Everton CEO outlines changes made following Strategic Review

Where are the Strategic Review findings?
What is the revised set of objectives?
Who is responsible for what?
How is progress to be measured?
What does success mean to each of you?
Who is responsible for what?
Why did it all go pear-shaped?
What is the owners view?
What is the club's main objective on and off the field?
How does it align?
Who is responsible for Communication with fans?

The FAB knows as much as we do! Sweet FA!

These are the questions she should address to give us confidence that the club is progressing. But no, not a single word of substance. What a joke, except it's not funny. It's a piece of crap.

Merry Christmas right back at you. Thanks for nothing.

So many that 20-odd new positions have had to have been created. So that means Thelwell walked into a club that didn't even have the requisite staff for a competent Premier League side. Had to put in new job roles that presumably are considered standard across the Premier League. Everything from player welfare to recruitment.

You'd imagine the review would conclude that the people at the top who are ultimately responsible for this and have overseen this amateurish mess have to step down.

1. Finance Department: You own these 4 bullet points. Unless you achieve them by the end of the season, you will be out of a job.

2. HR Department: These 4 points are yours. Contracts reviewed, professional qualifications mandatory, under-performing staff identified and let go. Professional experienced board identified and recruited.

3. Marketing: 3 points for you. Write a realistic and achievable marketing strategy and outsource it to somebody who knows what they are doing.

4. Fans Advisory Board: 2 points only for you. Communication of results of all the identified points to the fans in the timelines specified. Secondly, feedback legitimate concerns of all supporters – not just a select few.

5. Team Recruitment and Management: 3 objectives to be met. Identify the style and vision of the team you are building, how long it will take, what is required and how the board can assist. Secondly, identify the major obstacles to your success and submit a plan to overcome them.

6. Board of Directors: 1 objective only (incapable currently to achieve little else) find professional successors to yourselves.

7. Ownership: 3 points require addressing, The reinstatement of AGMs. The Vision for Everton Football Club, with timelines and objectives stated. The realignment of shareholding to accommodate the build of stadium and new board of directors.

Not much really is it? But I bet my list looks nothing like their current one.

This club bows to none in its ability to act like a family-owned office cleaning company pretending to be a multi-national oil company.

All efforts should be directed at finding a "proper" owner with comparable wealth to the Premier League big guns – anything else is a continuation of "moving deck chairs on the Titanic" policy. What an uninspiring club this is!

But a Strategic Review?

If you dare, get an external auditor in to assess the club's operations. But that might fear the current hierarchy who would rather mark their own homework.

I like Thelwell, I want to give the current management time to let them see through what they want to achieve.

I like the call for change. But the higher echelons aren't looking in the mirror and realising where change is really needed.

I would love to know what Kevin Thelwell really makes of things. As much as I feel grateful to Mr Moshiri for financial support of the club, I can't see how we truly move forward until he sells to someone who will take the bull by the horns.

Until then, it will be same old chiefs bringing yet more Indians.

I agree, the owner, whoever that is, needs to take ownership.

I accept we are all entitled to views and opinions on what the solution may be, but relegation is not something I hope or want for.

I hope we chip away at as many of those 69 points that are up for grabs and knock Man Utd out of the cup in a couple of weeks time.

Even on those 3 occasions when we sailed way too close to the wind in 1994, 1998 and 2022, I couldn't accept or believe it was going to happen.

I'm no prophet, but I don't ever believe it's going to happen.

Here's to a turn around starting on Monday.

Considering that Everton have one of the highest wages percentages in the Premier League, and the second-highest Director remuneration in the Premier League, it is obvious she hasn't a clue what a Strategic Review is, and any commercial wherewithal, regarding running a Football Club.

Such a statement by a Chief Executive is absolutely staggering. She should not be in a Chief Executive position at Everton.

He's the man who inherited a Top 6/7 club, that was regularly playing Europa League football, and knocking on the door of the Champions League.

Now, we're knocking on the door of the Championship – all because he brought in useless, incompetent Directors of Football, who equally brought in useless players.

Can we please go back to the days of finishing 4th, 5th, 5th, 5th, 6th, and playing in an FA Cup Final, and finishing back-to-back above Liverpool for the first time since 1937.

All with no money. He's even worse than Agent Johnson. The buck stops with Moshiri, and nobody else.

Exactly. Did we not have these basic roles before? I'm hoping the unspoken part of the Strategic Review as that Bill and Moshiri appoint experts to these jobs and stop meddling.

