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How to Reach the Top 4

Moshiri – our long wanted billionaire – has just stated that Everton’s future is linked to Silva with the emphasis linked to bringing youth through to the first team. Can Silva do it, can Brand’s academy and scouts find the stars or is Moshiri expecting far too much. Why can’t he give us a start like the recent billionaires did elsewhere.

Let’s look at two clubs taken over by billionaires, namely Abramovich at Chelsea and the Qatar royalty at Man City, and see what commitment they’ve made.

Abramovich took Chelsea over in 2003, just after they won the FA Cup, he gave the existing manager Ranreiri year, then he sacked him after spending £153m to win the FA Cup. He then took on Mourinho from Porto. He immediately gave Mourinho £170m to spend on players (probably £450m in today’s transfer values) and Mourinho delivered by winning the Premier League in 2004-05 and 2005-06.

Mourinho had a few world class players already there, Makelele and Robben, probably being the main two players. Chelsea since under Abramovich have won a further 5 FA cups, 3 further Premier leagues, 3 League Cups, 1 Champions League, and 1 Europa League – so 16 trophies in 15 years, spending over £1.5bn and recouping £680m, and he’s gone through 10 managers in that time and bought 98 players.

The Qatar family took Manchester City over in 2008 after 25 years of not winning anything. The existing manager Mark Hughes was sacked after a year after finishing 10th in the league and he was given a £40m player in Robinho as a start, plus another £80m for players (in today's inflated transfers £250m?). He was replaced by Mancini who after 2 years, had got City into the Europa League after finishing 5th and then he won FA Cup, then in his 3rd season he got them into the Champions League after finishing 3rd.

He was given transfer monies totalling £350m in his 3 years, then he was sacked and Pellegrini was brought in who won them the Premier League in 2012, and 2014 and a League Cup. Pellegrini was given £250m in his 3 years. After a barren year with only finishing 2nd in the league, he was sacked to be replaced by current Guardiola who in his 3 years has won the League Cup twice and the Premier League once and spent £520m.

So, in total, the family have injected £1.3bn in their 10 years at the club and received back £350m in transfers, and they’ve bought 89 players. Trophy wise, it’s not as dynamic as Chelsea with 3 Premier Leagues, 3 League Cups and a FA Cup and they’ve only used 4 managers.

It’s fair to say both clubs have bought their way into success and have not really tried to use any serious academy, homegrown talent. Mourinho is notorious for avoiding youth, as is Guardiola, who quite clearly stated that with the time he got to obtain success at Bayern Munich and Man City he couldn’t/can’t rely on youth. He doesn’t like this, and his record at Barcelona showed he used youth, but again he says he knew the whole youth system there is set up to bring players through who are steeped in the Barcelona style and who know their jobs.

Both clubs also very quickly got into obtaining World Class managers, experienced, proven managers, who had done it at European level and had had success elsewhere.

So where do Everton stand? Moshiri took over Everton in Feb 2016 and has spent £320m on transfers in 3 years and recouped £186m. To be fair to the man, his main cash input has been in takeover costs, clearing debt and new stadium support, probably near or over £300-350m, with at least another £100m on the stadium to come in the next 2-3 years.

He’s clearly not in the same league financially as Abramovich or the Qatar family and in today’s costs I just can’t see him pumping in £100-150m a year in getting top class players, let alone supporting the astronomical wages they’ll want. We’ve made that mistake already with the likes of Schneiderlin, Ramirez, Bolasie, Klaassen, Tosun, Walcott and probably more.

We are not clearly going to be supported as we probably all thought 3 years ago with a mega billionaire throwing cash around like there’s no tomorrow. We haven’t taken on any European or English proven manager as I suspect Moshiri and Co know they’ll want the big monies transfer deals, and our only hope to get up there into the Champions League places is by bringing through youth either from our own academy or Brands finding the £10m gems from elsewhere, youngsters itching to be given an opportunity and only asking for a meagre £30-50k a week, rather than Ramirez’s £120k a week.

So our only route is a young manager with potential, a proven director of football and on the hope that we can find at least 6 youngsters who have the potential to become future Premier League class players. It probably won’t be as quick as Chelsea’s and Man City, more like the Spurs model, as Moshiri recently said. Is Silva the new Pochettino?

The major worry I have is that Pochettino inherited a team from Harry Rednapp at Spurs in 2014 who already had gained a top 4 place 3 years before, then 5th and 6th and already contained Vertonghen, Dembele, Eriksen, LLoris in it; within a year, Pochettino had supplemented them with Alli, Dier, Davies, Tripper, Wanyama and Alderweireld, total fees for all 6 players: £37m!! And of course they had the gem of Harry Kane from the academy. The 25-goal-a-season absolute-must player all top clubs need.

He got rid of about 2 dozen deadwood players within 2 years, including Sigurdsson, Livermore, Townsend, Solado, Kaboul and Paulinho. The rest since has been a roller coated ride for them, with 5th place in his first year and virtually top 4 since. He hasn’t won any trophies yet, but no doubt they are now top 4 material.

Not sure at all whether Silva has inherited anything special and we’ve got plenty of deadwood to shift ourselves. Oh and only time will tell if Silva is as good as Pochettino.

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