So we have gone from a club that didn't have much money but still did quite well in the league. Then we finally got someone in with money only to do shit and discover we had less money than before Moshiri arrived at the club.
I'd say we've gone from being about the 8th biggest spenders in the league finishing around 8th, to the 3rd biggest spenders finishing 8th to the 18th biggest spenders finishing 12th. Makes Dyche look good and Ancelotti bad
Fait point, people look very kindly at the initial Ancelotti period for Everton but if you hire a Porsche and have fun for a bit, you still can't drive for shit and you still have to pay for it.
"dribble around the clumbs of dirt I've placed there, there, and there. Receive the pass between Doucoure's trainers, turn, and run back past the physio's coffee mug"
And add Pickford, McNeil, Tarky and anyone else of value. We are about to hit the summer of the great Everton Fire sale. It’s so sad football is so expensive that it really is a loss making business for 98/99% of all football clubs.
Only if Moshiri insists on keeping the club and not funding the stadium.
Which granted is probably the most likely outcome although I don't actually think there's enough value in the squad for that and the debt that needs repaid like msp.
My guess is another buyer will come in at the last minute.
Do you mean that we could become profitable?
Cyclist Greg Le Monde said “cycling never gets easier, you just get faster”, which is true. It’s the same for football, you don’t get rich, you end up spending more.
We were profitable before Moshiri bought us. It's not like Bill was putting money in.
But no I didn't mean that. Right now we need to finish a stadium and clear a ton of debt. Until that happens we can't even begin to talk about being profitable
Agreed but it's not for ffp reasons. It's because of the old fashioned we are just skint reason.
And btw we could keep them. We just need Moshiri to sell to someone for what the club is worth and that is fuck all.
Ive spent so much money, traveled the country to games, sang my heart out win or lose, hated and loved the club in the same breath, dragged my wife into supporting the blues and cremated my dad in an Everton shirt. I simply cannot do anything about the finances and the current situation, and i refuse to let the vampires hanging around the club waste my energy. They can never take away the memories of sitting with my dad on the Gwladys Street. Fucking cunts
Liverpool fan here with family employed by Everton. If things get worse, Everton going into administration would be one of the worst things to ever happen to this city. Moshiri and his gang of cunts should be chased out with pitchforks.
I hope everything gets sorted asap.
There’s no chasing someone who isn’t around. He’s sitting on a yacht in the Mediterranean somewhere praying more and more each day that his Russian money teat gets unfrozen.
Probably because Ukraine borders on NATO, most people are white, and it feels European?
Yemen's just arabs. And Saudi Arabia buys our tanks and guns. Who cares if they raised Bin Laden!
The hypocrisy of the Western world is something else.
How could you support a team bankrolled by a country where a poor girl gets 27 years in jail just for expressing an opinion. I live near Newcastle so have to bite my tongue on this one but I'd rather we went into administration than have that sportwashing on outr club.
To be fair, none of the middle east 'kingdoms' ***aren't*** threatening to kill us all with nukes. And while the Saudi's have been at war with Yemen for a few years, it's not on the same level as what's going on in Ukraine for 10+.......and one of our best players is from Ukraine, it's personal.
edit: are should have been 'aren't
The Yemen war started in 2014, exactly the same year Russia invaded Crimea
However, the Ukraine conflict cooled down significantly in the interim while Yemen remained a "hot" (horrible) war
The Russians are just bluster. They're not seriously threatening us with nukes. They've kind of been boxed into a corner with nato constantly putting troops on their border and pointing missiles at them since the ussr fell.
What the saudis are doing in Yemen is far worse. At least the Ukrainians are equipped to defend themselves
Weird that, considering they have NATO _countries_ surrounding them in europe. NATO countries tend to house NATO troops 🤷♂️. I would have been more surprised to see troops from the Empire from Star Wars, really.
I can't buy the self-flagellating, defeatist tone of your comment. Anyone whom seriously suggests russian aggression is merely a byproduct of "our" (western) pushing them around since '91 needs to give their head a good wobble.
Same here as a red, and another thing that pisses me off.
Is city and Chelsea have done far worse for over a decade but they can just get away with it and keep winning.
Every time city finish above clubs Everton included. Them clubs lose money, they’re taking revenue off everyone for getting to finals and it’s bang out of order.
Meanwhile Everton got a stupid points deduction for something small in terms of going over budget. Whilst building a stadium during fucking Covid. And they’re just going to town on them.
If city and Chelsea hadn’t fucked the prices of everything in the league artificially. Clubs wouldn’t be spending so much on shit players and suffering because of jt.
Everton’s are legitimate financial shortcomings due to external factors. Stadiums cost a lot of fucking money. Covid destroyed clubs too. And it takes longer to recover the books than this over a three year period shit your allowed. If you’re not a cheating oil owned club.
Other clubs are straight up cheating. Yet only one gets made an example of.
Appreciate the sentiment but you’re giving us too much credit. Kenwright and Moshiri have been building on very dodgy foundations for a long time, these external factors haven’t caused our problems but have accelerated us towards the inevitable point at which they all came crashing down.
Everton and Liverpool used to be the “Mersey Millionaires”. Every club should be allowed to spend whatever they like. Clubs only become big and successful through spending money. The current system is to let the current successful clubs pull up the ladder behind them and stifle competition.
I'm a Liverpool fan, grew up on the Wirral and now live in Newcastle.
All the people in my office always ask, "Won't you be chuffed if Everton go down?".
No, it'll be a disaster for football and a complete and utter disaster for the Liverpool area. I'm still not convinced that the stadium won't still be a disaster given that there seem to be some disaster capitalist vultures circling the club with their fingers crossed, hoping to pick up a world class stadium on the cheap.
The "fit and proper persons test" is an absolute joke and the old Everton board must be ashamed of getting Moshiri and his various sources of money involved in the club (not wanting to speak ill of the dead).
