MOSHIRI PUTS MONEY WHERE HIS MOUTH IS... NO APOLOGY NEEDED
FOOTBALLERS, managers, owners, whoever saying sorry to supporters has become tedious.
Manchester United players, for example, produced more apologies than points last season.
And, often, those apologies were more pathetic than the performances.
Insincere, PR-scripted tosh. The advisers who, presumably, tell these players to ask for fans’ forgiveness have never been life-long supporters of one club.
Fans have a contract with their clubs. They support them through thick and thin, for better or for worse.
They don’t need apologies, they just need the players to try as hard as they can.
That is it, really.
But apologies have become a staple feature of the modern game.
And so we have Farhad Moshiri’s statement to Evertonians, in which there was this mea culpa.
“Mistakes have been made and for that I want to apologise to all of you, you did not deserve the frustration and fear that the season brought,” he said.
Surely, no Everton fan thought Moshiri (below) made those mistakes with the intent they would drop Everton into a relegation battle?
Frustration? Fear?
That is part and parcel of being a football supporter.
Appointing Rafa Benitez was a monumental error, but Moshiri must have thought it was for the benefit of the club.
Ditto for all the players that have been signed with the £500million or so he has provided for transfers.
No one wilfully signs a dud. Moshiri – notable by his absence from Goodison Park for most of last season – has no need to offer grovelling apologies, not even ones that are delivered in his favoured form of communication, an open letter.
But his statement on the club’s website should be welcomed by Everton fans.
There are some dubious parts, – not least the one where he says Frank Lampard “was the outstanding candidate at the end of a robust and clearly defined process”.
Or maybe he was the only one standing after fans kicked off about the impending appointment of Vitor Pereira and after the failure to get Roberto Martinez from Belgium.
Nevertheless, this Moshiri communication IS important.
“I am committed to securing the future success of the club by delivering a fully-funded stadium that will underpin our status as a leading club”.
Never mind the apologies, this is the sort of commitment fans want to hear.
In this day and age, there can be no guarantees around club financing and, of course, Everton lost a fair chunk of sponsorship money when Moshiri’s close friend and business associate Alisher Usmanov was sanctioned for connections to Vladimir Putin.
Everton’s profit-and-loss accounts have also drawn the attention of other clubs.
There may well be financial complications ahead for Everton but no one can doubt that, in Moshiri, the club has had, for the past six years, an owner who has backed up his words with big investment.
There might be a need to do a lot of things better, but there is no need to say sorry.