Everton’s financial position entering the summer

Having had 5 minutes to bask in that unenviable glory, we now focus on next season and specifically the outs and ins and therefore what the squad will look like come August.

As Paul has once again pointed out, it will very likely be a season of same, same but slightly different personnel. Remember the excitement of the last day of the window when we got James, Allan and Doucouré in?

Our owner has had his fingers burnt, to a considerable extent if the reports are correct, by getting personally involved in our transfer dealings. If that is the case, no doubt he will have learnt his lesson.

Let's also hope that Thelwell and Lampard will prove far more astute than their predecessors when it comes to recruiting any new players.

As you rightly conclude, it appears that we may have to sell one or two of our player assets in order to free up finance for recruitment... Or we keep our better players and move on some of the lesser value/earners in bulk, downsize the experience in the squad and promote a few youth players.

I don't think that Moshiri will blink at the figures, given his worth and our next season will be defined by re-jigging the squad with outs and ins.

As Laurie says in #3, it will be down to Thelwell and Lampard to collude in order to sort out the defence and midfield issues that lead to us leaking too many goals, especially from opponents' set pieces.

I will be content to see Richarlison and Calvert-Lewin staying with us and adding better quality striker options in the squad. We need forward cover as we saw with injuries last year. Lampard knows the score with this squad and I am sure his player targets will strengthen our squad.

Instead of looking at the top end of the player market, we will be forced, by circumstance, to look for younger, hungrier players from the less glamorous leagues of Europe and the championship.

Get the right ones, mould them into a cohesive unit and we might just strike an unexpected winning formula.

I am hoping that our new DoF and manager can spot the necessary personnel to pull this off.

It's going to be a bumpy couple of seasons ahead with bottom-half finishes I suspect. I just hope we have enough not to get embroiled in another relegation battle.

Unfortunately we probably need to sell at least one of Calvert-Lewin and Richarlison – and that will generate the money along with Mina and Kean. We won't generate much from selling anyone else (apart from Pickford but I doubt he'll be sold).

Since it is impossible, with these financial constraints, to compete for the Top 6, we should focus on building a younger, lower wage side who can develop together over a few seasons. We can do it with a little patience.

Also, having Frank Lampard will be leverage for getting some quality young players in at the right price and developing them.

It's going to be a weird one for everybody with the stoppage for the World Cup and I hope that this doesn't work against us.

That will only be the case if the players recruited are cheaper, carry some resale value and are more effective on the pitch. That is a tall order for the new regime but other clubs have managed to achieve it.

The ‘setting aside ….. of uncrystallised losses' does sound dodgy. The more we fall back on that presumably the more scrutiny the club's future accounts will attract not only from the Premier League but also from other clubs.

Our track record in the transfer market needs to improve 1000%

Champions League — here we come!!

If we sell Mina, Calvert-Lewin, Gray, Pickford and Richarlison, then we will struggle to get in the Top 10. The first XI will be very much weaker than the best we can muster currently and the squad would lose its strongest foundations.

In many respects, next season is already a write-off. We will not achieve anything unless we get lucky in a cup competition. It is about building up the core of a side that can perform and deliver over the next 3 to 5 years.

The last 5 years shows there's no short-cut without mega-bucks. But patience can be rewarded.

I'm basing it on:

£20M for Kean
£15M for Mina
£10M for Keane
£10M for Gomes
£10M for Allan
£15M for Gray
£5M for Gbamin
£5M for Davies

That's actually £90M so give or take for a few of them.

I actually think we could get more for Mina and Davies.

Do you really think we couldn't sell those players for those prices?

I disagree.

Selling Gray and buying Scott Twine for less money makes us a better team and with profit in the bank.

Likewise with Pickford and Rajkovic.

The point is more that we'd need to willing buyers for that list of players. However it works out, we won't get anything like £80m for our deadwood this summer. I'll buy you a Mars Bar if I'm wrong.

