If you think I'd remove a post for the word "shite", you haven't been a regular reader for long!)

Regarding Michael's own belatedly expansive comment :), I don't think we can compare 2005 with today. The glass ceiling has got a lot higher and thicker since Moyes guided us to fourth. That's not to say, of course, that we could have finished higher in the seasons since by playing better, more positive football.

Further to my own earlier comment (and to reiterate my Column article of a couple of weeks ago), my view is that it would have been impossible for us to finish fourth last season but with a couple more targeted acquisitions and some luck with injuries, a challenge for a Champions League place this coming season is not beyond us. Highly ambitious, but not impossible.

Would still require an altruistic millionaire prepared to pump in money for transfers (£20 million per annum initially) and wages to strengthen the squad. We have shown that we are not that far off the required level and so with luck we could have some silverware and be regularly 'bloodying the noses' of the top 4 within a couple of seasons which should raise our profile and make us more marketable. Whether that would put us at a level of profitability (and potential) sufficient to tempt the initial investment is the £250 million question.

We have been at the level of Spurs, Villa, Newcastle and Sunderland for long enough to show we don't necessarily need as much money as they have, but we need more than we have

Don't pass yourself off as superior to the ones who support both the club, AND the manager; Or believe that you yearn for higher standards to the rest of us.

We all "LOVE Everton.".

I'm also interested to know which managers you think are tactically more advanced than Moyes.

For the record, there are better managers out there, I just think it would be revealing to see how you respond.

Still, nice to see one of your posts devoid of consistent capitals. I'm almost dissappointed.

As for the thread, same again really. Far from perfect I think all would agree but I do struggle to imagine how many managers would match Davey boy's record in the Premier League given the same paucity of spending over the last 10 years. And anyone who tries to claim that money has nothing to do with it is either naive or stupid I'm afraid. Yes, there may be one-off teams (such as us when we qualified for Champions League) who buck the trend but one swallow does not a summer make.

(That's all I needed to know).

Chelsea - £191m (up from £174m in 2009-10)
Manchester City - £174m (£133m)
Manchester United - £153m (£132m)
Liverpool - £135m (£121m)
Arsenal - £124m (£111m)

Everton - £55 million?

But its only going to take £10-20 million a season more and three good players in specific positions to get there - right?

To compete for CL we are going to need £50 million or more every year just to match our competitors, every year. We do astoundingly well to get anywhere near these clubs.

Any buyer will have to spend £50 - £100 milion a year to challenge for europe on wages alone (unless merchandising and corporate entertainment can be radically boosted). To start to get a return on investment it is going to take £2-300 for a new stadium and that will take 2 - 4 years to even start - so now he has spent £300 - 700 million. There is more to it than getting £50 million off the purchase price, as Randy Lerner found out.

Michael is co-owner of the friggin' site and, as such — not that I think he should — he can break the rules if he wants. My point in leaving his one-liner up with a public prompt to him to fall back within the site guidelines was both a friendly ribbing and a reminder of those guidelines for others to follow.

I don't think I'm alone in preferring that people offer something a little more by way of response than simply saying "utter shite" or "absolute garbage".

Congratulations my friend, you have just broken all records for the money required to put our club in the top 4.

£700 MILLION!!! £700 MILLION!!! £700 MILLION!!! £700 MILLION!!!!!!!!!!

We currently have a board who spend £0.00000000000 - and you reckon we would need anywhere between £300 and £700 million.

Our board & the media love to peddle these ridiculous figures – don't fall for it.

And when you compare wages – this is for the whole operation, to run huge clubs which dwarf Everton in regards to commercial departments alone. Imagine the 75,000 at Old Trafford and the wages it costs just for their hospitality sections.

We have hocked our commercial, catering and everything else that isn't nailed down – so these wages are not even included in our accounts.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/manchester-city/9255702/Manchester-Citys-930-million-spending-spree-to-turn-club-into-Premier-League-title-contenders.html

Sad but unfortunately realistic.

Even if it's £10m or even £20m a year more - I still fail to see where we need hundreds of millions.

As far as I am concerned, we need to get rid of the debt, fully realise all commercial opportunities, and a new owner could start a ten year plan on that basis alone.

We currently have 11 executive boxes, shall we start from there ?

City's money won them the title - no doubt.

But the suggeston (implication/claim whatever) that the football we played up until the second half against Swansea, was the only type of football we could have played, or that we were as successful as we could have been before Christmas, is imo, beyond nonsense.

Yes Pienaar and Jelly made a big difference after Christmas, but there were times in the early part of the season when (to me) Moyes actively seemed to be trying to demotivate the side AND the supporters.

You think we couldn't have finished 4th?

REALLY?

Go through the individual games, look at some of those we lost or drew (nb: against NONE top six sides) and tell yourself "Yeah, 4th was absolutely impossible'.

In fact I'll give it a go now.

We beat QPR at home instead of losing - there's 3 points.

We beat Villa at home instead of drawing - 2 more points.

We beat Stoke at home instead of losing - 3 more points.

We beat Bolton at home instead of losing - 3 more points.

We beat Wolves away instead of drawing - 2 more points.

Have a feeling that would have secured 4th.

Maybe one more?

Erm...a home win against the worst Liverpool in my lifetime - 3 more points.

We finish third.

Fucking THIRD!

And look, we didn't have to welly Chelsea or United or Barcelona or Brazil 1970.

A shit Villa, Stoke, Bolton etc.

Yes I agree "if this/if that" IS stupid, but that isn't the point I'm making.

The point is, despite what actually happened, do you think these results were beyond us?

Do you believe we'd have needed millions more to have achieved them?

If you think they WERE achievable without spending millions, then guess what (like me) you believe we DID underachieve and we SHOULD have done better.

What I think IS beyond dispute, is that a defeatist attitude rarely brings victory.

The big problem with your 'logic' is not that we couldn't achieve a Top 4 finish, we've done it before, it's just that by singling out games we would have been 'expected' to do better in you conveniently forget the ones we would have been expected to do worse in.
Chelsea, Man City, Spurs at home. Man U away.

Over the course of 38 games regardless of individual results teams tend to find their natural level based on how good they are in comparison to the competition, and as you quite rightly point out that tends to depend mostly on the resources you have to compile a quality squad of players.

I do agree however we were well below what should have been expected in the first half of the season and probably ' over achieved' in the second half. I think we probably came up about six to nine points short of what we should have got.

Im not convinced we will ever finish fourth again without decent investment though. Man City and Spurs have both spent their way to the top table since we did. This makes the job so much harder.

Even if you 'replace' the points we could/should have won in the first half of the season we were unlikely to have moved up the table (or at best one place) due to the gap above.

Cahill, Saha, straq, Coleman, Barkley, Rodwell, McFadden, Billy, Neville, gueye, hibbert, Heitinga, Distin. 7 goals. 7 goals! I can make that 8 by adding tim Howard FFs.

I realise it might look like a simple 'if we'd won these games, this would have happened' but as I attempted (admittedly not very well) to point out, this was not really the point.

The point was simply to use those games/results to pose the question - was it POSSIBLE to have done better (or indeed finish 4th) without spending millions, BUT with a more positive attitude from Moyes and/or different tactics.

We'll never know either way, but it is my belief that with a more positive attitude from the start, more could have been achieved (certainly Europa).

I don't believe I'm being unrealistic as I long ago accepted I'd never see an Everton win a title again.