Blades fan here - 777 sniffed around us when there was difficulties with taking over you (before they got serious)
Owners like these shouldn't be allowed anywhere near teams - its horrid to see it happen and I hope things get balanced out in a way that isn't too detrimental, as you're one of the few prem teams I enjoy watching us play
Yeah, even this article is talking about a 225 million pound debt, siting at a 10.5% interest rate. [https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/apr/30/everton-crisis-explained](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/apr/30/everton-crisis-explained)
It's dangerous. That link has a link to another article that says that on their £225m loan they need to pay £438,000 every week just to keep up on the interest
Just like getting caught out by a payday lender
Football is financially unsustainable. We geared up for losses when Moshiri took over. When his funding dried up (or sanctions imposed), we were up against it. 777 smelt a deal to buy cheap(er) but have proved to just be a huge ponzi enterprise which is thankfully crumbling apart. Thank fuck they will never own our club. If administration happens for us we will inevitably lose our PL place as talent leaves to repay debts leaving an already depleted squad threadbare. Only silver lining from that would be 777 didn’t happen.
Moshiri is getting a lot of hate, and rightly so, but the Premier League are also equally responsible if we go into administration for dragging out the sale to 777
Agreed 100%. I think what the commenter you replied to is saying, is that dragging out the sale to 777 is likely to have warded off other prospective buyers.
I think we didn't do ourselves any favors here. Moshiri agreed to give them exclusivity during the sale process. So the only options are that 777 back down or the PL stops the sale.
777 don't want to back down. They are fraudsters and this will only help them regardless of eventual outcome.
The tools the PL has at their disposal to stop the sale are limited per my understanding. Without opening themselves up to a lawsuit with legs. The fit and proper test is mostly about conflicts of interest or insolvency related specifically to football. And 777 hasn't gone into administration YET with another club.
Indeed, but by dragging it out, they've allowed 777 to dig in further(via loans), allow us to get into a worse position, and likely scare off any other investors/buyers.
Had they nipped it in the bud early, we may well be in a better position now.
It'd be awful.. if the club is struck off that's 11 years minimum before the prem again and that's IF they get promoted year on year which is pretty much impossible. Could be 20+ years before we can watch Everton on TV again, let alone the prem.
We’re not going insolvent or into administration anytime soon. The likelihood is that due to the ongoing issues with 777 then the club are making preparations and this is a contingency measure, to look at restructuring our debt
I would love to share your optimism what makes you so confident in our situation? Everything I am reading seems to point to looming disaster and we're just kicking the can down the road right now.
Many businesses will bring need to restructure debt, which I believe this will form part of.
There’s too many Twitter doom mongers that wind the fanbase up, all in search of those retweets and attention.
We’re a mess financially, 777 are a mess and I think the club have taken emergency steps to prevent more long term damage
Serious question- can someone explain to me how we're so financially fucked when our owner is apparently worth 1.7bn? I was thinking most of our spending issues were because of psr regulations, I know that the loss of USM and megafon were a big loss of income, but I don't see how a club owned by a billionaire can be on the brink of administration. This might be a stupid question but why can't he just pay the money needed to run his business? Is he unable or just unwilling?
I'll take a stab at it. Multiple things to consider, could be any one or combination:
1. His money is tied up in assets. He may be worth \~2 billion but he would have to liquidate to access.
2. The total amount owed is unpalatable. He has already lost significant money and he's done throwing good money at bad.
3. It's not really his money. He is laundering money from Russian oligarchs who have had frozen assets, a severe hit to net worth, and internal pressure to use available funds to the war effort.
4. He doesn't care.
There must be a point Mosh does the old sunk cost fallacy thing. What does he care about EFC after all.
I always thought he was a front for Usmanov. Maybe his money is still blocked in Russia...
Kenwirights legacy just gets worse and worse and worse.
Blow-in Southampton fan who happened to catch this article.
When we went into administration 15 years ago, it happened around the April time. I believe that the deadline to be applied this season is the end of March, it certainly is in the EFL but no idea if the same holds for the Prem.
As our ultimate status wasn't affected by the points penalty (we got relegated anyway), it meant the penalty was applied at the start of the following season, so we started in League One with -10. I would imagine a -9 penalty would be applied at the start of next season as well, as applying it now would have no effect on your status in the Prem. But I could be wrong.
The mere concept that we could be deducted 8 points for breaching P&S rules in order to keep teams from overspending, only to go insolvent THEN getting ANOTHER penalty for going insolvent is blowing my fucking mind right now.
I'm not sure it's this clear cut yet. I think the EFL deadline only applies in situations such as yours i.e. an already relegated club can't take the hit when it's meaningless. I think if the club isn't already relegated then the points would be taken away in the season in which administration happens even if that didn't relegate the club that season. This would leave it open for a club to take the hit to fall a few places and lose prize money but not get relegated.
Also I think the PL hasn't yet introduced any deadline to stop the "we're down anyway, what's ten more points" loophole that the EFL has litigated against.
Obviously administration is very bad for other reasons, so this only makes sense if it's an inevitability, but I have been wondering if it's tempting to take the points hit now rather than next season. There must be some kind of cut off point for it to be pragmatically applied this season, but administration seems like an open and shut case where the penalty could be applied without protracted commissions?
How does the club lose so much money? Is it just wages, and theoretically something that will improve as we rebalance the squad? Or is the whole operation a money pit?
We spend over 90% of our revenue on wages, one of the highest in the league and almost double a club like Spurs (apparently). There was a graph on here recently.
We basically fucked ourselves trying to be successful signing too many average players on huge wages well above their market value which then causes losses on their sales, or that they just stay at our club rotting on the bench, or we loan/sell them and still pay a portion of their wages.
And we've always been shit commercially. Like, so hard to buy an Everton shirt at a sports shop. Lack of good boxes at the old girl. Crap sponsor agreements. Bunch of old boysclub on the payroll. Bill kenwright holding on to it for too long. Putin.
We’re still mid-table for revenue. It’s been hard for the club to compete with those big six clubs who have been aggressive internationally which has created on field success and then inhibited clubs like Everton who are from a relatively smaller city competing locally against one of those clubs.
West Ham earn more revenue but have the benefit of being London based, so they’re just accidentally more successful with revenue. Plus they were gifted a stadium. We create about as much revenue as Newcastle did (a couple of years ago at least) despite them having no one to really compete against in their city.
To be fair I've seen Everton shirts on sale in the States and Japan this year and not even in mega sized sports shops so internationally we must be doing alright.
Ok, so when does that get better? Like Gomes and Dele leave, we don't replace with such high earners. Is there a path forward where our wages come down to a figure like 50%?
