New Book
In August 2010, the club unveiled the Everton Timeline at Goodison Park. Extracted from The Everton Collection and stretching around three sides of the stadium, the 123 photographic images in the timeline chart major events in the club’s illustrious past.
Though updated periodically, the final image on Goodison Road celebrates the signing of Romelu Lukaku in 2014. Did time stand still for Everton Football Club, or has it simply failed to acknowledge the struggles which occurred during one of the most eventful periods in its 145-year history? This is the book that fills in all the gaps, on and off the field, during the tumultuous years of Farhad Moshiri’s ownership.
Welcome to The Unofficial Everton Timeline, a new book that I have co-written with Steve Dickinson and which is out now for purchase from Amazon, either in paperback or Kindle format.
It’s a book about modern-day football. It documents unbridled ambition crashing into chaotic reality, starting in 2014 when Moshiri first began talks with Bill Kenwright about taking a stake in Everton and going right up to the present day and the cliffhanger of the 777 Partners takeover saga and the club’s clash with the Premier League over Profitability and Sustainability rules.
It is a comprehensive and detailed chronicle of important matches, big dreams, colossal financial investments, unproductive transfers, property deals and engineering marvels.
But most of all, it is a book about people: moneymen, conflicting egos in the boardroom, highly rewarded players, and the real heroes of the story – a community of passionate Everton fans whose spirit, devotion and frustration, we hope, run through the chronology of an era that promised so much but which has brought this grand old team to the brink of disaster.
With the British-Iranian businessman seemingly about to exit stage left, we thought it was time to take stock and examine what really happened after the club’s ‘messiah’ owner arrived on the scene.
Over 600-odd pages, we try to answer some big questions:
- What assumptions did Farhad Moshiri make before and after becoming the club’s major shareholder?
- Why did things not work out the way he meant them to – not for the club and its fans, nor too for Moshiri?
- Would Moshiri ultimately achieve his goals and make a tidy return on his investment, or would he suffer a massive write-off and retire from this chapter of his life with his reputation in football circles in ruins?
- Most importantly, in what condition would Everton FC be at the end of the Moshiri era?
In short, we update the Everton Timeline. It’s the unofficial version of events – the version guaranteed never to be included on the club’s website, or on the walls of the stadium.
We know you’ll already know the answers to some of these questions – after all, you’ve lived it through eight rollercoaster years – and some of them still had no resolution by the time we went to print!
But we hope you’re moved to buy what I feel is part reference book, part historical narrative of one of the most turbulent and drama-filled periods in Everton history and stay with us from start to finish. It’s a fascinating story, after all.