With each new set of accounts, Everton’s majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri has narrowly avoided a reckoning for his erratic running of the Merseyside club.
Now there are grave fears that it is finally catching up with him.
Everton are contesting the Premier League’s decision to refer an allegation of a breach of Profit and Sustainability regulations to an independent commission, but do not underestimate the sense of foreboding that it has gone this far. For a club in the midst of another relegation fight, the prospect of a points deduction ban flirts with Premier League doomsday.
No wonder the statement on Friday afternoon was received like a detonation, Everton employees took aback by the decision as – below ownership level, at least – there was no anticipation of any action given how relatively prudent the club has been recently, and the belief there has been full transparency and cooperation with the Premier League.
Such a robust pursuit of one of its members is unprecedented, evidence the new Premier League chair Alison Britain is determined to hold clubs to account where in the past there have been accusations of leniency, not least last season when Burnley and Leeds United led the accusations against the Merseyside club.
Although the alleged breaches follow the receipt of the accounting period between June 30, 2021 and July 31, 2022, it is the cumulative impact of previous financial results that has put the club in jeopardy of serious sanctions.
Moshiri has been acting like a gambler chasing his losses since his first transfer splurges resulted in a failure which at first could have been described as appalling but may come to be more accurately described as catastrophic.
In all he has spent an estimated £700 million on new players since 2016. Beyond that the club has been handing out extravagant contracts to underperforming players, and had to pay off six sacked managers during Moshiri’s tenure – Roberto Martinez, Ronald Koeman, Sam Allardyce , Marco Silva, Rafa Benitez and Frank Lampard. He also spent a fortune recruiting Carlo Ancelotti, who later left for Real Madrid, and backed him with some extraordinary deals for the likes of James Rodriguez who was paid £250,000 a week at a time when Everton were already in serious danger of being sanctioned.
The record shows how each time Everton have seemed to be on course for a more serene period – their ex-director of football Marcel Brands was among the sane voices advising of the perils of veering from a sane financial and recruitment course – the whims of the owner to scatter expensive stardust took hold. Moshiri has suggested that he has deferred to recruiters on transfers, and fans when deciding to swing the axe. Whatever his motives or intentions, the consequences now promise to be dire.
Successive managers have inherited a mess trying to work with the limitations imposed by the Financial Fair Play guidelines. It was Benitez’s job to try to navigate a course through in July, 2021. There is some irony that the Premier League believes Everton tipped over the edge in a period which saw moderate spending on Andros Townsend, Demarai Gray and Solomon Rondon, while Benitez fought a public PR battle to get Rodriguez off the wage bill. High-earners Bernard, Theo Walcott and Moise Kean also departed, and Lucas Digne – also on a significant salary – was controversially sold to Aston Villa.
But Benitez’s unpopularity meant he too was fired, alongside his coaching staff, in January 2022 after signing Vitalii Mykolenko and Nathan Patterson. The cost of hiring Frank Lampard and another backroom team was an avoidable expense had there been more foresight and clarity in previous football decisions. The cost of Lampard’s subsequent dismissal will be covered in next year’s accounts.
As in previous seasons, Everton might have hoped that clear evidence of trying to remedy the mistakes of the past would demonstrate a move in the right direction.
They sold Richarlison last summer for a fee which could rise to £60 million, and by the time Anthony Gordon left for Newcastle United the Merseyside club believed itself in a position where they could afford to sign recruits.
The failure to do so in the final week of the January window may prove more expensive than many imagined at the time if they are prohibited from buying players this summer, although a temporary transfer ban would be infinitely more desirable than a points deduction.
It remains to be seen what Sean Dyche makes of it all. Last weekend Dyche was maintaining a positive momentum with a hard-earned point at Chelsea to edge Everton away from the bottom three.
It is inconceivable that he had prior notice of such a threat when agreeing to take the Goodison job. Some of Dyche’s predecessors felt they were working with both hands tied behind their backs. If he is expected to keep Everton up with a points deduction, or rebuild for next season despite an inability to sign players, Dyche too will feel like he is operating in a strait-jacket.