As for Twine, he's had a fine season in the Third Tier with MK Dons and may yet prove to be Premier League quality. However, Gray has had a very decent season as a Premier League player with 9 goal contributions and some good hard defensive work at the business end of the season.

But it is obvious that we are going to have to trade. That means at least one of our sellable assets will be on the move.

If you want a personal opinion, I would rather that be Calvert-Lewin if it has to be someone. That doesn't mean I want him gone, it's just I think we can replace him easier than the others.

Realistically, I think it will be Richarlison along with Mina, who also can be replaced.

As long as we reinvest wisely it doesn't always matter if you sell, and as many will have heard me say, I believe there is a lot more value to be had on the continent. How you spend, not what you spend.

We need a different approach and I feel we have the right team in place to do that. But I'm in pre-season optimistic mode already. Is it August yet? Wishing my life away on Everton. Will I ever learn?

You seriously think that players that many on here refer to collectively as dead wood will fetch the sums you mention?

That someone in the real world will think: "Mmmm… some bargains to be had a Goodison Park... Look, Gomes can be picked up for £10 million, he's a star, what a season he had."

Very optimistic, Tommy, very optimistic indeed.

Sorry Andy. But we are talking about many individuals who are international players.

We are talking about a collection of misfits who they've tried to make a team out of. Doesn't make them bad individual players but their qualities when brought together as a team are lacking. But they could be useful additions to many teams that already have a system and spine in place.

Absolutely Yerry Mina would suit a club in either Spain or Italy. He is not built for the rigours of a Premier League season. That is abundantly clear. But elsewhere in Europe, he may find a place where he can play his best football.

Gomes is another player more suited to playing in a continental league. Technically a very good player and with a decent engine. But he is lacking in pace for the premier league and is often overrun in our game. With the time and space to suit his game, there's obviously a gifted player there.

Gbamin was wanted on loan in Moscow and by all accounts, he's done well for them. To ask them to part with £5M for his permanent services is not that unfathomable.

Keane is reportedly wanted by West Ham and for £10M they would get a decent centre back who on his day, in a rigid system and with a bit of confidence can be a good player. He's better than Craig Dawson put it that way. He's the kind of player who'd flourish under Moyes as we well know.

Moise Kean has many suitors. I don't see achieving £20M for him being any kind of problem.

Likewise £10M for Allan who I'd expect to return to Italy and £15M for Gray who would improve any of the teams that have just been promoted.

Someone would pay £5M for Tom Davies…

I think a free transfer with the buying club taking on his wages is possible but still may be optimistic. Even that deal would free us up some wages headroom and offload a player that is virtually completely ineffective in the fast-paced Premier League.

Agreed. Depends what is the best way to present the finances. Whether that be get a fee in and then continue to pay some of his wage. Even if we pay him £50k to be elsewhere and bring in someone young and hungry on £20k a week then we'll be saving money. Mad as it is.

We'll have to see how that all works out. Better than past efforts, I hope.

The elephant is not only in the room but rampaging through our future

We have subsidized the loans of players like Walcott and Gbamin and let go for free the likes of Schneiderlin. No team in their right mind is going to give us anything for Gbamin and it will be hard to find one who would pay Yerry what he is on with us.

When I look at the crazy fees that we paid for some of these players, I can't help but wonder if someone at Everton benefitted from the deals.

It's okay saying we will have so much through sales but, if the past is any guide to the quality we might buy, we will be an even worse team than the season just passed.

Good post. I think with a younger consistent squad, and a couple of mid table finishes we could be on the way. I believe Lampard and his team can achieve that.

Sorry Andy. But we are talking about many individuals who are international players.

But they're crap, that's why we are were we are.

Moshiri seems to have given up and wants to sell to save his diminishing wealth which has gone down by £1.2 billion. He only attended one game all season. The club is being run by Kenwright and Barrett-Baxendale, two amateurs. There is simply no comparison with the experience of the people running Liverpool.

Chairman Tom Werner is an American tv producer turned businessman. He invested in Fenway Sports then bought in to the Boston Red Sox, becoming chairman. They won four World Series under him.

