On Friday, Everton and the Friedkin Group ended talks regarding a possible takeover by the US firm of the club. The group, headed by billionaire Dan Friedkin, had an exclusivity agreement with the club’s current majority shareholder, Farhad Moshiri, about acquiring his shares.
An agreement could not be reached for the purchase of the club
It seemed the Toffee’s search for a saviour was over, and everybody connected with the club could finally breathe a sigh of relief. However, an agreement couldn’t be found between the two and the Merseysiders search for new owners continues.
However, one positive outcome of the deal is that the Everton Stadium at Bramley Moore Dock is now completely funded after Friedkin Group loaned the Merseyside club to ensure the project’s completion.
It is another loan, and few people seem to know the terms of the reported £200m loan, though. Whatever the terms, it at least means that the Toffees can finish the stadium, which will bring in far bigger revenue than Everton’s grand Goodison Park when the club moves into their new home in time for the 2024/25 season.
Reports suggest that the Friedkin Group paid off the money owed to MSP, another company that had loaned money to the Toffees.
It is revenue that could make a massive difference in how the club operates in the future and maybe put the Merseyside club in a more beneficial financial position in the future, which was always the aim of the move.
It won’t really affect Everton’s summer transfer activity
Despite the apparent financial blow that the takeover collapse brings, many major news sites and journalists are reporting that it won’t affect the Toffees’ summer transfer activity
The club has enough financial power to operate in the short term, but it may only be a future issue. By then, the club may have found a new owner, or it will benefit from the extra revenue from the new stadium.
The potential takeover bid didn’t have any effect on the club’s summer transfer plans, as the new owner wouldn’t have been able to provide funds due to PSR anyway.
After years of attempting to recover from their past mistakes in the transfer market, the club seems to be finally moving away from its PSR issues, which means it can operate properly in the transfer market this summer.
The early summer exits of Lewis Dobbin to Aston Villa and Ben Godfrey to Atalanta helped balance the books. However, the deal that will strengthen their PSR position majorly is Amadou Onana’s imminent £50m switch to Aston Villa.
The Belgian midfielder only joined the Toffees in the summer of 2022 from Lille for a reported fee of around £30m, plus an add-on of a 20 per cent sell clause on any profit the Toffees make from selling the midfielder.
Even with Lille taking their slice, Everton is still making a profit on a player who quite simply doesn’t fit into the plans of the current head coach, Sean Dyche. He actually found himself benched towards the end of last season.
Director of football Kevin Thelwell reportedly has big plans to move the team forward, even if he hasn’t got major money to work with. The plan is to buy younger players, develop them, and then sell them for a profit, just like the club has with Onana.
That sounds like a no-brainer plan, which the club should have been enacting anyway. However, somehow, they were stuck with a group of players who the club signed for overinflated prices and on big wages.
Everton have slowly started to get those players off the wage bill. In recent years, the club have trimmed the wage bill by selling underperforming players, and it has had a positive effect on their finances.
The club’s signings so far of young midfielder Tim Iroegbunam for £9m from Aston Villa and forward Iliman Ndiaye from Marseille for an initial fee of £15m look like the sort of deals that could prove to be shrewd in the future.
Neither player is arriving for a massive fee, which means there is little risk if their signings go wrong. This is definitely a change of tact from when the club wasted hundreds of millions on players who mostly flopped and then left on free transfers at the end of their massive contracts.
Thelwell, as the club’s director of football, and Sean Dyche, as head coach, at least bring some stability to the club, even if the ownership issues are far from cut and dry.
New bidders will emerge for Everton
The latest news of the Friedkin Group’s takeover bid collapsing seems to have led to major panic amongst certain sections of the Everton fanbase. Some are once again worrying about the club going into administration.
However, when respected journalists close to club affairs, such as the outstanding Giulia Bould, say there is no financial uncertainty at the club after the collapse of the takeover, I tend to believe them.
Lots of qu’s! My understanding right is The Friedkin Group paid off MSP’s £200m loan
But the 777 debt’s too big an issue to resolve due to lawsuits filed
TFG’s 200m is stable loan & means #EFC not in a precarious position
New stadium’s funded, there’s no financial uncertainty https://t.co/LNf3ELq8W4
— Giulia Bould (@GiuliaBould) July 19, 2024
Everton, with a brand new stadium on the Liverpool waterfront, is unlikely to be left on the shelf for long. New bidders will emerge. They will still have to overcome the hurdles that the Friedkin’s couldn’t.
However, it will happen eventually, but the feeling within and around the club seems to be that a new buyer will emerge sooner rather than later, and the club’s immediate future is in no danger.
There is also a suggestion that the Friedkin takeover deal may not have collapsed completely, as a similar thing happened with the group’s takeover of Italian giants Roma.
Even without the takeover, Everton is in a better place now than they were a few months ago. There is some positivity about the club’s transfer business, and hopefully, for the sake of the fans, the club and team will enjoy a less eventful campaign in season 2024/25.
Will Everton’s squad be stronger in season 2024/25 than it was in the previous campaign?