Brands laments interference from Moshiri and Benitez during time at Everton

Kenwright and Brands wanted Arteta but Moshiri got Carlo. Moshiri alone sacked Silva.

Rondon brought nothing to the team and his wages were outrageous. But then he says he can't say more out of respect to the club. So that's the light version…

Brands (61) has a nose for talent, is financially well versed, negotiates sharply and is known to be extremely competitive. Yet things did not go as planned at Everton – officially owned by British-Iranian businessman Farhad Moshiri, although oligarch Alisher Usmanov is closely involved in the background, according to The Guardian.

Despite a good relationship with club chairman Bill Kenwright – 'Indy' he called Brands, the chairman thought he resembled Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford – he stepped down as technical director in December 2021, disillusioned. "Different views" on the policy to be pursued, was the official explanation. Things were going badly for the club and the English media judged harshly. After a 4-1 defeat against city rival Liverpool, Brands even got into a fight with an angry fan.

Brands was 59 when he left. He was devastated. Perhaps the most difficult moment of his career coincided with a worrying situation at home. His son turned out to be seriously ill (he has since recovered). "I had to do nothing for a while," he says, in his office in the Philips Stadium. "I have never had more than 10 days' holiday since I quit football at 35 and joined management. So I took my son to Dubai and we went to Disney with the children and grandchildren."

But quitting? "I never seriously thought about that."

After that break, Brands said yes when he could succeed Toon Gerbrands as PSV's general manager last year. Just like in 2010 – when he started as technical manager in Eindhoven – he has to make the club financially and sportingly successful again. The former has more or less succeeded, the sporting resurgence is yet to take shape. A first success beckons this Sunday, when PSV play the cup final against Ajax.

How does working in the Netherlands differ from England?

"It is totally different. The English culture makes fans and media think the manager [the coach] is about transfers. And the owner decides a lot. He wanted Rafael Benítez as coach in 2021, which was not my choice. And Benítez wanted Salomon Rondon, which I could not approve. He was already in his 30s, was not on the scouting list, he was not going to bring Everton anything more. Far too high a salary too. I said I thought it was a bad idea. Think of it as a present for the coach, the owner said. Then you are powerless."

But you will be judged on transfers.

"The problem is: there is no patience. Twelve coaches have already been sacked in the Premier League this season. In my second year, Marco Silva was sacked, I tried to prevent that, but it was beyond my control. While I knew: he is a good coach, he is proving that now at Fulham. The owner also stipulated that there should be an experienced successor, while the chairman and I wanted Mikel Arteta. In the end it became Carlo Ancelotti."

What does it do to employees when you are at the mercy of an owner's whims?

"People try to survive. The nasty thing is: in those rounds of layoffs, a lot of good club people often go with them. Physiotherapists, analysts, you name it. I then had to send away people who were good, worked hard. That is difficult. And it doesn't work either. The first few years I still had the idea that I could change something at Everton. But that didn't work out."

Brands cannot go into too much detail "out of respect" for his former employer. But he tells, without being able to name names, about meetings on expensive yachts and phone calls telling the coach who to draft. "You can't imagine that world if you haven't seen it yourself," he says.

An extraordinary adventure, but so you couldn't actually do your job. Why do you still look back with pleasure?

"You also get a lot of appreciation. Because I paid attention to the youth, to the structure, that you look beyond transfers and really try to build something. When I first went to watch Young Everton, I got an app from that coach: how fantastic that you are there, I have never experienced that before. I never saw a technical director from other clubs at duels like that either. And we lived beautifully, the football is great."

Doesn't it strike you as cynical that owners treat it like it's their toy?

"They do have the best interests of the club at heart, I think. But I firmly believe that you can achieve something with good policy. They think: I'm pumping money into it, then it must produce success quickly, right? But in the Premier League, everyone has a lot of money. The crazy thing is: we get more from commercial activities with PSV than Everton, but they get between 130 and 140 million in TV money [against almost 9 million with PSV]. That makes it all a bit easier."