CEO Billy Hogan is also a top American businessman with a track record of turning businesses around into high profits. He renegotiated a kit deal with Nike which gives the club a tremendous income compared to ours.

Kenwright was quoted last year of saying “I haven't a clue about business” while Barrett-Baxendale is an ex schoolteacher and charity worker with zero business experience. There is absolutely zero chance of these people turning the finances around.

Kenwright has a full-time commitment in London meaning he is a part-time chairman. Everton will never progress long term until the finances improve and there is no chance of that with two clowns at the helm.

As for transfers in and out, there are so many permutations, it’s a conundrum.

It’s clear that there will be players in and out, I just hope we keep our better players, offload the rubbish and have different players in our squad for next season.

Man City, if it is true, have already seen the potential in Branthwaite, so we should keep him along with Godfrey. The midfield is where we need strengthening and I would keep Allan and Alli, sell Doucouré. Go for Gallagher or his type of midfielder

Forwards, we have Gray, Calvert-Lewin and Gordon. After that, see what we can get for the ones who are saleable and start improving the squad with a dominant centre-half and a quality midfielder.

No_one expected Everton to be fighting against relegation with just a couple of weeks to go. But, as shown, this was the culmination of poor corporate management down, and the last manager to be fired was just the icing on the cake.

The starting 11 at the start of last season was not poor, the problem was in the squad, and that meant, when people got injured, we never had replacements for that position and it meant readjusting the formation to suit the injured player; get another injured player and that made it worse.

Lampard and Thelwell have to come to an understanding of what the system or type of play will be that will be used all through the club's academy to develop young players in the positions they are most comfortable with. So we have a player that is used to playing in a position of an injured player.

Not being able to watch the academy, I have to rely on other supporters' expertise on up-and-coming young players, but I believe we have enough young players that can come through.

The club can then start trimming the saleable players' wages and deadwood to start bringing the club back to a more stable financial position to gradually improve the first 11.

There is zero evidence to support this assertion. I strongly suggest taking it with a large grain of salt.

On the Sunday Times rich list, published about 3 weeks ago, his wealth is down to £1.7B having been £2.9B previously. He attended one game last season and it has been widely reported he is looking to sell, which may not be a bad thing.

It depends on who you believe.

According to Forbes, who keep track of billionaires, Farhad Moshiri is #1196 on their list and, as of 30 May 2022 (ie, yesterday), his real-time wealth was listed at $2.95 billion.

My perception of wealthy people is that many of them have the peculiar ability to take a hit and bounce back from it.

The stadium is going ahead in leaps and bounds so it may be that he will decide to stick. Who really knows.

If he does decide to stick I still maintain, as I said above, he had better get someone who does know “about business” to run the club. In that event he could be whistling Dixie in a couple of years from now.

The following was published on ToffeeWeb 12 massively more depressing years ago than now. I plead with folk to read it. Neither Kenwright nor anyone else inside Everton has ever challenged its integrity… and yet some of us, including that wazzock in Monaco, still just refuse to see where the heart, lungs and "brain" of our problem lie.

"I'm more concerned about Everton" – By Colin Fitzpatrick, 14 October 2010

Congratulations to the esteemed, by me at least, author by the way!

I read it and here we are 12 years later. So how do you see things changing?

That is a genuine question by the way.

Something has certainly changed as we have to sell before we can buy after spending only £1.7M last summer.

We are now forced to do what we should have done in first place, that's simply implement a value adding sustainable recruitment strategy managed by professionals while moving towards being a younger squad that is properly coached and motivated.

This is presuming Mr Bean (our owner), the greatest theatre impresario ever (and Everton fan!) and a best mate of Vladimir Putler stay away from player recruitment.

I suspect in a transfer window the players we would expect to raise funds may not realise the values expected. Lampard is going to have to get a better tune of what we have got. Iwobi has improved, and Mykolenko has been a good buy.

