The Unofficial Everton Timeline – 2014-2023, The Moshiri Years

Lyndon, you're well known to us. Can you tell us something about your co-author please?

Also, having clicked on the link it was interesting to learn a bit about your own background.

Paul Ferry, click on the link in the post and you can find info about Steve, the co-author.

As Paul #2 says above, the wounds are currently too raw to live through again in the short term.

However, I think this will go on to be a really really important record of one of the most difficult and tumultuous periods in our entire history. When (let's be positive eh!!!) we start to achieve our medium/term and long-term aims and start to achieve success again, your book will help fans understand the wreckage from which a successful team arose.

You do so so much for us long suffering Evertonians. You're one of the best of us.

Good luck, pal.

I’m up for the challenge, although it might tip me over the brink.

The only problem with your timeline is….you're going to be ending on one hell of a cliffhanger: the club facing a points deduction, further sanctions and the threat of relegation, the 'Fraggle Rock'-eyed financially frivolous fruitloop responsible for most of the mess in hiding and desperately seeking a way out, prospective new owners with way more question marks around them than the Riddler in a lime green romper suit, the shadow of Bill Kenwright finally being lifted by virtue of being laid to rest, the nerve-shredding never-ending wait to see if Dominic Calvert-Lewin can net again before the ‘Doomsday Clock' signalling nuclear Armageddon strikes midnight, the last season at Goodison Park straight ahead and the uncharted ground of a brand spanking new stadium on the horizon.

Shit, I smell a sequel here, Sir.

God knows when that will be but then the book would have been the definitive account of his time at Everton. I just think there are a lot more twists and turns ahead while he is still here…

We've been through a lot of emotions in our Everton lives and no doubt there will more.

Growing up on stories of Labone, the Angel Gabriel, the Holy Trinity and the often not mentioned Derek Temple and Gordon West, who looking at historical footage could seemingly throw further than Pickford can kick.

From my earliest memories through the '70s. Bob Latchford, Andy King, that green flag and Duncan McKenzie is magic. Into the Gordon Lee years. A difficult time to be a young Evertonian who had been told tales of greatness.

In comes Howard Kendall. The initial dark days but then the sheer joy of the mid-'80s that will live me forever. They need no explanation.

The decline in the '90s with two last day escapes from relegation.

The Moyes era, which I still debate with my brother as we have different opinions.

Surprising hope with Martinez's first season. Any other year, that is Champion's League qualification on 72 points compared to the oddity of qualifying on 50 points. Correct me if I'm a few out.

Further hope when we finally landed a billionaire only for reckless and incoherent uncoordinated spending and the managerial revolving door that has taken us to the brink. But we are still here.

That Palace match and another last-gasp escape.

Our defiance and fight with the Premier League (self-proclaimed 'best in the world').

I could probably write a book myself, which I've been considering.

We march on. We always have. We shall not be moved.

I hail from Liverpool (born at Broadgreen Hospital in 1957). At the age of three, my grandad 'introduced me to the Blues' with a walk around Goodison.

My first memories of watching the Blues on TV was the 1966 FA Cup Final. My first live match at Goodison Park was a 2-0 win against West Ham, during the league-winning season of 1969-70. Life for the Toffees was sweet back then.

Between then and now, I graduated with an engineering degree from the University of Liverpool and spent a 40-year career in the world of construction and manufacturing: running projects and businesses, and restructuring companies in the UK and overseas.

Now I'm an author, publisher and season ticket holder in TB1.

Lyndon and I have been working on this book together since May 2023.

We would be Champions League winners by now if the Moshiri cash had arrived half-way through Martinez first season but then we would have missed out on McGeady, Tarashaj, Atsu and all the other big money buys he indulged. 🙄

I see other posters have made reference to the timing of the book.

In wasting all the money, jeopardising the very existence of our club, Moshiri not only wasted our moment, he showed all the other new rich owners that have come along since, how not to go about revitalising a football club, even futher reducing our chances of competing anytime soon now the gap between the top clubs gets wider every year, as other clubs have sustainably invested and grown.