I've had a gift like that!? It was from Woolworths in the '70s. So Moshiri gets in a professional, Marcel Brands, and then ties his hands together behind his back so he can't do his job. Now Kenwright dares to say "It was me that found you the Billionaire" – Found us a power-mad buffoon more like.

Beggars belief, the whole sodding circus. Run by lunatics with not an ounce of footballing acumen. We all knew it but to read it in black and white is quite numbing. We clearly don't know the half of it. Not sure I could stomach it.

I think he was our highest paid director, nobody else has offered him a comparable salary, simply staggering. Just joins the long line of mercenaries and leeches who've run our club into the ground and not accepted their responsibility.

As regards Arteta, my guess is that, even if he had accepted an offer, he would have been lost amid the dysfunction around him.

If we'd hired Artea, he'd have been sacked within 12 months and he'd now be managing Fulham or Brighton or the like and doing well.

He kept his mouth shut for long enough though, just like Sharp, has kept his mouth shut recently, with my own conclusion being that Everton has become nothing but a gravy train.

The whole saga since Moshiri arrived stinks to high heaven, and we as fans are paying the price for the ineptitude of anybody that was employed by the club during this period. I don't care for former employees telling their own version of the truth when they could have stood up and been counted whilst they were in a position to alter things.

I don't know whether there is any truth in the rumour that Investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office searched the Allianz Arena and the headquarters of FC Bayern on Tuesday. Reason: A money laundering procedure against Russian oligarch and billionaire Alisher Usmanov – @BILD

Apparently it has to do with Champions League tickets for Bayern matches given to Usmanov, and Bayern are only seen as witnesses in the investigation.

If he was Director of Football, why didn't he come out, say his piece and resign! I can only guess!!!

Respect for his previous employers??? My left foot!

I thought Brands, going by his record, was a good appointment, and he was doing okay but then he was appointed on to the board and things changed, did the board, Kenwright, get to him?

It's a jigsaw price that's finally showing what's actually been happening at the top of the club. You can add Moshiri to the list of incompetence of Kenwright who found him. The only due diligence done was probably "How much do I get?"

Brands lacked the integrity to walk in the face of the owner's interference but that should not dismiss what events leading up to it as being true. Nails in a coffin…

He did not secure transfer funds for Ancelotti and he left. He then became the main opposition to Benitez, pushed forward by Kenwright & Co. Not being his own man finally resulted in him becoming a scapegoat himself.

Happened with the venkys at blackburn, admittedly they thought they were buying a premier league franchise but after it is well renowned money was been laundered and a complete disregard for the clubs welfare.

Worst thing is things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.

I think we have all seen how Kenwright has played Moshiri and his ego, when that horrible smarmy smiling voice, told everyone that Farhad is the man who just keeps on giving?

Brands took the blunt of the blame, because he let his guard down and was exposed in front of the fans, but he never did tell us who's fault it was besides the players?

Moshiri and Kenwright, made sure they protected themselves, and the fabulous Denise Barrett Braxendale, when they informed everyone that she had been looking for alternative employment (it genuinely reminded of the Chris Samuelson sketch) and then we got the strategic review!

I said it this morning on another thread, but I left Goodison last night, thinking about how Wayne Rooney, was made to be the bad guy, when it was obvious which party had instigated proceedings to try and force the seventeen year old kid, out of our club, and I left our stadium with this uppermost in my thoughts, after seeing history repeating itself with the booing of Anthony Gordon.

Kenwright was the master player, but luckily for him, he didn't need a master plan, and the gullible Evertonians have been very complicit, and this is what breaks my heart.

Semi pro standard experience.

Kenwright found someone with money who thought and acted like himself..my money, my trainset.. fans are like mushrooms, say nothing, feed them bullshit..

The purchase of the club was a vehicle for a real estate bonanza, except the vehicle had a motor that needed replacing because the previous owner lied about its condition...they deserve each other.. but the fans deserve neither..never have.. but the Arthur Daley of the football world never had the money or the acumen to sit at their table. The wide boy who really fucked us up.