Maybe something can be done with Keane and Holgate. Branthwaite may improve and Godfrey will be fit. We can't be dependent on Mina.

Kenny looks industrious at right-back, but we do need someone to replace Coleman. Parkinson was brought in for that reason, and will have to be tried.

It's in midfield that the big decisions have to be made. Dele Alli will cost Everton about £10M next season. Maybe Paul the Esk has a better breakdown of this option. I do think Frank could do something with him. We do have the return of Davies.

Van de Beek will want back to his former boss, though I think he would be better off at Everton. He for me has proved a one-dimensional player and will find it difficult in the Premier League.

Both Allan and Townsend will stay as backup and alternatives in tactics. Gomes hasn't impressed. Gray hopefully finds more form.

I do expect Richarlison to stay and younger forwards to come through and be tried. Calvert-Lewin is a conundrum, never quite reaching his promise, so I expect competition to be brought in for his place.

So, we need an additional midfielder and an attacker. I think that Frank and his team will be working on what they have already developed with the aim of consistency and cutting out errors.

The big difference next season will be fans behind the manager they selected and the absence of a go-slow for 2 months in the heart of the season. Maybe a few more changes in the backroom staff may be in the offing; good if it is so.

Slowly but surely, Everton may progress on a tight budget. We surely can't have a another season like last season where everything including the kitchen sink was thrown at the Club.

Thanks for the informative article, Paul the Esk.

Nobody from within our club has ever responded to the swingeing attack it spells out in enormous detail against Kenwright, never mind legally challenged it as untrue.

I therefore consider it unarguably supports my near 20-year contention that, with Kenwright in the heart of our club, we'll never win an egg-and-spoon race against children, never mind a trophy in professional football.

The fact that he sold out, whilst retaining day-to-day running of our club, to the world's most egotistical, delusional football billionaire, is to him, I've no doubt, his greatest achievement.

Kenwright and his entire family are thereby fabulously wealthy for the next generation or two, whilst we as a club were completely fucked by him from the day he took over, right through the Kings Dock fiasco, and the true crisis outlined in 2010 and, beyond, to tracing Mr Bean in Monaco from where things have plunged to massively worse depths, already killing any optimism for the next two seasons minimum.

Kenwright is still the unhealthy flaccid heart of our club.

Players, managers, coaches and the like may well be in tip-top nick when he signs them (acknowledging that almost all stop being top nick the day after he signs them) but, whilst they're important organs in their own right, they all depend on a healthy heart to have even a chance of thriving.

Having Kenwright in charge, supported by Moshiri, and the plethora of more minor club employees and coaches, who must kowtow to the pair of them to stay employed, I cannot have a hope in hell that there is any realistic way to expect even a top-half finish, never mind a trophy. There's way more than 20 years of unarguable evidence to underpin me.

Just how we get rid of the parasites, clowns and crawlers is unknown to me though.

Other clubs manage it, however – not least them across the park in that same 2010, after just 3years of owner and boardroom bullshit from Hicks & Gillet (neither of them having been even close to Moshiri and Kenwright when it comes to the term "bone-headed").

As you say it all comes from the top or running of the club. Just hope Frank and his coaches don't cotton on soon. Most of ToffeeWeb in fairness seem to be the exception to the rule but obviously not enough.

You are right: Kenwright is the main source of Everton's recent decline, more interested in self-preservation with his every move to achieve that. Unfortunately, that will continue, but the immediate problem is Everton's survival in the Premier League – not to is total disaster.

So we have to work with what we have got, a young manager, a new season, building on and improving Frank and his team's style of play and the flaws against it.

Even since January, the Strategic Review has placed old boys or Everton DNA throughout the club, fan protest has been met by a Fan Advisory Board to the Board's agenda, so the self preservation can continue. Even the base of should Everton survive relegation has been covered by the announcement of a 'Bright Future' and 'Smart Thinking'.

Other clubs are in a similar position, but not to the extent of Everton, though they are getting there. But they will all, including Everton, carry on making the best of a bad job.