Fair play to Everton ...they’ve beaten the elitist trap
How wrong was Michel Platini over financial fair play? Just look at Everton. Remember the club, as it was? Noses pressed against the glass, always on the outside, always struggling to make progress.
Couldn’t sign the best players, couldn’t get a buyer, couldn’t find a new ground. Doomed to be mid-table, for ever. Doomed to remain in the shadow of the elite, their last trophy the 1995 FA Cup.
And now look at them. Significant movers in the transfer market this summer, big plans for the future, too. Everton are revived.
If manager Ronald Koeman gets the best out of his new players, including wayne Rooney, there could be another challenger for the Champions League places. So that’s seven: two on Merseyside, two in Manchester, three in London.
Maybe more if we allow our imaginations to consider another bolter from outside the elite, like Leicester City two years ago. This is healthy competition. This is what FFP was going to strangle.
It is no coincidence that the moment it collapsed, Everton became an attractive proposition and Bill Kenwright found a serious investor in Farhad Moshiri. New money came to west Brom, wolves and Aston Villa, too — all clubs that had been on the market with barely a nibble.
There is nothing wrong with financial responsibility, but owners have to be allowed to invest. Not just in infrastructure, because that only goes so far, short-term, but in the now, in players, in the shaping of a new team. FFP was stripping football clubs of their potential to grow.
That is what Everton have done this summer. They have got bigger, they have moved on. And not in a way that puts the club in any jeopardy. The Romelu Lukaku deal has financed the arrival of Davy Klaassen, Jordan Pickford and Michael Keane.
Beyond that, Everton now have room to invest reasonably, to gamble responsibly on business success as any investor would. Four other players have arrived. Not as expensive, but still representing significant recruitment. Rooney’s transfer, in wages, fees and bonuses is believed to come in at roughly £24million.
Everton would have shied away from trying to make this leap forward five years ago. They would have been wrapped in red tape by UEFA and tied down by the big clubs.
OF course, losing Lukaku to Manchester United shows there is still distance to travel. Yet it is hard to resist individual ambition from seventh in the league.
what Everton are hoping to do is break that cycle, to move up, to show the next generation they can compete with the elite.
They have designs on being the next Tottenham, and now have the freedom to do that. Platini (left) may have started with good intentions but his plans were cynically hijacked by protectionist forces. what is happening under Koeman is exactly what frightened the elite. Had FFP continued, Everton would have been making up the numbers again. Now there is genuine optimism. who in their right mind doesn’t see this as improvement?