I think Brands is being very selective in what he's saying, and the reason I have these thoughts is because of how much Rafa Benitez was incredibly given to spend?

I remember one episode of Minder, when the great Arther Daley, decided he was going to go straight Christine, but by the end of the show he couldn't wait to get back into his own environment, stating that he had never met so many bad people as he had in the supposedly straight world. It's why villains send their children to university!!!

Somewhere along the way our club has been stolen from us, peddled to a completely inappropriate owner by a complete charlatan and staffed by poorly qualified managers staff and associated hangers on. All of this done in plain sight with none of this called out by the journalists who all had their tummies tickled by the regime at Everton. What is the truth in all of this? We'll never know.

I used to loose sleep worrying about relegation going back to the Wimbledon game, the Coventry game, the Crystal Palace game but now in the words of Pink Floyd I'm comfortably numb. I'm resigned to our fate now. The latest manager has returned to Martinez levels of delusion. I have a vote of no confidence in the entire infrastructure of the club. The only thing I have any confidence in at this time is the supporters but I fear the race is sadly run.

I hope against hope for some combination of events which could save us but as the saying goes hope dies last. We need a root and branch restructure at this club.

The link you provided is a Guardian story from last September, it's been revived because of the 'raid' on Bayern Munich which was referred to earlier in this thread.

In yellow at the top of the Guardian article it states 'this article is more than 7 months old'

There was a rumor going round that Moshiri bought Iwobi without the manager's knowledge and it's fairly certain he pushed for him to be selected.

But remember 22 players were brought in on Brands watch including Moise kean, Gbamin, Nkuoncou, Brandthwaite, Gomes, Bernard, Digne and Lossl- a real mixed bag of success and failure.

Looking for the truth I don't think there is an honest man at the club so we'll have to form our own conclusions

Paul swan's second paragraph@23, tells me everything about modern day Everton, which is unidentifiable with the football club I fell in love with, the first time I ever set inside Goodison Pk.

Everton will recover, it will take time because nepotistic poison is embedded very deeply inside our club, but we will recover and we will come again because WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED! It's in our DNA.

Perhaps we can have an appraisal of every Director of Football, Manager, and all players signed since the Moyes era?

The long suffering, exasperated fans deserve explanations from the board, as to why our great club has sunken to this level, and when they have explained, they should apologise and resign.

I drove past “Destination Kirkby” last night, and to think a genuine Evertonian, would think that this would have been a good move for Everton football club, is simply incredible, and very, very difficult to comprehend?

I first met a man who ended up on the FAB committee, whilst going to look at the plans for this greedy disastrous plan, and he told me that although he lived over the road from where the stadium was going to be built, him and his gang were going to fight it, because it simply wasn't good enough for our great club.

Imagine facing relegation whilst playing our football in Kirkby? no disrespect but fucking Kirkby?

Bill Kenwright is not and has never been, one of us, so thankfully the devious bastard has finally been found out, although this hasn't stopped the jinx from putting his horrible face back above the ticket office on Goodison Rd. (Have you ever put a picture of Farhad on the timeline that stopped the minute you got your claws into Everton, William?)

We were in a decent position so the bastard has gone and jinxed us again.

Exactly what went on behind closed doors will never be clear. It would seem very likely that Brands was inhibited from doing his job properly but nonetheless he was part of the machine that drove very far off the tracks.

Anyone who has been on the board in the last 6 years has to bear responsibility.

Brands signed inexperience at a time Silva needed an experienced central defender in the Kurt Zhumer mold, and although this type of thing might have worked in the Dutch league, I think he learned that England was a different kettle of fish?

This was especially true at Everton, with everyone being in a rush of wanting us to get back to what we consider our rightful place near the top of English football.

It looks like Brands and Moshiri obviously wanted the same thing, but had completely different ideas about how to achieve the success that we all crave, with the end result being that Everton are now completely lost

And we all wanted Silva out, to be fair. Plus arteta wanted the arsenal job, which he took when we borrowed Ancelotti from the top table for a short holiday in Crosby.

