Former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan reckons Everton owner Farhad Moshiri’s apology “seems like a snivelling exercise to curry favour with the fans” in an extraordinary tirade about matters at Goodison Park. The 54-year-old who spent a decade at the helm of the Eagles between 2000-10 is known for his strong opinions on football matters and his latest tirade on talkSPORT was no different.
On Wednesday evening, Mr Moshiri, who has had a controlling stake in Everton since 2016 said sorry to long-suffering Evertonians after the club suffered a disastrous season that almost ended in relegation. In an open letter to supporters, praising Blues fans for the remarkable support displayed during the final weeks of the season, the Monaco-based businessman said: “Mistakes have been made and for that I want to apologise to all of you. It has not been good enough and we need to do better.”
However, Jordan said: “I suppose if you’re going to go strong, go strong or go home. If you’re going to start backing yourself, he’s started backing himself on appointments – no one can argue with this man’s commitment – whatever his motivations behind it, whatever he wants, to unload half a billion quid on a football club to achieve the square root of nothing that’s his gift and his curse because he’s had to write the cheques out.
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“It’s Everton fans right to have an emotional investment in this club, these fans with their support, to drag the bunch of ingrates across the line – because they were – the group of players were not a good side but they shouldn’t have been occupying the space they should’ve been. The reasons why they were at the bottom was because of poor management and poor playing, this was poor ownership.”
Asked if Everton fans deserve an apology, he added: “No, they deserve a vision, a policy. We start to get into this territory of what fans are entitled to, they’re entitled to responsible ownership.
“Does anyone say Moshiri isn’t trying to be honest? Has he got an alternative agenda?
“Is he trying to hold back the spend? No. Has he run it well?
“Should you explain and perhaps justify decisions? Perhaps yeah, it’s a public domain business, the fans are the lifeblood of a football club. So on one hand you can’t say ‘I get it’ but on the other hand, I’m not going to explain it to you.”
Jordan got through five managers during his first three years in charge at Selhurst Park but still had plenty to say about Everton’s revolving door in the dugout that has seen Mr Moshiri appoint seven bosses since taking control. He said: “They say good people don’t need hindsight and the idea that you make mistakes and learn from those mistakes and you keep on making those mistakes eventually someone is going to point the finger at you. I’m not entirely sure he should be apologising, it seems like a snivelling exercise to curry favour with the fans.
“An explanation of the thinking, the substantiation of the vision, a directive to give the fans an understanding of how they’re going to overcome the challenge of Financial Fair Play, the vision they’ve got. I see the blueprint, he’s going to continue spending, he’s going to commit his future that’s great, some people will say ‘actually I don’t care how much money you spend you haven’t done a good job over the best of back of a decade’.
“You look at the thinking, it does not take karma to work out that Benitez was not the fit. Everybody with a brain said ‘this is trouble awaiting you’.
“Benitez gives his soul? Did he give his soul to China, did he? When he slung his hook from Newcastle for a big bag of money and couldn’t wait to get back when the money started coming out of China.
“Benitez is no doubt a class act of a manager, I don’t think he’s a class act of person, he’s probably very difficult to work with and if you look back at the history of his experiences, he’s proven to be so. It was always an ill-fit.
“Most people sat there thinking ‘Ancelotti, we needed Ancelotti’ was his terminology but Ancelotti didn’t need you, he’s never going to need you. It was always going to be a situation where the project the wheels came off it because Everton were not the fit for Ancelotti.
“I spoke to some quite significant voices in European football that questioned the appointment, questioned bringing his son in as a coach, they felt it dialled in a certain mentality where Ancelotti was, Ancelotti was doing Everton a favour. You can’t have a manager that’s coming in doing you have a favour, it has to be an equal footing.
He added: “Those appointments, the pursuit of Marco Silva, the wheels came off with Silva that’s where it started, Martinez was okay for a period of time but Everton fans started to get fed up of the tiki-taka football that he was playing. Ronald Koeman was okay but the stuff behind the scenes changed the direction there so you can give him latitude but when you start alighting upon manager’s like Benitez after five years of control of a football club, if you don’t know how this is going to perceived, you give yourself no margin for error as soon as this went off its kilter then they were going to be after Benitez.
“He took a risk with Frank based upon the fact he will become a decent manager and I’ve made this comparison that one day he will be an elite manager and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will never be one, that’s been thrown in my face on many occasions because Frank hasn’t set the world alight, he’s gone into Everton and it’s a mess there, behind the scenes, recruitment, on the pitch, it’s probably a mess from the pitch to the boardroom. I like Bill and the football club but you’ve got to call it for what it is.”