It's going to get even harder as the new Champions League format kicks in and the likes of Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City etc are given spots for their wins in bygone years.

Going forward, hopefully we have cut our cloth accordingly, putting us in a healthier position for new owners to take advantage of the opportunity the stadium represents, and it isn't another wasted chance to compete.

I can just imagine the sort of sweet nothings you whisper into your dear wife's ear: "Anyway, we got a free kick just outside the box and..."

No such thing as a "shameless" plug, Lyndon. Nobody orders books they don't know about. And thanks for the brief background, Steve.

Looking forward to reading it.

Should our management team steer the club to safety this season – and next – I firmly believe that this would prove to be a monumental achievement given all of the barriers to progress facing Everton FC.

That is no reflection on the book, just the way the club has been run.

Thanks for the profile of your career and how you started following the Blues.

Good luck to you and Lyndon with the book, I hope it sells well.

Second of all was actually sacking and not backing Martinez.

He should have given him at least half a season with the money he gave Koeman and someone should have made certain large chunks were spent on signing quality defenders and Pickford of course came in anyway.

We had the attacking threat with Lukaku, Barkley, amongst others and I think it would have bought us another year to then carefully choose what manager was out there.

The appointment of Koeman wasn't smooth running and it's now widely known that they had reservations about him before he even took the job.

Little did we know then that the brave new dawn of the Moshiri era was quite simply only ever going to be the most expensive managerial merry-go-round ever.

I do recall Mrs Mac telling me that I'd had a restless night after the imposed sale of Richarlison, and I was simpering "Dey sold Richy" in my sleep.

I will look forward to references to the sale of our iconic Brazilian in the book: if ever there was a totem for Everton's self-destruction, it is the sale of our (then) best player and crowd favourite for the price of a third-choice Chelsea defender!

Having come to the Everton party at roughly the same time as one of the authors (Steve), I've seen the best and worst times.

When Moshiri arrived, it seemed like the days of treading water and taking knives to gunfights were over. No longer would we have to listen to other teams' fans and football journalists asking "What exactly is the point of Everton? They'll never go down or win a trophy?", or the smarmy people on the Guardian's Football Weekly Podcast predicting pre-season who would win 'The Everton Cup' (finishing 7th, in case you're wondering).

Instead, we now find ourselves worrying about possible extinction.

How did it come to this? What I can't decide is whether Moshiri was capable of finally getting things right and leading us to a bright new future, or the pandemic and Putin left us once again on the wrong side of a sliding door moment in history.

What I am sure about is that the love felt by so many for our great club will keep us going one way or another.

And as they say in my neck of the woods, "Odi etern al futbol modern!" (Eternal hatred for modern football).
UTFT!

Ah Pete Mills - 6 - A Confederacy of Dunces, the smartest funniest book ever written. I got thrown out of bed once for laughing too much reading it while Ruth was trying to sleep.

That first physical description of Ignatius still has me roaring. How sad that John Kennedy Toole never saw a copy of it.

Problem is, until the ship was half-way under water and Moshiri thought Benitez a good lifeboat. he was too sensitive to loud-mouth fan screaming.

Consequently, managers of every stripe have been tried and all failed (or ran knowing they were failing). But it's all too late; there's no coming back unless a sheikh turns up. We had the right man at the wrong time and ran him out of town.

Moshiri hadn't a clue about football, we can guess who he listened to, but if he had backed Martinez, who was down to the bare bones in defence and no money to spend, he brought in Alcaraz on a free, that's how bad it was.

Sadly he sacked Bob and brought in Koeman, a total disaster, got rid of Lukaku, bought 3 No 10s instead, and other mediocre players for massive money, on big contracts, used Barkley as his scapegoat, paying the price ever since, in my opinion.

I've heard daft things in my time, one being if you play Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon to The Wizard Of Oz film, it all blends into the film, the music.

So if an audio book is available, I might try playing the audio while having One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest on at the same time.