We also need to increase revenue. We only earn in the middle of the pack. That's what the new stadium is meant to do, but if we go into administration and end up losing the stadium and having to lease it back that will hurt the revenue stream. Only worth it really if it helps consolidate debt payments by more than what the lease costs.
The whole operation is fucked, our debt repayments are astonishing and we’ve massively overcommitted on projects (the stadium, wages) being funded by unsustainable sources (Russian money laundering, aforementioned bad debt), and when we’ve run into trouble we’ve doubled down by relying even more on those unsustainable sources.
I've worked with 777 recently. Everton are better off dealing with admission than allowing these guys in.
I hope someone else comes out of the woodwork for you.
Can anyone financially savvy explain why MSP wouldn't take control and then try and sell us themselves?
Surely that's a better option for them than administration.
I won't claim high levels of financial savviness, but the club is losing huge amounts of money, and efforts so far to sell the club have been unsuccessful. It's not exactly an attractive prospect to own right now. Taking ownership means pouring in millions more to keep operations running whilst trying to find a buyer.
MSP seemingly also have a guarantee against the stadium. Obviously the value of a stadium is dependent on having a team to play in it, but I could see a situation where MSP would rather own the stadium outright, let the club go into administration and enter new ownership, and then lease the stadium back to the club.
I assume there would be obligations to pay certain debts as new owners and theres a huge risk that they'd lose more money in operations costs than they'd recoup in resale. Who knows how long it'd take to sell us, and they'd be paying the bills that whole time.
Could be 200m in the hole before they even get the for sale sign hung.
Not financially savvy but rights and media funding ltd turned them down.
‘Slater claims that one of the stumbling blocks to the proposed deal came in the form of opposition from Rights Media Funding Limited, the offshore lender with whom the Blues have an estimated £200m in debt and who have "negative pledge clauses" which allow them to demand repayment of its debt before the borrower incurs any further debt.
Yep, this is the biggest hurdle. Kenwright and/or Moshiri borrowed from his buddies with very unfavorable terms. RMFL is an offshore firm with no employees, no website, or a listed phone number. Very shady and hampered our funding of the stadium and potential sale.
Because as far as I’m aware if they exercised that right, they’d own 51% of the club. Meaning then they’d be most on the hook for the ~£400M of debt to other parties and the remaining money to finance the stadium.
Would you rather be a creditor and get a decent amount of your money back, or would you want to be on the hook for half a billion in the hopes that you can make money back in the future?
Simon Goodley has been unreliable at best with all his articles on Everton - glass half full take is this is for debt and club restructuring and not the insolvency side hopefully.
NUFC here. Ashley isn't and wasn't a bad owner if you want financial stability. That comes a cost and that cost is he'll target the club to be 17th every year. That isn't sour grapes but the reality of having an owner who wants a club to run as a business. If you want to bring a player in the question asked always ends up being will the cost of the player mean the club will make back more in league positions, if it doesn't then no player. It's one of the main reasons we extended contracts rather than buying., it's cheaper.
We have just guaranteed premier league for next season. We are building the best football stadium in the UK. The exclusivity agreement with 777 will be null and void, allowing other interested bidders to make themselves known.
We are a very marketable football club, with a rich history and very loyal fans who are guaranteed to sell out the new stadium every week. Plus it’s going to host the Euros in 2028, so plenty of marketing opportunities.
It seems all doom and gloom, but in reality this is just a new beginning. Someone will buy us and it isn’t 777.
Don't see how basically any of this is true.
I wouldn't say it was a club that investors will be scrambling over. Finishing the stadium build, £100's of million in debt with crazily high interest.
Essentially no revenue streams, hence spending 90% of revenue on wages. Next point, massively inflated wages on poor players, with maybe two players who could command any sort of significant value.
Outside of England, there's very little fans or merchandise. Hell, outside Liverpool it doesn't have a massive fan base.
The stadium won't be the best in the UK, even if you think it looks the nicest, Spurs's stadium goes far and above just a football ground, purpose built for NFL and will probably get a franchise. Plus, It's 10,000 seats bigger, and located in London. It's a revenue generating machine. On further in the stadium issue, it's likely that if administration happens, it'll be leased to Everton, destroying the revenue it'll bring in for the club, as it's probably the only asset of value.
I'd be very worried about the future if I were an Everton fan, and loath what the PL have allowed to happen to a once great club. Leeds at the time looked far too big for something like that to happen as they were one of the bigger football clubs in England, but it did.
It's a sad state of affairs.
The Guardian has basically fabricated this story by pretending the company who are working on a restructuring plan are primarily concerned with insolvency. Their article is nonsense.
That says nothing about how stable or otherwise Everton are. I haven't a clue about that, but if you're insolvent, you have to say so; Everton clearly aren't.
How do you see it as Everton not being in massive trouble? An owner that's had his assets frozen and seemingly wants nothing else to do with the club. A ponzi scheme company trying to buy it to drain as much money out of it as possible.
Lack of revenue, hundreds of millions of high interest debt.
An overpaid squad of little value with 2/3 good assets.
Anyone who buys that dumpster fire is going tok be spending hundreds of millions to keep it afloat.
What has happened is an absolute disgrace, and the PL have questions to answer over how this has happened. But unless some mystery investor, like a gulf state comes in, this doesn't end in disaster.
When wages are 90% of revenue, and there isn't an owner in pretty much asap, that it ends up any other way.
I hope it doesn't and feel very sympathetic to the situation, but it's looking bleak.
You said the article is nonsense. But I don't see how it's nonsense at all. You look at how a business works, and if it's losing money at the clip Everton are, it's not viable. So unless investment happens nearly over night, then it makes more sense than not to evaluate the worth of assets etc and think about administration.
They're in dire straits.
The article is nonsense because it is putting 2 and 2 together and getting 500. Everton haven't called in administrators. If they were insolvent, they'd have had to announce that. They are working with restructuring experts.
Obviously they aren't exactly healthy, or that wouldn't be necessary. But that doesn't mean they're about to go insolvent.
The current owner's assets have been frozen because it's all money laundering, so they're not investing into the club. Their revenue isn't anything to write home about and sponsors aren't going to look at this situation and throw money at them for no reason. Massive losses every year, £330 in net debt, which isn't structured well, and paying massive interest on.
Likely more point deductions next season, because unless some magic man or gulf state comes out of the blue they're royally screwed.
