First thing first. I may be a Liverpool fan but I will be fair and offer not biased views in this GraveTalk. I want all Merseyside teams to do well and succeed and Everton is no exception, so seeing them in this situation is worrying but Liverpool fans can relate – as I shall be divulging within this article. [I have actually been to more Everton games than Liverpool ones – and they have not yet lost!]
Let’s start with Rafa. Everyone’s talking about how he’s the one who has put Everton in this spot because he’s pro-Liverpool. For starters, how is making Everton go down going to help Liverpool? The derby fixtures are pretty much six points guaranteed each season (Only kidding!). In all seriousness, take a look when he went to Chelsea. Did he sabotage them? No, he did his best and won the UEFA Cup (Europa League). Everton were lucky and unfortunate to get Rafa and there is no doubt he wanted to succeed at Everton – and he would have been a success, however, not even Jϋrgen Klopp could do much with Everton within 5 months.
The question should not be about Rafa but rather why did Ancelotti quit? Ancelotti after a year and a half years at Everton quit to go back to Real Madrid – a team that sacked him because he wasn’t doing good enough despite winning their 10th European Cup. Ancelotti saw this coming and got out at the first opportunity. Ancelotti has won trophies pretty much with every team he has managed, but he also had money to spend – something he didn’t have at Everton, although they did manage to find £70 million for him from somewhere! (How much did Rafa get, again?). For all that money did Ancelotti improve results on the pitch? Not really.
Ever since Everton was sold to Moshiri they have spent more money on players and yet still finished in the same positions as they did under Moyes (and also finished in worse positions) and he had a limited budget. David Moyes did have the luxury of time and although it probably was the right time for him to leave – and the whole of English football thanks him for that – and to go on and set a trend for Manchester United (Brilliant move) and achieve his life-long goal of getting team relegated, at least he brought some stability and respected the club.
Since Moyes Everton – like Man United – have seen more managers than trophies [Love getting these little digs in] with each manager getting sacked (or leaving) when results start to get bad. If Moyes had stayed with Everton, with the way things have changed in the Premier League, may have ended Everton’s trophy drought and got a couple more Champions League seasons – look at Leicester and West Ham. He it would have taken time but as Klopp has proven, given a bit of time success will come and under the right manager during “the new era” of the Premier League Moyes probably would have been great for Everton.
Now, despite being in a complete mess, Everton brought in a proven manager and Rafa would’ve known full well that this would be like another Newcastle – but with an extra test with the fans (and if he didn’t know it from the start, he knew it in November). Rafa did his best with Newcastle, who were also a complete mess, but he loves Merseyside and probably just wanted to come back. This was always going to be challenge but at least Rafa didn’t quit when things got tough and stayed to do his best for the team and the club – whereas Ancelotti just bailed. Rafa would’ve turned it around in the second half, there is no doubt about that but he just never truly had the fans backing and that could possibly be why Everton, shockingly, go down. Lampard may be unproven but he is still inexperienced and Everton needed a manager with experience to get them out of trouble – Rafa was that manager. Hopefully, Lampard can keep them up (and win the FA Cup, if Liverpool fail) and if he does then hopefully he stays, or more importantly that Everton give him time to build the team because if Lampard can keep up this Everton team then if he can get his own team together who knows what he can achieve!
Time to move onto Everton Football Club as a whole. Right now, Everton seem to be in a similar place as Liverpool was in 2010 and Rangers in 2012. It may have taken longer for Moshiri’s ownership mess to come through (only because Liverpool was in a good place at the time and showed promise instead we saw a rapid decline).
Remember when Moshiri took over and how happy the Evertonian’s were, talking about how they now had money and would start to win trophies again and finally get a new stadium. Well, work only started on the “new stadium” last year (wasn’t it?) and don’t they still need to find funding for it? Look at all the money they have spent on players? They should be a half decent team by now but instead they have gone backwards and looking at a possible points deduction because of breaking the financial fair-play rules.
Compare this situation to Liverpool’s in 2010. In 2007, Liverpool were sold to those greedy American bastards who promised so much and in 2010 almost saw the club go bankrupt and kicked out of the Premier League. They did spend high transfer fees on the likes of Torres, Mascherano, Keane, Aquilani, Johnson amongst others, however, Liverpool had to sell a lot of players to help cover those costs – like Alonso, Cissé, Pongolle, Crouch, Riise, Garcia, Finnan as well as some of the new signings like Dossena, Benayoun and Mascherano. They came in and promised a new stadium, which never materialised, and by the end of their reign Liverpool was in deep financial trouble and very nearly went into administration (I have read something that they may have ended up dropping down to League 2 – similar to what happened to Rangers, though not sure how true that was as I can’t find it again).
Of course, Liverpool had a happy ending and John Henry and FSG have been brilliant rescuing and restoring the legacy of LFC – they are as much of a credit to the club as Klopp is! Now, the question is will Everton have a happy ending? Everton, apparently, have a debt of £340m and they still need money for the stadium. Forget about Usmanov because the debt was there whilst he was sponsoring them. Moshiri, like Hicks and Gillet (A man can do much better!) and other owners, he may just be wanting to “milk” Everton and when eventually it all goes “tits up” he will bail on them. Kenwright, like Moores, got greedy and just sold the club to the person with the bigger “brown envelope”.
Everton’s situation has been a long time coming and they need an FSG, a Jϋrgen Klopp and time. As for their new stadium, which they are set to move into in 2024 (two years away) is just a building site. If they suffer relegation or financial collapse then kiss goodbye to that!
I do hope that I am not proved right on this as Everton are a big club and should be in the Premier League and winning trophies. Now, they need a stadium to compete, but having a traditional stadium like Goodison Park is something special and gives something else for travelling fans to enjoy, as there aren’t too many like that ground around anymore. For this season, Everton are running out of time but can still turn this around. Hopefully they do!
And that’s it for this GraveTalk. Hope you enjoyed it. I have a few reviews to do for The Gigzter coming up in the next few weeks so there may not be any GraveTalks for April. I have two Crawlers’ gigs, Bowling For Soup, Alice Cooper and Marissa and The Moths all coming up so be sure to check out those reviews.
Why not leave a suggestion for future GraveTalk’s in the comments below!
Thanks for reading!
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