Business With Blain: A Place Called Start
With their feet under the table at Everton, TFG now need to set about enacting change.
By JohnB
The change of ownership at Everton had been a long-drawn-out affair. But finally, on December 18th, the purchase of the club by the Texas-based Friedkin Group (TFG) was completed through their investment vehicle Roundhouse Capital Holdings.
Chairman of the Board Dan Friedkin proposed Marc Watts as Executive Chairman with Analaura Moreira-Dunkel, TFG’s Chief Financial Officer, also joining the Board, alongside existing Interim CEO Colin Chong, with former owner Farhad Moshiri and his appointee John Spellman leaving with immediate effect.
The Board changes were expected, as was the conversion of the financial debt to Moshiri to equity, and the clearing or refinancing of other debts created from the new stadium build and the day-to-day running of the business, including the debt to TFG and the facility with Rights & Media Funding.
So far, so good, then. The result is the addition of very senior members of TFG, and it is welcome, as is the tidying of the balance sheet.
Watts and Dunkel seem like a transition team to me, and there is most definitely plenty of work for them to do. From afar, nothing has changed particularly on the sporting side, but the club has been stabilised and can now look forward and plan with some confidence.
After a short pause for the festive period, Everton fans will be eager to see how TFG set about improving the on-field outcomes, and they will hope for activity in the winter transfer window, as they and the club start preparations for next season and the move to the new Everton Stadium that already shines brightly on the banks of the Royal Blue Mersey.
Decisive leadership is something that has been absent from Everton for far too long, as also has been consistently effective engagement and communication with key stakeholders. The new leadership can set the tone now, learning from their recent experience at Roma and getting the fans onside can be achieved easily by walking-the-talk and being decisive in their decision making and clear in their communication.
TFG may have been wobbled by the fan reaction in Rome to coaching changes and so it seems likely, at least for now, that they will not be rushing to implement a change, even if a strategic decision has been made. Part of the challenges they have faced at Roma as of late can be attributed to a perfect storm of events that included losing a Director of Football, a coach and a CEO in quick succession.
Nonetheless, it is important that they hold their nerve, and not be pushed into making or implementing decisions to satisfy the whims of an expectant fan-base. That said, key lessons can be learnt not just from their experience in Rome but also the recent years at Everton.
At both clubs, communication with key stakeholders and specifically fans has not always been as effective as it could have been. Owners and executives who either could not or did not want to speak publicly left a void where tabloids and even more reputable news outlets had free rein to comment.
Everton football club have a heavily engaged fan base when it comes to social media. It is a breeding ground for rumours — both good and bad — that can spiral out of control and heap pressure on the club and its decision makers.
Improving and maintaining good media relations across the breath of social, new and legacy media is mandatory, and Everton would be wise to appoint a spokesperson; the de facto voice of the club, whose primary objective is to get as close to controlling the narrative as possible. Such a person, a Chief Engagement Officer, would oversee ALL engagement and communication with key stakeholders, ensuring consistency of messaging and being the point of reference for cutting through the speculation.
Sitting at Board-level, and as the external voice of the club, the Chief Engagement Officer would insulate those inside Everton from the noise that surrounds football clubs in general, specifically those in the Premier League. Sean Dyche may not have always delivered on the pitch, but off it, he has acted as the only consistent point of contact for both fans and the media, and has had to answer questions that no manager should on a regular basis.
With time to think and get things right, the internal team should ensure that Everton’s progress is steady and obvious; costs need to be reduced, and income needs to be increased.
A priority then for recruitment must be to find Board-level executives to join the Chief Engagement Officer, who add experience and skills to the organisation in the key disciplines of business operations and commercial (sales) activities. Job titles are not important, it is skills and experience that really matter, but if for now we call these roles Chief Operating Officer and Commercial Director, we can readily see the emergence of a more functional Board.
A problem that Everton has had for a while has been where the role of the Director of Football sits inside the organisation, and indeed TFG’s issues at Roma seemed to start when their Director of Football — Tiago Pinto — left earlier in 2024 (he is now at Bournemouth). Their CEO, Lina Souloukou, had to step into the breach, and so began a series of unfortunate events that culminated in some sections of Roma’s fans gathering outside the school of Souloukou’s child, following the dismissal of club great Daniele De Rossi. Souloukou has since joined Nottingham Forest, who have shown this season that you do not need too much to complete a quick turnaround in fortunes.
For me, and for some my view is too bold or simply wrong, the Director of Football should sit at Board-level and be a peer of the Chief Operating Officer and the Commercial Director. A holy trinity of natural tension could be nurtured by the Executive Chairman to stimulate a low-cost operation, increasing revenues and better on-field outcomes simultaneously.
In my view, two excellent candidates for the roles I have highlighted are born, not manufactured, Evertonians; those people are out there right now, and I suspect would not be able to resist the call to come home.
TFG, then, find themselves at a place called start. Two senior executives from the group sit on the Board, with the support of interim CEO Chong, who provides for continuity from the old to the new way of working. They have time to get it right, but ideally an improved Board needs to be in place before the end of the season and ideally sooner as critical decisions, over the futures of Kevin Thelwell, Dyche and not to mention several players — some of them first-team regulars — need to be made sooner rather than later.