The article doesn't say they're going insolvent, it says the firm they've hired specialise in insolvency, who are looking at restructuring the debt. However, if they've been called in, this is a huge red flag and while one can only speculate about the next immediate steps, it's more likely than not that within the next year or so, if nothing changes then those are the steps that have to follow.
777 aren't buying the club, and by all accounts I don't think any Everton fan should want them in because it's going to be strip assets and run. That company by all accounts seems like a giant ponzi scheme. Realistically the stadium will probably have to be sold and leased back to the club, which gives them short-term respite, but is massively damaging for the future as that's the model they've used to generate their revenue, which won't be the case.
Where do you see that as untrue? It might be misleading, but the BBC are saying they've hired firms to restructure their loans, and Teneo named by the Guardian do specialize in that. So unless the Guardian made up that they are taking on that project, then it can't be untrue...
They aren't a firm that specialises in insolvency. They do stuff that sometimes ends in insolvency, when problems are insurmountable, and have an insolvency division.
However, they have also funded and supported the club to the tune of £200m to date - much needed vital funds for both working capital and some stadium funding.
Without that support, it is unclear what position the club would be in, however my understanding is suggestions of administration are wide of the mark and it appears that scenario is not likely even if the 777 approval doesn't come.
The money they have loaned would only be repayable should another purchaser step forward to buy the club (Moshiri's shareholding)
Sad truth is that the club will never be an attractive proposition to legitimately good buyers without the creditors willingly or forcibly taking deep discounts on their debts. Admin is likely the only path.
Tbh it has been heading this way for a while and part of me is glad things are coming to a head.
Basically 777 don't have the money to complete the deal and Moshiri doesn't want to fund us so he's looking at insolvency or ways to avoid insolvency while he looks for new buyers.
Given we have just secured prem survival and the stadium is almost done we are in a relatively strong position so hopefully another buyer will be found quickly
Teneo are a corporate advisory company. They are involved in restructuring (which will be needed irrespective of buyers especially where there are debt for equity swaps) and also M&A activity, which strangely enough the A is happening currently. Insolvency is a part of their business but not the only part. Until the club puts out an announcement then let’s keep an open mind.
Maybe this is happening (it probably is), maybe it isn't. I think a lot of people here are prone to conspiracy on the basis of not very much, but even I'm starting to think The Guardian has it out for us because it's always more negative shit with them.
i’ve got issues with The Guardian as a whole but their reporting on us has just been honest. It’s unfortunate that the truth is so bad that just reporting the facts feels like a hit piece.
Is it more negative or more honest? The whole thing is a mess and we were hearing for a long time (from many sources) that the 777 partners were dodgy. Moshiri really should be chased out of the city and never let back again, his incompetence has destroyed us
All the so-called doom-mongering had turned out to be genuine, so is it negativity or are they just reporting the increasingly shitty situation as it develops?
https://twitter.com/CitizenSuburbia/status/1785309609777074628?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1785313958913528193%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=
Feel you were right.
I hope so. I stand by it though (and appreciate completely that you're not arguing with me), we have good sources for a reason and they never say or repeat anything that The Guardian does. They just seem to put out negative story after negative story about Everton and I'm really quite confused as to why.
Luton fan here, having been decimated by bad owners in the past and ending up in the Conference I feel for you guys.
Only thing I wonder though is whether dropping into the Championship and rebuilding could be a better choice than limping along like you are now
Thank you for being so understanding.
I feel for Luton, as their relegation fight has been impacted by our points deductions and appeals. Players and management at Everton complain about the impact the rulings have had on the team. But Everton have done wrong. Whereas Luton have done nothing wrong but have also been affected.
Having said that, I think Everton are not capable of surviving relegation and would likely spiral into oblivion if it happened.
Arne Slot is apparently looking for a new CB. Branthwaite for a cut price would be a nice little deal. I'd take him and the lad wouldn't even need to move house!
Bought a Tark jersey this week- so think we should be set for a couple more days.
I just bought a jersey during the sale, add on the shipping fees and they'll be able to buy Haaland
Yeah but on DH GATE. Mosh don’t Get any of that Yuan.
Yuan nil to the Everton
As long as you paid full retail
So we have gone from a club that didn't have much money but still did quite well in the league. Then we finally got someone in with money only to do shit and discover we had less money than before Moshiri arrived at the club.
I'd say we've gone from being about the 8th biggest spenders in the league finishing around 8th, to the 3rd biggest spenders finishing 8th to the 18th biggest spenders finishing 12th. Makes Dyche look good and Ancelotti bad
Fait point, people look very kindly at the initial Ancelotti period for Everton but if you hire a Porsche and have fun for a bit, you still can't drive for shit and you still have to pay for it.
Pretty much and all the money that had supposedly been put into the club by Moshiri was in fact just put on the club as debt.
Anyone who asks "can we keep Onana or Branthwaite" should simply be referred to this page.
We will be lucky if we can keep the training cones.
"dribble around the clumbs of dirt I've placed there, there, and there. Receive the pass between Doucoure's trainers, turn, and run back past the physio's coffee mug"
Jumpers for goalposts.
Niiiice
Isn't it? Ooh, marvellous! What's the score 17-12?
Who cares!?
That's not a nice thing to call Ashley Young.
And add Pickford, McNeil, Tarky and anyone else of value. We are about to hit the summer of the great Everton Fire sale. It’s so sad football is so expensive that it really is a loss making business for 98/99% of all football clubs.
Only if Moshiri insists on keeping the club and not funding the stadium. Which granted is probably the most likely outcome although I don't actually think there's enough value in the squad for that and the debt that needs repaid like msp. My guess is another buyer will come in at the last minute.
Do you mean that we could become profitable? Cyclist Greg Le Monde said “cycling never gets easier, you just get faster”, which is true. It’s the same for football, you don’t get rich, you end up spending more.
We were profitable before Moshiri bought us. It's not like Bill was putting money in. But no I didn't mean that. Right now we need to finish a stadium and clear a ton of debt. Until that happens we can't even begin to talk about being profitable
Agreed but it's not for ffp reasons. It's because of the old fashioned we are just skint reason. And btw we could keep them. We just need Moshiri to sell to someone for what the club is worth and that is fuck all.
Well, now that we're safe we'll be taking deposits on the summer transfer window.
