*Shakes head* Everton again.

[VladimirIlyich]

5 hours ago, polymerpunkah said:

Next up?

 

666

Too late for 999?

[Gnasher]

Someone said it Moshiri clearing out his office. 

 

 

[Megadrive Man]

Everton have finally made it in to Europe!

 

Premier League - Everton, chronique d'une mort annoncée - Eurosport

 

I've translated it for you non French speakers,

 

PREMIER LEAGUE - EVERTON, CHRONICLE OF A DEATH ANNOUNCED

 

In sporting difficulty (18th in the Premier League), Everton is even more economically. So much so that the dean of Liverpool clubs sees its existence threatened in the more or less long term. The Toffees accumulated debts in extreme proportions so that the threat of a disappearance hung over Goodison Park. It's not relegation that threatens Everton. It is extinction.

We can recover from relegation: Leicester were champions of England six years after falling in League One (D3). Among the PL residents of this season, Burnley have returned to the elite after a year of purgatory, Fulham and Sheffield United after two. But it is more difficult to lift headstones at the cemetery, towards which the hearse painted blue of the Toffees goes straight.

 

Not that the relegation they narrowly avoided in 2022 would not be a tragedy for a club that prides itself on having spent more seasons in English football's top division - 121 - than any other, and has not left since 1954. But that would only be a tragedy, not a tragedy. That the people's club dear to David Moyes disappears would be one, on the other hand, for those tens, hundreds of thousands of fans who can no longer hurt their beloved Everton; However, this perspective has shifted from the order of possibility to that of probability.

 

450 MILLION LOSSES

The crux of the matter is not really the Toffees' results on the pitch, but those on the accounts they have to submit to the Premier League - and those they have to give back to increasingly worried, and impatient creditors. The losses accumulated by Liverpool's dean of clubs amount to more than 450 million euros over the period 2019-22, and it will not be the 2022-23 financial year that will have cleaned up these nightmarish accounts that are worth to Everton to be the target of an investigation by the Premier League on their breaches of the rules of financial fair play of the competition (*).

 

Even some of the club's figures privately acknowledge that it will be very difficult to convince independent auditors charged with inspecting their finances that it is the impact of COVID that explains the financial abyss into which Everton keeps falling lower, weighed down as they are with debts amounting to 160 million euros (*). Oh - and a loan of 180 million that they will have to renegotiate from A to Z in case of relegation. Everton will not be able to count on the sympathy or support of the other nineteen shareholders in the Premier League, some of whom are furious that the investigation in question did not deliver a verdict more quickly. It is that infringements of the order of those attributed to the Toffees are passable from deductions of points which, if applied more quickly, would have allowed Leicester City to remain in the elite and a few others to live the last weeks of 2022-23 with more serenity.

 

It is true that, from this point of view, it will only be backwards to jump better - in the Championship. With one point out of twelve, with Arsenal coming up this Sunday at Goodison, Sean Dyche's men have already gained momentum, and it is doubtful that a deduction of ten or fifteen points will be the spur that blows the necessary wind of revolt in their dressing room.

 

ANATOMY OF A FALL

It is almost too easy to explain how it came to this. As Everton fall in slow motion, we can dissect their fall shot by shot.

here, a questionable or even incomprehensible choice of coach (hello, Rafa, hello, Frank!); There, a recruitment is done against common sense; there, there and there, and again, aberrant financial decisions. Not to mention the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the sanctions imposed by the British government against the oligarch Alisher Usmanov, an ally of Putin whom everyone knows was hiding, very badly, behind Fahrad Moshiri. , the nominal majority shareholder of Everton who no longer dares to put the tip of his nose at Goodison. As a result, the companies controlled by Usmanov can no longer inject money into the club.

 

Everton is not a club for sale. Everton is a club whose owners want to get rid of, and they do not find takers. The hope that the New York investment fund MSP Sports Capital would be that taker vanished in August, after a creditor of the club refused to see the Americans come to the head of the queue of people and entities to whom the club owes money. We are now talking about a stake in another US investment fund, 777 Partners, the controversial owner of Standard de Liège, Genoa, Hertha BSC, Vasco da Gama... and Red Star, among others, which has made it a specialty to acquire clubs on the brink of the abyss, but whose own resources are difficult to evolve, the mode of operation of the most opaque, and the motivations of the most obscure.

 

The BBC, the Telegraph and other British media have even claimed that 777 Partners is in pole position to acquire Everton and that a sale agreement is imminent, but seem to have based, all without exception, on a single source, in this case a close friend of Farhad Moshiri, who has every interest in believing that the club retains its attractiveness for new investors.

 

A PLASTER ON A WOODEN LEG

The information I have received does not point in the same direction and rather suggests that 777 Partners themselves are experiencing serious financial difficulties. The American fund, whose clubs are all in debt and accumulating losses by the millions, does not have the means to save Everton anyway; They would be at best a most dubious plaster on a wooden leg that worms gnaw from the inside.

 

It is that there is, as if all the above were not enough, the pharaonic project of the new Bradley Moore Dock stadium, an arena of almost 53,000 seats for which the municipality gave the green light in March 2021. Whichever way you look at it, this project makes no sense. The cost is staggering. We were talking about EUR 350 million at the beginning; then it was increased to 575; We are now at more than 800. For a Championship club?

