Everton looking to Benitez because of financial problems

Ever since Farhad Moshiri bought his majority share of Everton back in 2016 the Iranian billionaire has poured money into player signings under a succession of managers. I don’t think anyone can accuse him of not putting his money where his mouth is.

But as we know, although this strategy worked for Chelsea and Manchester City it hasn’t been successful for the Toffees. Ronald Koeman, Sam Allardyce, Marco Silva and now Ancelotti have all come and gone and have spent plenty on the players they wanted.

Everton have splashed out millions on so many players like Gylfi Sigurdsson, Yanick Bolasie, Jordan Pickford, Davy Klaasen, Theo Walcott, Cenk Tosun, Jean-Philippe Gbamin, Richarlison, Moise Kean, Alex Iwobi and then last summer’s additions Allan and Abdoulaye Doucoure. It’s a staggering number of players and amount of money.

While some of these have been sound investments, too many have proved to be inconsistent and unable to fulfill the hopes and expectations their arrival had prompted.

It’s left the Blues with a bloated and unbalanced squad with too many bang average and underperforming footballers who are proving very hard to move on.

This is something that has plagued the club in the past few transfer windows as Marcel Brands has struggled to get rid of all the fringe players, trim the size of the squad as well as most of all reduce the huge wage bill.

And it’s one of the big financial problems that whoever does get the manager’s job will have to graple with. I think the biggest movement in this summer’s transfer window is going to be players leaving rather than new ones arriving.

All this past spending and awarding so many players with high salaries and long-term contracts has left the club with a lot of financial commitments and in many cases very little reward for it on the pitch.

So inevitably with so much spending, Everton have been skating close to breaking UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations. These were supposedly put in place to prevent clubs spending more than they could afford in terms of their actual business profitability and therefore succumbing to too much debt.

Of course many of us suspect that the real reason for these rules is to protect the privileged position of the established big clubs and prevent other ‘upstarts’ from challenging them.

The flaccid response of UEFA to the breathtakingly arrogant way the elite clubs in European football attempted their recent breakaway Super League and the pathetic lack of punishment for those clubs (for example any European bans in the offing?) has only underlined the cynicism with which we should treat these sorts of policies.

I’ve said before that I actually think the Blues should just go out and spend if they want to, within reason, and deal with the consequences. But I don’t think this club will do that.

And finally we have the consequences of the Covid situation over the past year or so that has caused so much upheavel in all our lives and of course in football.

Everton were one of the clubs who didn’t appear to be furloughing staff and were continuing to pay full salaries so that combined with the big reduction in revenue from the lack of fans and reduced TV payments, has had a further negative impact on finances.