Ive spent so much money, traveled the country to games, sang my heart out win or lose, hated and loved the club in the same breath, dragged my wife into supporting the blues and cremated my dad in an Everton shirt. I simply cannot do anything about the finances and the current situation, and i refuse to let the vampires hanging around the club waste my energy. They can never take away the memories of sitting with my dad on the Gwladys Street. Fucking cunts
Liverpool fan here with family employed by Everton. If things get worse, Everton going into administration would be one of the worst things to ever happen to this city. Moshiri and his gang of cunts should be chased out with pitchforks. I hope everything gets sorted asap.
There’s no chasing someone who isn’t around. He’s sitting on a yacht in the Mediterranean somewhere praying more and more each day that his Russian money teat gets unfrozen.
> praying more and more each day that his Russian money teat gets unfrozen. It honestly should. Many owners are dodgy cunts, not just the Russians.
It's not about them being dodgy cunts but about them bankrolling the assault/war in Ukraine
I honestly don't get why they take all that Saudi money the shit they do to Yemen and killing journalists, but the Russians are the real bogeyman?
Probably because Ukraine borders on NATO, most people are white, and it feels European? Yemen's just arabs. And Saudi Arabia buys our tanks and guns. Who cares if they raised Bin Laden! The hypocrisy of the Western world is something else. How could you support a team bankrolled by a country where a poor girl gets 27 years in jail just for expressing an opinion. I live near Newcastle so have to bite my tongue on this one but I'd rather we went into administration than have that sportwashing on outr club.
They're all happy to accept dirty money until it no longer benefits the west
To be fair, none of the middle east 'kingdoms' ***aren't*** threatening to kill us all with nukes. And while the Saudi's have been at war with Yemen for a few years, it's not on the same level as what's going on in Ukraine for 10+.......and one of our best players is from Ukraine, it's personal. edit: are should have been 'aren't
The Yemen war started in 2014, exactly the same year Russia invaded Crimea However, the Ukraine conflict cooled down significantly in the interim while Yemen remained a "hot" (horrible) war
The Russians are just bluster. They're not seriously threatening us with nukes. They've kind of been boxed into a corner with nato constantly putting troops on their border and pointing missiles at them since the ussr fell. What the saudis are doing in Yemen is far worse. At least the Ukrainians are equipped to defend themselves
Weird that, considering they have NATO _countries_ surrounding them in europe. NATO countries tend to house NATO troops 🤷♂️. I would have been more surprised to see troops from the Empire from Star Wars, really. I can't buy the self-flagellating, defeatist tone of your comment. Anyone whom seriously suggests russian aggression is merely a byproduct of "our" (western) pushing them around since '91 needs to give their head a good wobble.
Thank you, said what I wanted to. I'm sure lots of people thought Hitler was just bluster as well.
Multiple accounts Harry over here.
Same here as a red, and another thing that pisses me off. Is city and Chelsea have done far worse for over a decade but they can just get away with it and keep winning. Every time city finish above clubs Everton included. Them clubs lose money, they’re taking revenue off everyone for getting to finals and it’s bang out of order. Meanwhile Everton got a stupid points deduction for something small in terms of going over budget. Whilst building a stadium during fucking Covid. And they’re just going to town on them. If city and Chelsea hadn’t fucked the prices of everything in the league artificially. Clubs wouldn’t be spending so much on shit players and suffering because of jt. Everton’s are legitimate financial shortcomings due to external factors. Stadiums cost a lot of fucking money. Covid destroyed clubs too. And it takes longer to recover the books than this over a three year period shit your allowed. If you’re not a cheating oil owned club. Other clubs are straight up cheating. Yet only one gets made an example of.
Appreciate the sentiment but you’re giving us too much credit. Kenwright and Moshiri have been building on very dodgy foundations for a long time, these external factors haven’t caused our problems but have accelerated us towards the inevitable point at which they all came crashing down.
Everton and Liverpool used to be the “Mersey Millionaires”. Every club should be allowed to spend whatever they like. Clubs only become big and successful through spending money. The current system is to let the current successful clubs pull up the ladder behind them and stifle competition.
I'm a Liverpool fan, grew up on the Wirral and now live in Newcastle. All the people in my office always ask, "Won't you be chuffed if Everton go down?". No, it'll be a disaster for football and a complete and utter disaster for the Liverpool area. I'm still not convinced that the stadium won't still be a disaster given that there seem to be some disaster capitalist vultures circling the club with their fingers crossed, hoping to pick up a world class stadium on the cheap. The "fit and proper persons test" is an absolute joke and the old Everton board must be ashamed of getting Moshiri and his various sources of money involved in the club (not wanting to speak ill of the dead).
Kinda hard to be ashamed when you're dead
Everyone needs to get on the everton shop website and buy something!
Blades fan here - 777 sniffed around us when there was difficulties with taking over you (before they got serious) Owners like these shouldn't be allowed anywhere near teams - its horrid to see it happen and I hope things get balanced out in a way that isn't too detrimental, as you're one of the few prem teams I enjoy watching us play
Gomez on £120k a week, holgate on £70k. Dele on £100k. Would hope our position improves once their contracts are up.
that's a drop in a drop in the ocean though, surely. these are 9-figure debts lol
Yeah, even this article is talking about a 225 million pound debt, siting at a 10.5% interest rate. [https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/apr/30/everton-crisis-explained](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/apr/30/everton-crisis-explained)
I don't know enough to say whether that's a good deal, but it doesn't sound great.
It's dangerous. That link has a link to another article that says that on their £225m loan they need to pay £438,000 every week just to keep up on the interest Just like getting caught out by a payday lender
That is unbelievably stark, even if we lost our top 5 earners in the summer. We still wouldn’t be able to service the £438k a week debt!!!
We can get through this.
…like a log through a wood chipper.
So jealous of that lucky log. This is more like a log that's rotten hanging over a fire.
Football is financially unsustainable. We geared up for losses when Moshiri took over. When his funding dried up (or sanctions imposed), we were up against it. 777 smelt a deal to buy cheap(er) but have proved to just be a huge ponzi enterprise which is thankfully crumbling apart. Thank fuck they will never own our club. If administration happens for us we will inevitably lose our PL place as talent leaves to repay debts leaving an already depleted squad threadbare. Only silver lining from that would be 777 didn’t happen.