This makes it sound like Denise is very modest when it comes to her achievements, Len? but will tell you anything, when things haven't gone so well, but I suppose she has had a great teacher,.

Good sentiments, I can't really disagree – except to wish for higher finishing positions and actually winning an FA Cup Final...

But: "All with no money." – Are we talking about the same guy?

I think your wish may be forlorn.

If he's got any sense at all (which may be debatable), I think he'll stick around at least until his stadium is completed – and maybe a while longer than that – to realize the full value of his tremendous investment in that venture and in this club.

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who has invested in Everton and then walked away leaving lotsa money on the table for someone else to profit from.

Moving on, LMD's gushings are par for the course for the tosser who's ruined us for the best part of thirty years. She's meaningless.

The very fact that a newly appointed DIRECTOR of football has taken months to discover the true extent of the inadequacies in the club, created stark staringly obviously by those previously in charge, that have required the appointment of 26 new people into every aspect of professional conduct to even try to begin to get things right would, to a 20 year+ chairman/owner who devised and implemented all those inadequacies, if he had one iota of humility and accountability, demand his resignation and apology.

For the record, I withdraw good will to that leeching, lying, buffoon who pleases every other club in the world when it comes to dealing with us.

We are stuck with Moshiri and co. for the foreseeable. No two ways about it.

@16 up there with comedy posts of the year on TW. So deluded it's funny.

All The Very Best of The Seasons Greetings, TWRs, Evertonians, across the globe.

Adapt, improvise and overcome.

Merry Christmas, TWrs.

God Yule, and let's beat Wolves.

Picking up on a point. The Fans Advisory Board.

Do they have a website or landing page? I haven't really seen or read much from them. Maybe I'm missing something?

Best to all.

And before him it was Mr Brands, and before him Mr Walsh, and somewhere along the line seven or eight Managers and their Staff and who was the "Coaches coach" who lasted about 6 weeks? And which of them had the Accounting Qualifications to find any problems outside of the "Football Operations"?

Doesn't make me believe that we've either seen the full review or that it has looked in the right areas. Perhaps we could get that bloke we had some years ago, Parry(?), to strategically review the review, shouldn't take him more than about 6 weeks.

This statement by Denise Barrett-Baxendale is similar it that it is trying to project a narrative of doing positive things, by giving us more titles and structure. In the first year after her appointment she announced structural changes by giving us a list of fancy titles in marketing and procurement. This had no impact on performance of any of those areas, other than to increase the wages of those that got the titles. There was a noticeable increase in wages percentage in the end of year figures for that year.

But this recent increase in roles as part of a Strategic Review(?) is really hard to fathom, since the urgent changes everyone knows are required, have obviously not materialised. There is now a real focus on this need for change on most quarters that watch Everton, which our Chief Executive Officer seem to be blatantly oblivious to in this statement, giving rise to heighten concerns amongst watchers of Everton.

Last year, I worked out the structure of Finch Farm and found a extensive structure with roles upon roles. I take it that there are similar extensive structures on the non-footballing side. I found extensive nepotism and jobs for the boys, with no performance accountability.

It appears that the Strategic Review was only on the footballing side, again with no performance accountability. It is also questionable if you can have a Strategic Review without looking at the whole Club operations and having measured goals worked out, with accountability and a plan of action to deal with underperformance.

For a Chief Executive Officer to make a statement as she has done would point to her not knowing what is required of her role or that she is in her role for purposes other than the role of Chief Executive Officer, ie, PR for the Chairman imo.

I don't agree that Moshiri has to go. It is a lot deeper and more complicated than that.

Link

Also, from the FWIW Department: Original FAB member from EHS and sometime ToffeeWeb contributor, Jamie Yates resigned or was bounced for some comment on Twitter.

Replaced by EHS member Richie Gillham.

Although the FAB said they will have a website, all I can find is the one on the Club site:

Link

If an AGM was held, any shareholder could request such information and the results. But no AGM means no accountability, no difficult questions… The disgraceful manner in which this club is run continues with a shroud of deceit over any form of transparency.

The club is either for sale or the investor is seeking to offload at least some of his significant investment. Sound familiar? Same old play from the chairman's playbook.

Kenwright is back running the club with impunity while the owner concentrates on divesting some if not all his risk.

It's as plain as day.

That also means they cannot respond to specific questions, comment on Everton issues in press or social media or be critical in any way of the club.