I will have a look on Amazon tomorrow for a copy.

So who did Moshiri listen to?

It was generally reported at the time that Blue Bill wanted to keep Martinez. It was also reported that Blue Bill was behind moves to bring Martinez back to Everton a few seasons back until the Belgium FA blocked the proposal.

It will be interesting if this new book can shed light on issues like these and others often discussed at length on ToffeeWeb.

£13.5 million for Niasse who was totally gash, and the rumour was he couldn't make his debut because he had broken his wrist, although it soon became very apparent it was because he was absolutely pony.

Martinez started well and gave us a very enjoyable first season but it went quickly downhill from then. I preferred him to Moyes because he definitely tried harder to win a cup (all about opinions) but Roberto was taking us down, and I genuinely don't think he recovered from the crowd turning on the players when Everton were cantering to a victory against QPR.

I say I don't think he recovered because he never really changed, although people might argue differently when you consider he once took off a midfielder (who was doing the work of two men) and replaced him with a forward, when Everton were winning 2-0, but down to 10 men, and ended up losing 3-2.

I wasn't aware Kenwright wanted to keep Martinez but, with him being sacked only a couple of months after the start of the Moshiri regime, then maybe it was already ominous what was coming Everton Football Club's way?

Eugene (12), I think you answered your question when you said, "God knows when that will be..." but technically, Moshiri sold the club in last September. That's if 777 are approved the by PL, of course.

We had originally planned to publish it in early November but were probably fortunate to have missed that deadline given what has transpired since.

The book does end on a bit of a cliffhanger in terms of 777 Partners and PSR but it could be a few months before anything definitive happens on either front so we made the decision to go ahead and publish now.

It's print-on-demand so we can always update it with a revised version down the road. It's all very fluid at Everton right now as we all know too well!

Lukaku also missed a penalty to make it 3-0 and they then scored 3 times in the last 12 minutes after Niasse had come on 2 minutes earlier.

Question, just a question out of curiosity. Where would it leave EFC's financial situation if somebody purchased the stadium and leased it back to the club for 50 years?

Naismith after a poor start (Moyes playing him on the wing) became a very useful player, as a No 10 or even leading the line. Plus some useful goals and great attitude.

I never understood why Moyes didn't play Naismith and Jelavic as a two (given their success at Rangers). Appreciate that Naismith wasn't the long-term future. But in that window, we wasted money and made the team worse!!

Not for the first time, Martinez's Everton took their foot off the pedal and started playing like they were trying to conserve energy, and they ended up finishing a game they were absolutely strolling, playing on the back foot, and the exasperated crowd let him and his players know they were not happy.

The crowd took a bit of stick in the media ("What do Evertonians actually want?" amongst the patronising headlines). But it was the shell-shocked players and manager, who showed us exactly what we didn't want when they never had the heart needed in the next fixture and we got totally annihilated by Koeman's Southampton the following Saturday (if my memory is correct).

The day we lost to West Ham, I thought Aaron Lennon was outstanding because he was doing the work of two men, but Martinez often made some strange substitutions which often had me thinking he would have been outstanding as the head of our academy rather than the head of the first team squad.

Football is all about opinions, and I'm sure my views will have a few scratching their heads. 🤷‍♂️

Very rarely does a team collapse because of letting one player go, especially a player as limited as Naismith, even if we compounded the issue by signing Niasse.

"Magic Martinez" simply was never cut out to be a successful club manager. To be fair, he acknowledged his limitations and opted for the "partial retirement" option that is international football after his time at Everton.

Somewhat predictably, he hasn't returned to club football and I suspect he never will.

Moyes had them train hard and did very well against the best of the rest; Martinez to his credit went to games against the big boys and attacked them.

After the first season, he then had a squad that wasn't as fit and never practiced set-pieces. Yes, we had some great games under Roberto, but we also had a lot of tippy-tappy sideways football as well.

I never faulted the fitness of a Moyes team who won a lot of games late on, just a shame Moyes bottled it against the top teams, instead of going for it like Martinez's first season.