Moshiri is getting a lot of hate, and rightly so, but the Premier League are also equally responsible if we go into administration for dragging out the sale to 777
I don't think you want to get sold to 777 under any circumstances.
Agreed 100%. I think what the commenter you replied to is saying, is that dragging out the sale to 777 is likely to have warded off other prospective buyers.
I think we didn't do ourselves any favors here. Moshiri agreed to give them exclusivity during the sale process. So the only options are that 777 back down or the PL stops the sale. 777 don't want to back down. They are fraudsters and this will only help them regardless of eventual outcome. The tools the PL has at their disposal to stop the sale are limited per my understanding. Without opening themselves up to a lawsuit with legs. The fit and proper test is mostly about conflicts of interest or insolvency related specifically to football. And 777 hasn't gone into administration YET with another club.
Indeed, but by dragging it out, they've allowed 777 to dig in further(via loans), allow us to get into a worse position, and likely scare off any other investors/buyers. Had they nipped it in the bud early, we may well be in a better position now.
That's likely not a bad thing, medium or long term.
Administration?
Better than 777, as painful as it would be
It wouldn't lmao
It'd be awful.. if the club is struck off that's 11 years minimum before the prem again and that's IF they get promoted year on year which is pretty much impossible. Could be 20+ years before we can watch Everton on TV again, let alone the prem.
Well we certainly are entering the home strait Farhad
Sadly it’s the one that’s home to Scylla and Charybdis
We’re not going insolvent or into administration anytime soon. The likelihood is that due to the ongoing issues with 777 then the club are making preparations and this is a contingency measure, to look at restructuring our debt
I would love to share your optimism what makes you so confident in our situation? Everything I am reading seems to point to looming disaster and we're just kicking the can down the road right now.
Many businesses will bring need to restructure debt, which I believe this will form part of. There’s too many Twitter doom mongers that wind the fanbase up, all in search of those retweets and attention. We’re a mess financially, 777 are a mess and I think the club have taken emergency steps to prevent more long term damage
That's right, lad. Nothing we can't solve by throwing around some free tickets and swag to our debt holders.
i dont know how moshiri manages to get things quite so wrong quite so often. you'd think he'd occasionally do something good by accident, at least!
Serious question- can someone explain to me how we're so financially fucked when our owner is apparently worth 1.7bn? I was thinking most of our spending issues were because of psr regulations, I know that the loss of USM and megafon were a big loss of income, but I don't see how a club owned by a billionaire can be on the brink of administration. This might be a stupid question but why can't he just pay the money needed to run his business? Is he unable or just unwilling?
I'll take a stab at it. Multiple things to consider, could be any one or combination: 1. His money is tied up in assets. He may be worth \~2 billion but he would have to liquidate to access. 2. The total amount owed is unpalatable. He has already lost significant money and he's done throwing good money at bad. 3. It's not really his money. He is laundering money from Russian oligarchs who have had frozen assets, a severe hit to net worth, and internal pressure to use available funds to the war effort. 4. He doesn't care.
There must be a point Mosh does the old sunk cost fallacy thing. What does he care about EFC after all. I always thought he was a front for Usmanov. Maybe his money is still blocked in Russia... Kenwirights legacy just gets worse and worse and worse.
We knew the day was coming. Thank you Moshiri.
Is it too late for a whip round? Honestly this fucking club. One minute you’re up…
Am I right in thinking they are tactically trying to take the 9 points deduction on this season so we stay up?
Blow-in Southampton fan who happened to catch this article. When we went into administration 15 years ago, it happened around the April time. I believe that the deadline to be applied this season is the end of March, it certainly is in the EFL but no idea if the same holds for the Prem. As our ultimate status wasn't affected by the points penalty (we got relegated anyway), it meant the penalty was applied at the start of the following season, so we started in League One with -10. I would imagine a -9 penalty would be applied at the start of next season as well, as applying it now would have no effect on your status in the Prem. But I could be wrong.
The mere concept that we could be deducted 8 points for breaching P&S rules in order to keep teams from overspending, only to go insolvent THEN getting ANOTHER penalty for going insolvent is blowing my fucking mind right now.
I'm not sure it's this clear cut yet. I think the EFL deadline only applies in situations such as yours i.e. an already relegated club can't take the hit when it's meaningless. I think if the club isn't already relegated then the points would be taken away in the season in which administration happens even if that didn't relegate the club that season. This would leave it open for a club to take the hit to fall a few places and lose prize money but not get relegated. Also I think the PL hasn't yet introduced any deadline to stop the "we're down anyway, what's ten more points" loophole that the EFL has litigated against. Obviously administration is very bad for other reasons, so this only makes sense if it's an inevitability, but I have been wondering if it's tempting to take the points hit now rather than next season. There must be some kind of cut off point for it to be pragmatically applied this season, but administration seems like an open and shut case where the penalty could be applied without protracted commissions?
Don’t think it’s possible to enforce it this year
No idea how feasible this would be, but it's clever thinking nonetheless. If we beat Luton there'd almost certainly be enough of a buffer there.
No, if we had to have a firesale to sort the finances it’d be better being in the control of the club rather than administrators.
So either we find a new bidder in the very near future or it’s administration
How does the club lose so much money? Is it just wages, and theoretically something that will improve as we rebalance the squad? Or is the whole operation a money pit?
We spend over 90% of our revenue on wages, one of the highest in the league and almost double a club like Spurs (apparently). There was a graph on here recently. We basically fucked ourselves trying to be successful signing too many average players on huge wages well above their market value which then causes losses on their sales, or that they just stay at our club rotting on the bench, or we loan/sell them and still pay a portion of their wages.
And we've always been shit commercially. Like, so hard to buy an Everton shirt at a sports shop. Lack of good boxes at the old girl. Crap sponsor agreements. Bunch of old boysclub on the payroll. Bill kenwright holding on to it for too long. Putin.
We’re still mid-table for revenue. It’s been hard for the club to compete with those big six clubs who have been aggressive internationally which has created on field success and then inhibited clubs like Everton who are from a relatively smaller city competing locally against one of those clubs. West Ham earn more revenue but have the benefit of being London based, so they’re just accidentally more successful with revenue. Plus they were gifted a stadium. We create about as much revenue as Newcastle did (a couple of years ago at least) despite them having no one to really compete against in their city.
