How can one owner be so incompetent? In light of new Financial Fair Play (FFP) violation concerns, Everton are being investigated by an independent law firm to conclude whether the club has breached the regulations.
Everton owner Farhad Moshiri is literally the antithesis of King Midas from Ancient Greek mythology. Instead of everything he touches turns to gold (as was the case with Midas), it just all turns into crap!
Ever since Moshiri became Everton’s primary/majority owner back in 2016, the club has devolved from an occasional European/Top-6 contender into relegation bottom feeders in literally less than a decade. Seriously, in the seven years prior (2008/09-2014/15) to Moshiri taking over, Everton’s average league position was 7th and the net total transfer spend was just +£4.52M (PS: + means money spent on transfers, – means money gained from transfer income).
Yes, you read that right, Everton almost made a profit from its transfers in the seven years before Moshiri took charge of the club in February of 2016.
As for the years after Moshiri’s initial purchase of Everton (so, every year post the 2015/16 season), the club’s average league finish was 9th (if you don’t include this season’s current rankings) or 10th (if you do include this season’s current rankings) and the net total transfer spend has been +£220.39M. That’s a lot of money to be spending in the transfer window without having a single piece of hardware or success to show for.
And, if those league positions don’t look too bad, the last three years Everton has finished 12th (2019/20), 10th (2020/21), 16th (2021/22), and looked poised to finished within the Bottom-14 teams again (currently 15th) this season. Essentially, Everton has been run into the ground by a guy who thought he could just spend hundreds of millions of pounds on players and climb up the Premier League standings artificially.
Simply put, such thinking/strategies have never worked as similarly minded owners in Fulham, Chelsea (under Todd Boehly), Nottingham Forrest have learned or are in the process of learning this season.
That’s why the likes of Newcastle, Manchester City, and Fulham (this season as the Khan family learned from its previous failures) have all steadily climbed the standings and made a permeant impact on the Premier League through smart, efficient, and resourceful transfer signings and strategies.
Anyways, the reason why I’m bringing all of this financial talk is because the new investigations into Everton directly stem from all of this failure and financial mismanagement.
Everton have posted losses of upwards of £100M+ in each of the last three years (2019/20: £111.8M; 2020/21: £139.8M; 2021/22: £120.9M), which adds up to club losing approximately £372M in just the last three years alone. Not great, right? Well, it gets worse.
By the Premier League’s own rules and laws, a club cannot post losses of over £105M in a three-year period, let alone almost £400M! Everton not only is failing to live up to its fans and its historic past’s expectations, but the club is simply hemorrhaging cash and Moshiri has done nothing but add more fuel (or paper bills in this case) to the fire.
So, it makes sense why Everton have been referred to an independent investigator/firm with the goal of finding a breach of Financial Fair Play by the Premier League as the club shouldn’t have been able to afford any transfers last summer, which was obviously not what happened with the signings of Neal Maupay (£10.46M), Idrissa Gueye (£3.53M), James Gardner (£9.20M), Dwight McNeil (£15M), and Amadou Onana (£31M).
We’ll see if this investigation brings anything to light, but its already clear Farhad Moshiri has to get out of Everton if the club has any hopes of returning to its former standings of the late 2000’s and early 2010’s.
Maybe Everton fans can hire Kratos from God of War to remove (in a non-violent manner) this King Midas wannabe. I remember he had some experiences dealing with Midas and his golden touch.
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