I'm more sympathetic to Kenwright but I believe his time is up and that he should have moved on when Moshiri arrived. The best actors know when to leave the stage.

The fact Moshiri hired him only to overrule him with mad ideas like appointing Benitez tells you EVERYTHING about who is to blame for our imminent relegation.

Hint: the fella railing against the Benitez appointment very likely isn't the culprit

He probably did signs a Non disclosure agreement, but ask long as he doesn't attack Kenwright nothing will happen.

Christine#26

My view is different on that .MoshisI having spent millions on players that were recruited by the so called professionals and he assumed had the expertise to do so,as a accountant, he would quite naturally ask why they were not playing.

I think Brands is deliberately being vague with the use of the word ' Trainer', to cover his weakness in the whole situation.as the Director of Football..

Actually Thewell is in hiding at the moment for similar reasons ,doing everything to avoid being part of the story.

Kenwright is happy for Brands to release this message to the press because he wants Moshiri to take the blame without directly saying it himself. Brands is deflecting the blame from Kenwright fully onto Moshiri

I probably typed my original message @ 6 wrongly

Brands is clearly on Kenwrights team. He's helping to knife Moshiri

Kenwright is cornered and happy for any blame to land at Farhads doorstep

I've never witnessed this hatred of Everton. We're generally seen as a proper old school football club with a proper old school local fan base. With the exception of out of town RS and bitter Barcodes, we're generally well liked as a club.

They're close to untouchable, and being appointed to a board gives you certain privileges that you're not going to relinquish by saying anything against the board/boys club that you've been invited to join.

Expecting a board member to squeal, is like expecting Everton to win football matches. ie, never gonna happen.

Regarding Brands mentioning the Yacht, he is talking about Usmanovs yacht that was berthed in Sardinia which is were they conducted interviews with Benitez. I actually posted this 2 days before Benitez signed as an impeccable source told me about Benitez being on Usmanovs boat.
Despite the sanctions against Usmanov, I still don't believe that he and Moshiri are still not having conversations about the money they have poured into Everton and how best to get out without losing anymore money.

I think this absolutely means that this club cannot move forward until Usmanov, Moshiri, Kenwright and the rest of the board are removed from this club. I know whoever takes over will face a very difficult situation, and provided they have knowledge of how to run a sporting club, but unless the present owners and associates are removed this club will continue to under perform.

Being a so called 'old school' club in the modern day, and the fairy-tale fascination with history is one of the many things that's strangled the club for years. Our failure to modernise is now haunting us big time. Tin-pot Everton run by small minded thinkers and dreamers with blue tinted specs on.

You ask around at other clubs, speak to other fans and we don't have the reputation we think we do. Well not in my experience anyway.

Touché. I've never seen any hatred towards Everton at any Premier League grounds other than the normal banter between fans.. and I've had no problems drinking in their pubs either.

We are still in with a massive shout as to whether we get relegated or not and I can't believe any Blue is going to go to Leciester or Brighton thinking otherwise...

I've seen Forest and Leeds play and, believe me, they are both shit – far shitter than Everton – so for me, let's just keep going.

In our efforts to get Moshiri to sell, we could start going for the financial starvation route and it becomes a dilemma for us fans stuck between "If you love Everton, stay away" versus "Turn up and support your team when they need you" – dividing the fans for the first time in 145 years and potentially a new low in our glorious history created by the current owner and leadership.

Only Moshiri can prevent this happening and it's his responsibility to act before we reach this point.

Whilst it was undeniably a contributing factor to our current plight, I keep thinking back to that season with Carlo, when we took our shot. Skyscrapers in South America lighting up blue. Second at Christmas. A world class manager. That level of investment was a risk for a club of our stature, it didn't work out, and we're paying for it now.

We'll be back. I'm confident it will be just a few years away from the top table. And we'll undoubtedly see more than 10 wins a season, which will be nice!

But, as I said yesterday, I've made my peace with relegation to, not only the Championship, but League 1. Because then we get to rebuild and watch our beloved club rise up the divisions again!