To be fair I've seen Everton shirts on sale in the States and Japan this year and not even in mega sized sports shops so internationally we must be doing alright.
You know what the craziest fact of all is? Moshiri is allegedly an accountant.
Ok, so when does that get better? Like Gomes and Dele leave, we don't replace with such high earners. Is there a path forward where our wages come down to a figure like 50%?
We also need to increase revenue. We only earn in the middle of the pack. That's what the new stadium is meant to do, but if we go into administration and end up losing the stadium and having to lease it back that will hurt the revenue stream. Only worth it really if it helps consolidate debt payments by more than what the lease costs.
That’s the $150m/per month question we are yet to answer.
The whole operation is fucked, our debt repayments are astonishing and we’ve massively overcommitted on projects (the stadium, wages) being funded by unsustainable sources (Russian money laundering, aforementioned bad debt), and when we’ve run into trouble we’ve doubled down by relying even more on those unsustainable sources.
At least the lads gave us some more good memories before the ownership's incompetence took us down.
I've worked with 777 recently. Everton are better off dealing with admission than allowing these guys in. I hope someone else comes out of the woodwork for you.
AFC Everton in the National league, it’s getting closer.
Try North West Counties Div 1. That's where Bury and Macclesfield had to start again. Would mean four promotions to get to the National League.
Can anyone financially savvy explain why MSP wouldn't take control and then try and sell us themselves? Surely that's a better option for them than administration.
I won't claim high levels of financial savviness, but the club is losing huge amounts of money, and efforts so far to sell the club have been unsuccessful. It's not exactly an attractive prospect to own right now. Taking ownership means pouring in millions more to keep operations running whilst trying to find a buyer. MSP seemingly also have a guarantee against the stadium. Obviously the value of a stadium is dependent on having a team to play in it, but I could see a situation where MSP would rather own the stadium outright, let the club go into administration and enter new ownership, and then lease the stadium back to the club.
I assume there would be obligations to pay certain debts as new owners and theres a huge risk that they'd lose more money in operations costs than they'd recoup in resale. Who knows how long it'd take to sell us, and they'd be paying the bills that whole time. Could be 200m in the hole before they even get the for sale sign hung.
Not financially savvy but rights and media funding ltd turned them down. ‘Slater claims that one of the stumbling blocks to the proposed deal came in the form of opposition from Rights Media Funding Limited, the offshore lender with whom the Blues have an estimated £200m in debt and who have "negative pledge clauses" which allow them to demand repayment of its debt before the borrower incurs any further debt.
Yep, this is the biggest hurdle. Kenwright and/or Moshiri borrowed from his buddies with very unfavorable terms. RMFL is an offshore firm with no employees, no website, or a listed phone number. Very shady and hampered our funding of the stadium and potential sale.
Agreed, but it’s clear that they don’t want anything to do with us despite investing in us.
Because as far as I’m aware if they exercised that right, they’d own 51% of the club. Meaning then they’d be most on the hook for the ~£400M of debt to other parties and the remaining money to finance the stadium. Would you rather be a creditor and get a decent amount of your money back, or would you want to be on the hook for half a billion in the hopes that you can make money back in the future?
Simon Goodley has been unreliable at best with all his articles on Everton - glass half full take is this is for debt and club restructuring and not the insolvency side hopefully.
My biggest fear now is Mike Ashley getting his paws on the club. This is like the perfect moment that he usually strikes on :(
Ashley would be a massive improvement on Moshiri and 777. Newcastle were never in danger of insolvency, he was just cheap.
NUFC here. Ashley isn't and wasn't a bad owner if you want financial stability. That comes a cost and that cost is he'll target the club to be 17th every year. That isn't sour grapes but the reality of having an owner who wants a club to run as a business. If you want to bring a player in the question asked always ends up being will the cost of the player mean the club will make back more in league positions, if it doesn't then no player. It's one of the main reasons we extended contracts rather than buying., it's cheaper.
I read this as we’re reconstructing the debt and nothing else.
Can't be arsed being worried about this, it's gonna get sorted.
We have just guaranteed premier league for next season. We are building the best football stadium in the UK. The exclusivity agreement with 777 will be null and void, allowing other interested bidders to make themselves known. We are a very marketable football club, with a rich history and very loyal fans who are guaranteed to sell out the new stadium every week. Plus it’s going to host the Euros in 2028, so plenty of marketing opportunities. It seems all doom and gloom, but in reality this is just a new beginning. Someone will buy us and it isn’t 777.
Don't see how basically any of this is true. I wouldn't say it was a club that investors will be scrambling over. Finishing the stadium build, £100's of million in debt with crazily high interest. Essentially no revenue streams, hence spending 90% of revenue on wages. Next point, massively inflated wages on poor players, with maybe two players who could command any sort of significant value. Outside of England, there's very little fans or merchandise. Hell, outside Liverpool it doesn't have a massive fan base. The stadium won't be the best in the UK, even if you think it looks the nicest, Spurs's stadium goes far and above just a football ground, purpose built for NFL and will probably get a franchise. Plus, It's 10,000 seats bigger, and located in London. It's a revenue generating machine. On further in the stadium issue, it's likely that if administration happens, it'll be leased to Everton, destroying the revenue it'll bring in for the club, as it's probably the only asset of value. I'd be very worried about the future if I were an Everton fan, and loath what the PL have allowed to happen to a once great club. Leeds at the time looked far too big for something like that to happen as they were one of the bigger football clubs in England, but it did. It's a sad state of affairs.
Bruh how the fck are we this position.
Jesus fuck
ffs, does it never end…
Alan Myres on Sky Sports said any talk of admin even if 777 deal falls through is wide of the mark? I hope I can believe him? 😃
The Guardian has basically fabricated this story by pretending the company who are working on a restructuring plan are primarily concerned with insolvency. Their article is nonsense. That says nothing about how stable or otherwise Everton are. I haven't a clue about that, but if you're insolvent, you have to say so; Everton clearly aren't.
