This is not a time for celebration.
A time for relief, yes. Everton remain in the Premier League. This is good for the club, good for an inspirational fanbase and good for the city of Liverpool and beyond. But this is still no time for celebration.
Last season the club faced similar peril and the scenes of jubilation that marked the escape from relegation were as glorious as they were chaotic. But months later those images were framed and hung on the walls of Everton’s Finch Farm training complex. Wonderful memories were created that night but this was still, ultimately, a tribute to failure and one that should not be repeated.
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The reaction to Everton winning this battle still sparked happy scenes but the overriding feeling is one of relief. That is understandable. A support that has sold out every single ticket available to it, home and away, is exhausted. They deserve so much better.
If they are to get it then the work needs to start now. The grim reality is Everton retained its prized place among football’s elite largely through the failure of others. Sean Dyche is due immense credit for leading to safety a side that was in a relegation spiral when he arrived in late January. But his rescue act should not have been necessary - though his appointment was the right decision that came just - just - in time to pay off.
Those who hired him made the correct call and that does warrant recognition. Yet survival cannot be seen as vindication of the decision-makers at Everton. It does not require forensic investigation to show the severity of the problems that have emerged on their watch.
On the pitch, more than half a billion pounds has been spent on transfers in the seven years of majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri’s involvement. Competitively, the club has gone backwards. Strategic and recruitment failures have seen the club lurch from manager to manager and director of football to director of football with little consistency of direction.
The result is a Frankenstein squad of players signed under regimes with jarring ideologies. Overcoming that has proved difficult. This season first Frank Lampard and then Dyche have sought to make sense of what is left while being strangled in the transfer market by the grotesque excess of the early Moshiri years.
New faces did arrive in the summer and some of them have proved to be astute signings whose talent and character helped prevent Everton from a catastrophic fall into the Championship. However, that business was overshadowed by harsh pragmatism. The club’s most prized outfield asset Richarlison was sold in an attempt to satisfy financial regulators and was never adequately replaced. In January, Anthony Gordon, the Kirkdale-born youngster whose emergence was one of few highlights last year, departed. The manner of his exit may have left a sour taste and, like Richarlison, he did leave for a big fee.
But, set against a lack of incomings, his sale confirmed a club in desperate need of strengthening had somehow conspired to end January weaker than it had started the month. That Everton would face an anxious end to the season was as predictable on January 1 as it was inevitable by February 1.
Off the pitch, a toxic crisis has engulfed the club. Headlines include another year of significant losses. Everton has posted a deficit of more than £430m across the past five years. That has triggered the attention of the authorities and the Premier League has referred the club to an independent commission for an alleged profit and sustainability breach. Everton vehemently deny wrongdoing and it is important the club is considered innocent unless proven otherwise.
Yet one does not need to go much further for evidence of severe trouble. The latest set of accounts include the dire warning that, should Everton have been relegated, there existed genuine concern over the club’s ability to meet its financial obligations. They also highlighted how the club has become reliant upon Moshiri’s support. His patronage is the club’s life support and while that may not be as unusual as it should be in top tier football, it is far from ideal.
The threat of the second tier may have been removed for now but survival has come at great cost. This is a pyrrhic victory. That it is because the divide between those at the top of the club and the fanbase is greater than ever.
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None of the four directors have attended a game at Goodison Park since the defeat to Brighton and Hove Albion on January 3, the humiliating collapse that effectively ended Lampard’s reign and left a fanbase that had fought alongside the club six months earlier questioning whether it could, or should, repeat its invaluable rescue act.
Everton conceded a damaging late goal to lose to Southampton in the next home match but what mattered most took place before the game started. It was in the build up that the club issued a statement claiming directors had been advised it was unsafe for them to attend Goodison. The saga created more questions than answers - an unhealthy and unhappy situation compounded by Merseyside Police’s lack of direct involvement in the gathering of the intelligence that formed the basis for that advice. The directors have not returned. Moshiri’s absence, meanwhile, extends to the Autumn of 2021.
Throughout this turmoil the chief executive, Denise Barrett-Baxendale, has been silent. Barrett-Baxendale’s updates in matchday programmes ceased after Brighton. Days earlier, ahead of the Boxing Day defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers, she had written of her confidence in a stable and progressive future for the club.