Look at Sunderland, promotion last season and they went into the play off positions a few days ago. Do you really think any of their fans are sulking right now? No, they're having a great time.

We'll be back!

In the coming weeks we will have all

and sundry wheeled out blaming the opposing camp within the organisation hoping something will stick to get them of the hung of incompetence.

We are about to see the rats abandon ship.

If Everton survive being relegated, which is still possible giving the twist and turns that are still.possible, all will be egged.

A professional, well funded consortium, even a loser in the Man U bidding, is welcome to get us a bargain price. Fantastic iconic stadium, incredibly loyal fans, a club ready to unite and build something new after the lost Kenwright years.

It's unlikely but sometimes incredibly wealthy people like a challenge, especially a hugely exciting bet at the right price.

It's now time for Everton and Moshiri to offer both.

We are now entering the lesser spotted stage.

The problem is with the club management.

Talk of investment / takeover by sports businesses encourages me. We need professionals in charge.

It makes me think those in control (owner/board/others, someone recently sanctioned by Government?) have been running the club as nothing more than a trading floor. Buying and selling players like stocks and shares. No interest in success on the field, as long as the right 'option' is placed on display at the right time for a sale.

Everton's games since 2016 have been little more than shop windows. With the one ahead of an increasingly likely fire sale the biggest of all.

Not that those in power seem to have been that successful given our reported financial position And most alarming of all, it makes sense, an unpalatable explanation for the incredible record of the Moshiri reign.

According to the above he was bought by Moshiri.

I am not a conspiracy theorist but is that why every manager has been playing him? A combination of being bought by the owner and he highest paid asset that needs to be protected?

I guess he has played under Silva, Ancelotti, Benitez, Lampard and now Dyche. Only Lampard managed to get a tone out of Iwobi for a short while. A part from that he has been a regular for a long time no matter how poor he has been playing.
If he was homegrown and on 15k a week would he have a regular in a PL side?

We are such in a mess with internal politics that it is no surprise that we are where we are.

I'm not even convinced Kenwright does any more, other than to pander to his enormous ego and allow him to look like the big 'I am'. And that is not going too well either.

Whether in the PL or Championship, the question here is how to precipitate the exit of the failed ownership and board. I believe they would gratefully exit for the right price but it is hard to discern what that would be, who would offer it, and how it would be structured. And of course the answer will be very different if we are relegated.

I've been convincing myself that we will crawl out of it but now even Dyche seems sanguine at our chances.

Mike @52, when you go to pubs do you think that polite people are going to tell you straight that they hope you go down?
Think back to the countless times when we have sung "going-down" home and away. Fans remember.

That was always the case. All Moshiri & Co were interested in was getting in on a docklands and related development opportunities. They got in at a discount by allowing Kenwright to stay on.

They are actually happy for him to stay on convinced that all was needed was cash injected. They only got involved to curtail the excess. But were still more interested in the development side. Actually, the development side has been well run.

It will be interesting to see what happens when it all boils down. Even with the money he has spent, Moshiri & Co are still quids in.

A developer is a totally different animal than a builder. Moshiri is a developer and investor. Probably adept at putting together investment packages for his associates. That is how he became a billionaire.

It seems the new investors are to do with the stadium rather than the club. That is why I still think that Kenwright is still in the wings to try to get Everton back again as a bargain.

I lost faith around the Benitez appointment. Why get one of the most respected directors of football in Europe and not use his experience and expertise?

This is why it's not just the board who need to go, Moshiri is as culpable as anyone. He can say it's his money, but it's not his club to ruin! His money has got us nowhere. Meddling in player signings and DoF duties is a joke.

What does this joker know about football? Why does he think he knows better than Brands?

We all know Kenwright's time is up. But I believe that the root cause is Moshiri; you could have a whole new board but, if this clown keeps sticking his nose into playing aspects, it's all a waste of time!

As an Evertonian, I've never understood how the Chairman could watch what fans watch, see what fans see, and be totally sanguine about it. The Chairman is a gambler, as pointed out by a poster who relayed the story about a £50k bet that the Chairman put on the 1995 FA Cup final. Apparently, so too is Mr Moshiri, who enjoys trips to the Casino.