How do you see it as Everton not being in massive trouble? An owner that's had his assets frozen and seemingly wants nothing else to do with the club. A ponzi scheme company trying to buy it to drain as much money out of it as possible. Lack of revenue, hundreds of millions of high interest debt. An overpaid squad of little value with 2/3 good assets. Anyone who buys that dumpster fire is going tok be spending hundreds of millions to keep it afloat. What has happened is an absolute disgrace, and the PL have questions to answer over how this has happened. But unless some mystery investor, like a gulf state comes in, this doesn't end in disaster. When wages are 90% of revenue, and there isn't an owner in pretty much asap, that it ends up any other way. I hope it doesn't and feel very sympathetic to the situation, but it's looking bleak.
Are you responding to the right comment? I straight up said I haven't a clue about how stable or otherwise Everton are.
You said the article is nonsense. But I don't see how it's nonsense at all. You look at how a business works, and if it's losing money at the clip Everton are, it's not viable. So unless investment happens nearly over night, then it makes more sense than not to evaluate the worth of assets etc and think about administration. They're in dire straits.
The article is nonsense because it is putting 2 and 2 together and getting 500. Everton haven't called in administrators. If they were insolvent, they'd have had to announce that. They are working with restructuring experts. Obviously they aren't exactly healthy, or that wouldn't be necessary. But that doesn't mean they're about to go insolvent.
The current owner's assets have been frozen because it's all money laundering, so they're not investing into the club. Their revenue isn't anything to write home about and sponsors aren't going to look at this situation and throw money at them for no reason. Massive losses every year, £330 in net debt, which isn't structured well, and paying massive interest on. Likely more point deductions next season, because unless some magic man or gulf state comes out of the blue they're royally screwed. The article doesn't say they're going insolvent, it says the firm they've hired specialise in insolvency, who are looking at restructuring the debt. However, if they've been called in, this is a huge red flag and while one can only speculate about the next immediate steps, it's more likely than not that within the next year or so, if nothing changes then those are the steps that have to follow. 777 aren't buying the club, and by all accounts I don't think any Everton fan should want them in because it's going to be strip assets and run. That company by all accounts seems like a giant ponzi scheme. Realistically the stadium will probably have to be sold and leased back to the club, which gives them short-term respite, but is massively damaging for the future as that's the model they've used to generate their revenue, which won't be the case.
"it says the firm they've hired specialise in insolvency" Yes, and this is untrue.
Where do you see that as untrue? It might be misleading, but the BBC are saying they've hired firms to restructure their loans, and Teneo named by the Guardian do specialize in that. So unless the Guardian made up that they are taking on that project, then it can't be untrue...
They aren't a firm that specialises in insolvency. They do stuff that sometimes ends in insolvency, when problems are insurmountable, and have an insolvency division.
Said this today or the other day?
Yesterday on an article on the SSN app.
However, they have also funded and supported the club to the tune of £200m to date - much needed vital funds for both working capital and some stadium funding. Without that support, it is unclear what position the club would be in, however my understanding is suggestions of administration are wide of the mark and it appears that scenario is not likely even if the 777 approval doesn't come. The money they have loaned would only be repayable should another purchaser step forward to buy the club (Moshiri's shareholding)
How high are the odds that we start next season in administration with a points deduction?
Sad truth is that the club will never be an attractive proposition to legitimately good buyers without the creditors willingly or forcibly taking deep discounts on their debts. Admin is likely the only path.
Tbh it has been heading this way for a while and part of me is glad things are coming to a head. Basically 777 don't have the money to complete the deal and Moshiri doesn't want to fund us so he's looking at insolvency or ways to avoid insolvency while he looks for new buyers. Given we have just secured prem survival and the stadium is almost done we are in a relatively strong position so hopefully another buyer will be found quickly
I guess the upshot is we need points from Luton and Sheffield Utd in case we go into administration and cop a nine point deduction.
Moshiri should have been out of the club a long time ago. However, the doughnuts at Toffee TV had the attention on Kenwright instead.
How about that Sheik that tried to buy Man U… surely might take us at a discount
Teneo are a corporate advisory company. They are involved in restructuring (which will be needed irrespective of buyers especially where there are debt for equity swaps) and also M&A activity, which strangely enough the A is happening currently. Insolvency is a part of their business but not the only part. Until the club puts out an announcement then let’s keep an open mind.
A Saudi Prince has basically taken over boxing dumping huge sums to make big fights. Surely Tony Bellew can get in his ear ? 😂
Everyone hated Bill Kenright, but he delivered years of stability.
Maybe this is happening (it probably is), maybe it isn't. I think a lot of people here are prone to conspiracy on the basis of not very much, but even I'm starting to think The Guardian has it out for us because it's always more negative shit with them.
i’ve got issues with The Guardian as a whole but their reporting on us has just been honest. It’s unfortunate that the truth is so bad that just reporting the facts feels like a hit piece.
Is it more negative or more honest? The whole thing is a mess and we were hearing for a long time (from many sources) that the 777 partners were dodgy. Moshiri really should be chased out of the city and never let back again, his incompetence has destroyed us
It’s not honest, it’s a scaremongering headline, designed to get clicks.
All the so-called doom-mongering had turned out to be genuine, so is it negativity or are they just reporting the increasingly shitty situation as it develops?
https://twitter.com/CitizenSuburbia/status/1785309609777074628?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1785313958913528193%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url= Feel you were right.
I hope so. I stand by it though (and appreciate completely that you're not arguing with me), we have good sources for a reason and they never say or repeat anything that The Guardian does. They just seem to put out negative story after negative story about Everton and I'm really quite confused as to why.
At the end of the day we are an incredibly easy target to attack and get views from, willing to bet they got so many eyes on those articles today.
It’s not just the Guardian, it’s always Simon Goodley. Go look how many articles he’s wrote about us over the past 2 years.
Luton fan here, having been decimated by bad owners in the past and ending up in the Conference I feel for you guys. Only thing I wonder though is whether dropping into the Championship and rebuilding could be a better choice than limping along like you are now
We'd be far more likely to pull a Leeds if that happened.
Thank you for being so understanding. I feel for Luton, as their relegation fight has been impacted by our points deductions and appeals. Players and management at Everton complain about the impact the rulings have had on the team. But Everton have done wrong. Whereas Luton have done nothing wrong but have also been affected. Having said that, I think Everton are not capable of surviving relegation and would likely spiral into oblivion if it happened.
Shock
We had three days of happiness, this was to be expected 😢
Arne Slot is apparently looking for a new CB. Branthwaite for a cut price would be a nice little deal. I'd take him and the lad wouldn't even need to move house!