Huge wages for average players have left Blues in the red
CONSIDERING the Premier League is awash with riches, losing £100million in just over a year must take some doing.
But, for the 13 months to June 30, 2019, Everton did it easily – £111.8m to be precise. Full houses, a long waiting list for season tickets, a share of the multi-billion pound TV deal and you still lose the equivalent of a Euromillions rollover. But when your wage bill amounts to 85 per cent of your turnover, you don’t need to be an accountancy whizz to understand how an operation can produce such a huge deficit.
When a loan move to Crystal Palace reveals Cenk Tosun, who cost £27m, is on over a hundred grand a week, you can pretty much tell Everton are paying big wages to duff players.
And counting the cost.
Owner Farhad Moshiri (right) is good for the debt. Having invested an initial £200m in the club, he has since provided £350m worth of interest-free loans.
His outlay was meant to see Everton compete at the top end of the table, on and off the pitch.
This time four years ago, just over a month before Moshiri’s takeover, Everton sat 11th in the Premier League table with 29 points from 22 games.
As they head into Saturday’s engagement at West Ham, Everton sit 11th in the Premier League table with 28 points from 22 games.
The team for their 22nd Premier League match of 2015/16, which drew 3-3 with Chelsea, read: Howard, Besic, Stones, Jagielka, Baines, Barry, Barkley, Oviedo, Lennon, Lukaku, Mirallas.
The team for their 22nd league match of 2019/20, which won 1-0 against Brighton, read:
Pickford, Sidibe, Holgate, Keane, Digne, Bernard, Davies, Sigurdsson, Walcott, Richarlison, Calvert-lewin.
A lot of change, little improvement, if any. There are mitigating factors, too financially dull to go into, as to why Everton have posted this huge recent loss.
But the basic truth is that Moshiri has made a massive investment in the club and his cash has largely been wasted.
On the face of it, finishes of seventh, eighth and eighth in three complete seasons are not too bad but, really, his four-year tenure has been a salutary lesson in how not to spend.
Recent acquisitions need to be afforded a little more time, sure.
But the massive spend on footballers who could not quite cut it at the type of club Everton aspires to be like, underpins the club’s current problems. Despite the, er, innovative move of securing a £30m option from Moshiri’s pal Alisher Usmanov on a stadium that is at least three years away, these latest results show there are big problems. Under Premier League rules, Everton cannot post losses of this magnitude in the near future. Which is why Marcel Brands, their director of football, said it was ‘not realistic’ for the Blues to be in the market for players in the £60m-£80m bracket.
Presumably, Carlo Ancelotti (left), a man accustomed to working with that bracket of player, knew this when he took over, so credit to him for taking on the challenge. And three wins from four Premier League matches is a good start in anyone’s book.
But if he needed reminding how big a challenge it is, then the £100m loss was a thumping one. If Ancelotti turns this Everton into a Premier League superpower, it might just rank as one of his finest achievements.
WHATEVER your views on Prince Harry and Meghan’s plans for their future, it is hard to deny he does a good job at a tournament draw. His enthusiasm and warmth at what was essentially a launch of the 2021 Rugby League
World Cup at Buckingham Palace yesterday was plain to see.
It was a big coup for rugby league and hopefully the tournament will capture the imagination of the English public. Maybe Harry can pop back from Canada for a few of the matches.