So you cannot ask questions, be critical, comment outside on anything without the club's express permission… it's a built in gagging clause for a "front" of supporter interface.

I also think this PR press release is full of corporate buzzwords and corporate speak, and is simply horseshit. It reeks of corporate bullshit.

Good try. Now forget about X number of point plans, root and branch restructuring, and your fucking roadmaps. Just have a plan, execute it, and let the record speak for itself please.

Jesus, the vernacular used to put a shine on things in the corporate world is comical.

It does smack of Kenwright trying to dig in, Christine, and I'm sure he's constantly telling Farhad what Michael K writes in post 25, but hopefully our current owner has had enough and a sale is going to go through soon... 🤞

However, one does impact on the other, financial restrictions impact on any operational review. Management decision-making has impacted the football operations of the club and therefore any process or review has to include the wider operation of the club as outlined earlier.

Every non-football decision made impacts on the ability of the operational side to compete. It is not an independent division of a bigger company – it is the reason for its existence. As such, it is arrogant at best to imply that a Strategic Review into the club's operational side is independent from all else. Just absurd.

The statement from Denise Barrett-Baxendale does not give one objective nor one vision for the future. With that in mind, Jerome is correct in his observation that such a review is not strategic at all if it does not include areas of the club that impact upon it.

And just also to say thanks for to Lyndon and Michael and all the other people who help put ToffeeWeb together and allow it to be a place where “free speech” isn't frowned upon (even if I do disagree with some of it myself, lol).

“For those on the totalitarian Left still capable of entertaining a subversive impulse, this article teaches the pattern of what passes for discourse among the intelligensia today. Because once you read and understand what these Guardian writers are really up to (Thought Policing), you can start to identify the thought control efforts everywhere.

From anthropogenic climate change to the Wuhan bioweapon to the mRNA vaccine deaths to even the collapse of the Big Bang theory's ability to empirically verify its own predictions via JWST, we have been blinded to the shackles put on upon us by the gatekeepers of thought. Censorship is the least of their tools though it is the most often used. The smear and the side-taking is even more effective.

For instance, “You must hate JK Rowling if you want to stay in the club! If you are not in the club, bad things will happen to you. You don't want that, do you?”

But here we are. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus! In that leap, the Guardian was right to be worried. You cannot un-peak behind the curtain and unsee the wizard for whom he really is. The all-powerful Oz, my ass.

And when you deny the goodwill of those who are skeptical, as today's totalitarian Left is wont to do, what then is left? Cynicism. Anger. Malign distrust. Cynicism is the natural byproduct of the totalitarian system.”

Cheers

I join with your thanks to Lyndon, Michael and others who make ToffeeWeb so readable, enjoyable and infuriating throughout the year.

Any talk of a Strategy Plan by Barrett Baxendale in her time as Chief Executive has been purely a PR exercise.I actually doubt that the Board has a Strategic Plan or is interested in one.

After been appointed she spoke of Structural Changes which in the main consisted of new titles for existing jobs,which I suspect resulted in increased wages paid out of the intial largesse introduced from Moshiri.She then talked of a Permanent Strategic plan( Something you will not find in any book on Business Management) after Brands appointment to the Board, which heralded a number of promotions at the Academy in Brand's name.All announced by Barrett Baxendale in the back recesses of the Evertonfc.com site.This was after the debacle of wasted millions in transfers and player contracts.

The FAB again was a much heralded part of the Strategy Plan, but in reality it was to head off Fan protest,which did do in Brands, and threatened Kenwright and Barret Baxebdale like never before. Previous protesters against Kenwright from years back had been banned from attending Goodison, so the Board have form in dealing with protest.Some where part of #27 years and had to maintain a low profile.

The Strategic Review was borne out of protests after Benitez left and relegation threatened.It's sole purpose was a PR exercise to head off Fan protest and give reassurance to fans that new positions had been introduced to justify Thewells appointment and give the impression that changes had been implemented.Simply put Thewell was appointed and he implemented changes.A Strategic plan does not exist to be reviewed, and no measured accountability exists either,through our the Club.

Everton Club is just a badly run Sole trader outfit.This is in shape contrast to the Stadium Development, which is highly professionally run, nd is more in line with Christine's description of how a Strategic plan should be consist of.