 

Nevertheless, work has begun. It was necessary to fill the basin on which to lay the foundations of the new temple, because Bradley Moore Dock will be built, if it ever is, on water. One can imagine the additional cost caused by this choice. The idea was to "keep up the pace [imposed by] [Everton's] rivals in the Premier League and prosper"; the reality is that Everton could just as easily have built its stadium on quicksand and that, far from prospering, Everton, forced to get rid of its best players, forced to mortgage its future income, a sad circus of white elephants that we no longer even dare to parade, is now contemplating its own demise. and has only prayers to address to a God hitherto mute

 

 

(*) The PL only allows losses of a maximum of £105 million over three years, and those the club suffers between 2019 and 2021 are more than three-and-a-half times that figure.

 

(*) The rise in interest rates means that Everton must repay nearly 60,000 euros per week in this respect.

[Barrington Womble]

777 deal is complete. Moshiri has sold his 94%. Which suggests blue rinse bill has held on. 

[Leyton388]

Brilliant. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. 

[Baresi]

Can I begin to fear for them?

[TD_LFC]

Have they won the post-transfer window?

[Barrington Womble]

4 minutes ago, Leyton388 said:

Brilliant. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. 

Could be worse than that everything you read about them. Interesting it's happened now right before they're going to find out about those charges. Quite the gamble from 777 too. 

[Carra_is_legend]

I have not been following the thread closely in the last few days. So are the 777 dodgy cunts? 

 

Please say yes. 

[TD_LFC]

1 minute ago, Carra_is_legend said:

I have not been following the thread closely in the last few days. So are the 777 dodgy cunts? 

 

Please say yes. 

 

Standard Liege love them.

 

 

Oh and 

 

Quote

The company has faced allegations of fraud, offering illegal loans and failing to pay bills totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars in the US. Co-founder Josh Wander, who set up the company in 2015 with Steven Pasko, also faced drug charges to which he pleaded no contest in 2003. 

 

[Megadrive Man]

Just now, Carra_is_legend said:

I have not been following the thread closely in the last few days. So are the 777 dodgy cunts? 

 

Please say yes. 

 

Yes with a capital Y!

[Megadrive Man]

4 minutes ago, Baresi said:

Can I begin to fear for them?

 

I really do.

[Carra_is_legend]

1 minute ago, TD_LFC said:

 

Standard Liege love them.

 

 

Oh and 

 

 

 

1 minute ago, Megadrive Man said:

 

Yes with a capital Y!

 

Brilliant.

[clangers]

5 minutes ago, Megadrive Man said:

 

I really do.

They are completely screwed. 

[TD_LFC]

All they've done so far is sign an agreement in principle so it'll be interesting to see what the new beefed up owners test will make of it (if anything).

 

Quote

The league announced in March new “Disqualifying Events”, which “include offences involving violence, corruption, fraud, tax evasion and hate crimes”.

“A new power for the league to stop those who wish to become ‘Directors’ when they are under investigation for conduct that would result in a ‘Disqualifying Event’ if proven,” the rules also state.

 

 

[johnsusername]

This is going excellently.

[Megadrive Man]

777 own Sevilla who are bottom of La Liga, Hertha who are 17th in the German second division, Standard Liege who are 3rd bottom of the Belgian League and Genoa who were relegated from Serie A two seasons ago,Vasco Da Gama who are on course to be relegated from the Brazilian Serie A and Melbourne Victory too, second bottom in the Australian league.

[Pidge]

I hope they keep an eye on any money heading moshiris way. Can't be going back to Russia...

[Bob]

The one problem with this is the Everton fans seem to be reacting negatively and not crowing about it, which means there’s a possibility it could end up going well.

 

we need some brazen optimism and gloating before this goes too far.

[Pidge]

Liver building separate to the club right?

 

I suppose everything's separate to the club. The City owns the training ground. Who knows who will end up owning the stadium as well...

 

At least 777 can't be asset strippers, because... what assets?

[Stouffer]

Sacre bleu.

[Toxteth O'Grady]

6 minutes ago, Pidge said:

Liver building separate to the club right?

No mate, that got burned down to below ground level by Redshite tallyclappers letting off nuclear warheads at it the other year, don't you remember?

[TD_LFC]

10 minutes ago, Megadrive Man said:

777 own Sevilla who are bottom of La Liga, Hertha who are 17th in the German second division, Standard Liege who are 3rd bottom of the Belgian League and Genoa who were relegated from Serie A two seasons ago,Vasco Da Gama who are on course to be relegated from the Brazilian Serie A and Melbourne Victory too, second bottom in the Australian league.

 

Doesn't make a difference but their ownership of Sevilla amounts to a 7.5%-15% minority stake and Melbourne Victory is a $30 million loan that would be converted to a 70% share if they can't repay.

 

They seem like vultures who swoop in and buy distressed clubs but don't really turn them round.

 

Which is nice.

 

 

[Anubis]

[Doc Pheezin]

https://x.com/theesk/status/1702611291330724047?s=46&t=DiTZ_IjmeyiheEbwqnGBCg

 

how do I embed a tweet 

I quit forums in 2005 and can’t remember