We are in deep shit, likely to get deeper in terms of winning trophies, on account of those in charge.

Yes, a stadium is rising from the ashes but guess who's going to pay for it for years to come, to the cost of having a hope of squad improvement? It won't be a millionaire or billionaire, no. It'll be "ordinary" fans, the sort of people who those in charge exploit as thick, addicted muppets.

I look forward to better understanding the crazy arms race among Premier League owners as the money got out of control this past decade, pushing us to the brink of destruction. As depressing as it all may be to read.

It's no small feat to write a book of this magnitude, and we all know what a top writer you are, Lyndon. Steve, great to learn more about your story and history as an Evertonian.

Martinez did bring in some great forward players on a budget, which probably kept Everton going on sales over the next 5 years, but nothing was brought in of that level since. The burden fell on Calvert-Lewin, under-prepared as he was. I am hopeful of Beto and Chermiti, at least they have the basics.

I find it enlightening that there were doubts about the appointment of Koeman. Someone must have read the Spanish newspapers after all. My Valencia friend did assure me that Barcelona could read Spanish newspapers but wanted to wind up Valcenia anyway.

The holidaying Koeman was a disaster. I can see this Russian connection with Niasse but Koeman was Bill, true and true.

Martinez transformed Swansea from a bankrupt outfit to promotion Champions, laying the foundation work that saw them in the Premier League and win the League Cup.

I know it upsets people to say he kept Wigan up as Chairman Whelan went for a controlled descent to the lower leagues but he did. His parting gift was the most incredible FA Cup win ever, knocking over Man City in the final.

Dare we mention giving this club its best ever Premier League points total?

Not sure how that equates to not being cut out to be a successful club manager…

Moshiri's transformed Everton from a near bankrupt Champions League chasing team, to a bankrupt relegation fighting team, all for the price of £500M — what a bargain!!!

I don't think he'll be getting any accounting work from now on.

He was basically staring in his own football version of Bruster's Millions, the Richard Prior movie, where the guy had to get rid of millions of pounds without having anything to show for it at the end.

Plot sound familiar?

If only Liverpool had been more astute and appointed Martinez instead of Brendan Rodgers who delivered actual success to Swansea. If only...eh?

There's a reason that it upsets people to say he kept Wigan up...it's because he didn't.

But perhaps I wasn't being objective...I wasn't ruling out a Swansea/Wigan type return.

Great to see we’ve already reached the top spot on the Amazon best sellers for books about British Football. Ahead of two books about Liverpool FC.

Thanks for your support, Blues. Please keep spreading the word.

I always had the impression that Koeman was reluctant and didn't want to be at Everton. He almost had to be coaxed.

I was excited but have admitted since I probably got carried away with my memories of Koeman the player and central defender with the cannonball shot.

He just didn't seem to connect with Everton.

If you don't think Martinez brought success to Swansea you really need to expand your research.

Ditto his relegation escapes with Wigan till absolutely unavoidable but at least unshackled from his death grip Wigan sprung right back to the Prem. Oh sorry, that's bollocks - they're back where they want to be.

Lovely to see you swerving his cup win and record Prem points total here. Almost like you want to prove facts not matching an argument should be ignored - scintillating stuff

Notwithstanding some of the horrific content it’s an excellent read. Well done to the co-authors.

On the subject of Martinez people have a short memory.

In his first season he managed to transform a solid defense inherited from Moyes into a total sieve meaning we lost out on a nailed in 4th place and the following season he would have taken us down with his "tippy tappy shit"

His pedigree was that his record at Wigan was worse than Steve Bruce's and he ultimately got them relegated.

Even with the supposed best players in the world he struggled to win anything relevant with the Belgian national side despite the support of Henri.

”Not withstanding some of the horrific content.”

Jesus, Peter, mentioning Cuco Martina in the previous paragraph was horrific enough for me, he was on £30,000 per week as well, unbleedinbelievable.