From a purely football point of view, the last few years have been an unmitigated disaster for the club, for a few lucky punters, who may have known what and when to back. there may well have been some really huge paydays

That last thought of yours has occurred to me also and fills me with despair. Can I still support a club owned and run by that fraud? It's not a given. The stupid thing is, he could have had pretty much all the glory and none of the grief had he allowed himself to be shifted to some quasi ceremonial role when Moshiri took over. At that point his stock was high enough to pull that off.

Reading Paul the Esk's articles, I've also mused on the possibility of some kind of seperation between club and stadium, more because I see that as the only viable exit strategy for Moshiri, bar a total meltdown. It is already structured in such a way as to allow it to be easily peeled off.

Balanced against that, what use is a stadium without a club attached, and given its scale, a PL club to boot? And what value is there in a club without a stadium? I think we've seen enough examples to know that doesn't work. That implies there has to be connection beyond a mere rental agreement. Maybe a very long term lease with some cross share ownership?

I switched off at aged 10 when we sold Alan Ball.. Only to switch back on when we won the FA cup in the 80s..

But now my switch is truly off because of Billy lair

It's embarrassing

His first 3 seasons, he was paid 50k per week. This one and the next, it's around 120k per.

I'm not arguing the total amount is still too much. But in average, Iwobi was on about 78k per week, which is a little less than what Keane gets and a little more than what Godfrey gets.

So, yeah, Moshiri throws it around quite a bit.

To me, the big and immediate problem if relegated is the Dele/Gomes/Gbamin 300k per week. They're not in the Club's plans but get another year in wages.

Then the Tark/Keane/Godfrey/Holgate 325k per week for at least the next 2 seasons. With Branthwaite in the wings, we could (need to?) get rid of 2 of those.

That's the exact opposite of what I think. Arteta would have been a great manager and also fits the mold of only ex-Everton players being successful Everton managers since WW2.

We are now seeing what Silva can do at Fulham. They're 10th. We're 19th and drowning...

I said to someone this week, half in jest, that we might not need to win another game to stay up. Maybe I was right? That would be our best chance, I think!

Ancelotti is one of the great managers of all time; if we would have replaced Martinez with him, I believe we would now be playing Champions League football regularly. Unfortunately, we got him when the money had gone, it was too late.

Silva was out of his depth at Everton, he was not capable of taking Everton forward. He's 10th with Fulham, great, he can take a small club to mid-table. It doesn't mean he can take a club with money to compete at the top, something he proved as our manager.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but wearing rose-tinted specs with a different set of circumstances is not a true barometer.

Arteta only started being successful when they brought in Albert Stuivenberg, a highly rated Dutch coach, and Steve Round to assist him with Edu coming in as DOF and recruiting some top players for fees we can only dream about.

Silva was complemented by Boa Morte so it's more about creating the conditions in which Silva or Arteta could be effective – which wouldn't have happened at Everton.

We're quite likely to be relegated, without a trophy in 28 years.
Sadly we're all suffering from the delusion that we're still a relevant big club.

There is a big difference between the Everton that was consistently in the Top 7 with the injection of half a billion pounds on its way, and the Everton of today.

If Moshiri had got in a manager and board who knew what they were doing and stayed out of footballing decisions, we could have gone from big club to giant club.

Instead, he meddled in things he knew nothing about and left Chairman Nero and his cronies to run things. They appointed managers ill-equipped to transform us, Silva was one of those.

Let's not compare this pathetic shell of a club with the great club it has been and may one day be again.

We now have a manager here that nearly got relegated with Burnley but was sacked before it happened.

Silva got Fulham promoted and has them mid table, that's a fact. Whether he could do better with a bigger club is a matter of opinion. Whether Everton would have been relegated or not in the year that he was sacked again is a matter or opinion.

Dyche was sacked last season before Burnley's fate was determined, that a fact. Whether he could have kept them up or not is a matter of opinion.