It seems to suit the parties involved, but the fact that they go to such length to deal with Fan protest, does point to them being concerned about it.It would be easier to do things right in my opinion.The current thinking on Strategy in Business, but not at Everton, is more adaptable, flexible, and results lead.It is more trading based and is assessed at different stages during the financial year.

Michael Kenrick accurately observed the absence of predictions coming true in reality, when he queried the doom and gloom around Financial assessments, which are snap shot on a particular date.Many of the posts on this thread are made in this context.

The main problem with the Chief Executive's statement is that she is getting Chief Executive wages and clearly is not a Chief Executive and is talking about a Strategic Plan that never existed to be reviewed.This calls into question her spending any money, which makes us all nervous.

I just hope someone at Everton knows what they are doing from Boxing day on,and we hear less from the Chief Executive(?)

Christine (as ever) exudes the insight that our owner and boardroom completely lack, sadly for us and any optimism.

Nick's a member I always read and largely agree with despite his denigration of so-called "dangerous left-wing mantra" perpetrated by the ever so gentle "left-wing mantra" Guardian newspaper.

Jerome echoes what so many of us know… And that is, with this owner and board, we're fucked.

And I'm sorry to say that the people on the so-called FAB need to give their heads a wobble because it's stark staringly obvious to me that the owner and board are using them. They're massively constrained-by-them, the bosses; their presence as another shield to hide behind when it comes to preserving their endless unaccountability whilst the club plumbs new depths of ineptitude.

But 'tis the season to be jolly so go on then;

Happy Fucking New (new! new? - to us in the desert of football success!!??) Year.

What Subject and article and publication?

I'd like to read it.

I happen to have already done Christmas yesterday here in Brisbane, have had Christmas fare with the family and a few beers to ward off the heat and kids, before setting sail back to New Zealand in a couple of weeks time.

Talking of kids, the press release reminds me of kids attempting to sound grown-up by using as many big words as they can to make it sound important but not understanding a word they say.

A press release by a corporate body only ever happens when the are giving good news, or trying to hide bad news (wrapped in something good); clearly neither of the above applies to the CEO's statement, which of course means no news here, move on.

Pointless. I am going to update you but tell you nothing, isn't that splendid?

Corporate speak from amateurs.

I was suspicious that the Fans Advisory Board would end up being a token gesture. A hollow "be seen to be doing something" gesture. The Strategic Review seemingly an exercise of marking your own homework.

I don't know anyone on the FAB, but I have heard that one or two of the individuals are known and respected.

I don't expect them to directly influence decisions made by the owner or a competent board. But if you are going to form such a body, at least let them have a voice and listen to them. Maybe they do behind the scenes. The wall of silence and lack of communication doesn't make it feel like that.

Last negative from me today. It's matchday and the team is most important.

Marching.

While I wouldn't argue with a word of your scathing characterization, this was not a press release in the corporate sense – it was programme notes for today's game – grist for the Happy Clappers who await Bill's fulsome features to appear on the big screens…

For some reason I thought someone said it was a press release... even so, the press (Echo) does refer to it and that's probably why I thought it was, my mistake!

It really wasn't corporate either way... but I guess that was my point. It's all about the art of saying nothing in a positive manner!

Little Miss Dynamite becomes a very large damp squib. I saw her at an AGM in the Philarmonic Hall. It felt like my brains were coming out of my ears, and she went on for a good 15 minutes...

I wish I could have recorded that speech. I'm an insomniac but that speech would have put me to sleep in no time, forever even!!

Since Nick is a bit of a bomb-dropper and rarely returns to assess the damage, I did a quick search to find that this came from a comment posted under an article at the "Off-Guardian" site.

The article is a lengthy ramble on Ancient Apocalypse & Graham Hancock's ‘Dangerous Ideas' – Why has the popular Netflix documentary ignited the ire of the media?

Apparently, the documentary examines the history of ancient civilizations that "mainstream" Archeology isn't too keen on, like the story of Atlantis. Enjoy!

Answer me this, Denise: Why have we treated the League Cup with utter contempt for the best part of 60 years?

Come on, play the game, no hard questions...

How do you expect Denise to know about the League Cup?

Good afternoon James

Thank you for your e-mail.

We have been working hard to get our website up and running and it will be published very soon. I am forwarding your e-mail on to our Communications Lead, Tony Sampson (EFC Fans' Forum Chair), who is working with our tech partners to prepare the launch.

Thank you.
Julie Clarke
SECRETARY
EFC Fan Advisory Board