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Everton eye ‘significant’ transfer spend as Friedkins mull over Dyche’s future.
Dan Friedkin believes he has got an “absolutely astounding deal” in buying Everton – a Premier League club with rich heritage and huge potential to improve – for south of £40m.
Given the going rate for buying into the top flight’s owners’ club, he might well have a point.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, remember, paid £1.25bn for just 27 per cent of Manchester United a year ago, while Bill Foley’s takeover of Bournemouth was three times what the Texan billionaire has spent to acquire Everton through Roundhouse Capital Holdings, the Friedkin Group (TFG) entity which now owns 98 per cent of the club.
If it is a good deal for Friedkin, it is an even better one for Everton.
Make no mistake, until this deal was concluded the Toffees were heading straight for a financial iceberg.
A series of high interest, short-term loans were crippling the club, with insiders estimating repayments to be around £1m a week.
That was, to be blunt, unsustainable.
One insider likened it to “running a football club on payday loans”.
While sources say work remains “ongoing” on restructuring some of those debts, the £225m debt owed to Rights and Media Funding has now been paid off in full while the A-Cap loan, a hangover from the ill-fated 777 Partners bid, has also been “boxed off”.
Farhad Moshiri’s shareholder loans have disappeared completely and the Friedkins are on the verge of “reverse engineering” the stadium financing – with a deal lined up with a blue chip lender that was unavailable to Everton when the project was launched because of their perilous financial position.
Any debt moving forward will be “long-term” and at “very favourable” rates.
And what that means for the club itself is that things are only going to get brighter in the immediate future, with the Friedkins’ “deal of the century” to buy the club allowing “substantial headroom” to invest in Everton moving forward.
If the club was being sustained on payday loans they now have a “sensible mortgage” – along with a gleaming new stadium which will increase matchday revenue by three times and help them navigate the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR).
The big spending will have to wait – they hope to recruit in January but there are PSR challenges that may limit ambition – but from the summer that “virtually disappears”, one insider says.
The Friedkins are committed to strengthening the first team and any clubs expecting a cheap deal on Jarrad Branthwaite can forget it.
Sean Dyche and Kevin Thelwell are being backed too, for now, with first proper meetings planned on Friday with the key football figures.
While the director of football has brighter long-term prospects – indeed he is set to remain, with football executives added alongside him – Dyche’s future still feels uncertain.
The Friedkins are wary of instability in the short-term and will be supportive but he still doesn’t look like the right fit and a clean break might be better in the summer, provided safety has been secured.
Whoever is manager, they can expect a very different outlook from the one Dyche has been used to.
Strategic, data-led recruitment is the expectation but “significant funds” will be allocated for new signings to ensure Everton no longer scrap at the bottom of the table.
The huge churn of out-of-contract players – 13 are set to leave in the summer – gives them an opportunity for the “rebuild of the decade”.
Given the mood music around the club has felt so dire for so long, it should also be noted that TFG’s decision to retain Colin Chong as interim CEO is a show of faith in the current administration, who have been working with one hand tied behind their backs.
It is understood that the deeper TFG’s conversations with those working day-to-day at Everton have gone, the more impressed they have been with those who have manned the fort while the club have navigated such choppy waters
That also gives Everton time and space to make a permanent CEO appointment, with that role seen by the new owners as “absolutely crucial” moving forward.
While the Friedkins are high-profile they do not intend to follow Moshiri’s bizarre penchant for off-the-cuff statements or set-piece interviews with journalists.
No interviews are planned and they will not be at the Chelsea game on Sunday; instead a delegation from the Friedkin Group led by Marc Watts will be there.
“They are all about action rather than words,” one insider says.
“But the CEO will be the main point of communication and will be expected to communicate with fans.
“They want that transparency and communication.”
Work on sourcing a “high calibre” candidate is ongoing, it is understood, with Nolan Partners running the search.
In the meantime Watts, a Harvard-educated lawyer who is the president of the Friedkin Group, takes over as executive chairman.
He is described as a “trusted partner, confidante and ally” of Friedkin while Ana Dunkel, chief financial officer at TFG, adds further heft to a board that will be headed up by Friedkin himself.
It is a far cry from the ad hoc stewardship of the unpredictable Moshiri, who arrived with big promises and turned out to be far from what was written on the brochure.
He could be forgiven for some of his misjudgements – the Friedkins know from Roma how managerial appointments can unravel – but saddling the proud institution he owned to 777 Partners last year was unforgivable considering the pressing issues around their business model.
It nearly proved ruinous until the Friedkins intervened.
Out of that mess, Everton can now rise and look to a brighter future under committed, professional and strategic owners.
