Don’t let the results fool you: Everton is still a club with problems.
Sean Dyche has given the Blues confidence, belief and resilience and, as a result, a side that looked doomed when he took over now has a fighting chance of survival. Even if Manchester United end his four match unbeaten run and Everton return to the bottom three this weekend, supporters can take comfort from a wider perspective. His appointment was the right decision and that should be acknowledged. Dyche has built momentum with Everton and there are signs he is making genuine progress.
It is a different matter off the pitch, however. Nowhere is that clearer than in the latest set of club accounts. While the headline number points to a substantial reduction in the club’s losses for the last complete financial year, and some important savings have been made, the underlying figures remain chilling. Without the last-minute deal that took Richarlison to Tottenham Hotspur, it would have been a fourth consecutive year of losses of around £100m. Without another injection of support from majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri the situation would have been even worse. Everton are surviving on a drip of Moshiri’s millions and player sales - neither are sustainable in the long term.
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While the numbers contained within the 42 page document were revealing, the words within it also held significance. Or, more precisely, the words that were not contained in the report.
The accounts were introduced by forewords from Bill Kenwright and Denise Barrett-Baxendale. Other than Kenwright’s welcoming of Dyche to the club, these were the first public, on-the-record comments by the chairman and chief executive since before the game with Southampton - a dismal January afternoon that truly plunged Everton into chaos. Neither has attended a home match since the club claimed that afternoon that the safety of the pair, and of other senior figures, was at risk should they attend Goodison Park.
Since then a toxic impasse has developed between the board and elements of the fanbase. Everton is locked in a holding pattern whereby club directors are staying away from home matches while supporters, justifiably worried about the running of the club, are maintaining their pre-match protests - with more demonstrations calling for change to come. Barrett-Baxendale’s regular match programme updates have even stopped. This situation, like that portrayed in Everton’s accounts, is unsustainable.
Whether the relationship between the club hierarchy and sections of the Blues support can ever truly be repaired remains to be seen. It is doubtful. For some, a second consecutive relegation battle, the troubling financial outlook and the allegations that directors are not safe to attend home games - claims initially made without the intelligence input of Merseyside Police nor any specific incidents having been reported to the force - suggests the wounds can never heal.
But for there to be any chance of a return to stability, the consensus is the club should make the first move. And this is what makes Kenwright and Barrett-Baxendale's introduction to the accounts so significant. Their first public comments since the breakdown could have offered an olive branch to disaffected supporters. There could have been a recognition of the turmoil and a display of understanding that many supporters are scared of what will happen to their great club. There could perhaps even have been a degree of humility that those in power may hold at least some responsibility for the problems that blossomed over a dramatic January but had their roots in the previous years of chaos. There was none of this, however.
Instead, Barrett-Baxendale wrote of the club’s financial security - though the pages that followed included dire warnings should the threat of a relegation become hellish reality. Kenwright, for his part, chose to double down on the club’s insistence of innocence in the face of a referral to an independent commission by the Premier League for an alleged breach of profit and sustainability regulations. To hammer home that denial is within the club’s rights and it is important that even the fiercest critics of those who run Everton acknowledge the club is innocent unless proven otherwise. And given the club’s position that it worked closely with the Premier League during the period under scrutiny there is little doubt the governing body deserves scrutiny over its handling of this, at least while the specific allegation remains unclear.
Kenwright did mention the “instruction given to myself and my fellow board members not to attend Goodison Park”, but only to describe it as “painful”, adding: “That has hurt deeply.”
Whether he or Barrett-Baxendale could have written anything to appease their harshest critics is unlikely. But there are Blues who believe the responsibility is on the club to make the first move if relations are to have any chance of reparation.
That neither sought to do this, after months of opportunity for private reflection and despite having the freedom to extend into personal thoughts in the account forewords, represents a missed opportunity. This was the first time concerned supporters heard from either during months of deep instability and mistrust. Yet the words they chose not to write still haunted the accounts that followed - as they did Goodison over the following days. Ahead of Spurs, supporters marched again, this time beneath the replacement panel depicting Kenwright’s takeover of Everton in the club timeline along the perimeter of Goodison. The last one was discovered dumped in the Leeds Liverpool Canal. It has been that kind of season. Before the draw with Tottenham, fans marched once more because they want the best for their club. They say they will keep marching if they have to.
Whether those in power are watching is another matter.
But if Kenwright truly believes, as he wrote, that “a united football club is a stronger football club”, it may fall to the chairman or those around him to make the first move in bringing people together.
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