Chairman Bill Kenwright has been more vocal, but his words have been incendiary to supporters craving a coherent explanation for how Everton faced such a mess again and some insight into the plan to escape it.
Peaceful protests against the running of the club saw hundreds walk up Spellow Lane before home games but just as emphatic was the launch of a petition calling for a vote of no confidence in the board of directors issued by the Everton Shareholders’ Association, primarily angered by the removal of a commitment for the club to hold a general meeting through which its actions could be questioned.
Just last month the club’s Fan Advisory Board issued its own declaration of no confidence in Kenwright following the release of an extraordinary letter in which the 77-year-old railed against criticism of himself, Moshiri and other board members. For months some within the club have clung to the belief that discontent is being driven by a small group of radical fans. Instead, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests this is the season in which concerns over the running of the club emerged onto the radar of the standard match-going supporter. Few could take reassurance or comfort from the way this season has unfolded.
This fine club had a second chance last summer but did not learn from the mistakes of the recent past. The worst season in a generation was followed by, point-for-point, the worst season in the club’s modern history. As a result, this is different to 12 months ago, when the ECHO greeted survival with a front page that marked the result but implored those in power to do what was necessary to avoid a repeat.
Back then there was hope of better things to come. Lampard had re-united the club with the fanbase to create scenes in the stands that inspired those on the pitch, while the board heralded the strategic review that had begun months earlier as the catalyst for a cultural reset. Six months later Lampard, whose appointment was pitched as the culmination of that review’s findings, was sacked. Twelve months later relegation was again a dire possibility and any goodwill had been squandered.
The unavoidable consequence is attention must now turn to the boardroom. Those who have overseen the crises of recent years cannot avoid scrutiny. Kenwright and Barrett-Baxendale have been key figures throughout Moshiri’s reign and have either been part of the decision-making process or unable to prevent mistakes from taking the club to the cusp of the Championship.
Those at the top include key figures who, like so many others in and around Everton, love the club and will say they have acted in its best interests. But this is a time for logic, not emotion. Conversations about legacies are for another day. This is now a billion dollar industry where expertise is needed to ensure stability, not just progress. And Everton is far from stable.
While those in power can fairly point to the rise of the new waterfront stadium with pride, its vast potential cannot be unlocked without Premier League football. Twice that has been put in jeopardy. Everton cannot risk a third strike. Fresh ideas, innovation and inspiration is needed.
That is a process that may have already begun. Survival will be the starting pistol for the next step of discussions between Moshiri and MSP Sports Capital, the US-based investment firm that appears to be seeking to gain influence at Everton through the provision of finance for the new stadium. The group’s interest has been serious for months - indeed co-founders Jahm Najafi and Jeff Moorad were at the home game with Southampton in January. That the prospective investors have watched first team football at Goodison Park more recently than Moshiri, Kenwright and Barrett-Baxendale is a poignant reflection of the current state of affairs.
MSP’s past suggests that operational influence will form part of its vision and so change - whether through an overhauled or expanded board - is likely should a deal be reached. Moshiri has spoken publicly of his desire to use investment as a vehicle to bring in outside experience. This is not uncharted territory for Everton though - a deal is not inevitable as showcased by the Maciek Kaminski-led talks that faltered after reaching the same stage last year.
Nor should the desire for change inspire a lack of caution. Due diligence must be done on prospective investors - by the club, by the footballing authorities, and by the press, including the ECHO. This cannot be a case of change at any cost. Everton as an institution is too valuable to blindly offer suitors the benefit of the doubt.
Whatever happens it is difficult to see progress without an acceptance that change, in some format, is needed in the corridors of power. What is a certainty is the club cannot be ignorant to the enormity of the challenge ahead and the dangers of failing to act with competence. It was lucky to receive a second chance last year. It is extremely fortunate to get a third.
Humility and a change in attitude will be a necessity. Everton’s supporters are its greatest asset and little that is worthwhile can be achieved without them. If the relationship between the club and its fanbase is to have a chance of being repaired then those with the greatest responsibility must make the first move and acknowledge their role in the crises that led Everton to the brink of disaster. The supporters have twice done everything in their power to help to save the club. But they cannot do everything. They, the fans, clearly deserve better.
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