Nuclear scientists recently moved forward the Doomsday Clock – their estimate of how close humanity is to global catastrophe – to just 90 seconds to midnight.  

But what is more alarming to Evertonians is the ticking of our club’s very own Doomsday Clock.

Relegation in itself would not spell immediate annihilation for the Blues, but it could certainly place the continued existence of the club in jeopardy. Think that is an exaggeration? Well, it was Farhad Moshiri who, only last week, said: “This is the most critical time in our history. It is almost an existential point.”

Because without the huge income from the Premier League broadcasting deals, we would – to put it mildly – struggle to make ends meet.

Financially, we are currently up Schitt Creek, but with a paddle. If we are relegated, we will be up Schitt Creek without a paddle.

Many Blues have been looking upon relegation in May as the likely outcome, even though the Everton Doomsday Clock says there are still 18 games to go until midnight.

Let’s beware any self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. There is almost half the season to go, we are two points from safety and four points from 14th place.

We need to replace negativity with positivity. We need change.

Yes, the manager is being changed, yet again. Good luck, Sean Dyche. But we also need to change the board. It would be wrong to lay all the responsibility for our current predicament at its door. But it has overseen this drift towards oblivion.

The Everton Shareholders Association executive committee is renewing its call for supporters to sign its online petition that is a vote of no confidence in the club’s board of directors.

Of course, some might say we should call for majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri, who is not a director and not on the board, to also move on. We might do that, if we can ever find £500million to buy him out.

In the meantime, if you have not signed the petition, we urge you to do so. Essentially, it is a call for the majority owner to appoint a fresh set of directors – ones with greater experience of running a business the size of Everton Football Club. Ones with more expertise.

It is a company with an annual revenue of around £200million in a fiercely competitive industry. The club motto is Nil Satis Nisi Optimum, frequently translated as Nothing But The Best. Surely that applies in the boardroom as well as on the pitch. But the word dysfunctional is being used time and time again by neutral commentators in connection with Everton.

The board has spoken of its strategic review, and the fact that it apparently contains 120 recommendations. Is that not an implicit admission though of how it has got things wrong? Also, how many of these recommendations should have been implemented five, ten, fifteen years ago? Does this help to explain how we have been overtaken by Brighton and Brentford?
 
It is a board that marketed the club as a caring, community club, but undermined this by going for sponsorships with betting companies, helping to fuel the gambling epidemic that has wreaked havoc in families and communities up and down the country. 
 
It is a board that has had long enough to have Everton punching its weight, or nearer to its weight.
 
If you have not yet signed the petition and if you are unhappy with the state of Everton, please sign now. It is far more useful than booing. And infinitely better than shouting abuse. 
 
A new set of well-chosen directors has the potential to breathe fresh life and fresh ideas into the club.

Finally, we would urge all supporters to recognise that now the transfer window has closed, these are the only players we have until the end of the season. The more support that they receive, the more likely we are to see the best of them and the more likely that we avoid the nightmare of relegation and a financial nuclear winter.

Reader Comments (9)

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Alexander Murphy
1 Posted 01/02/2023 at 12:41:15
Bringing in somebody of the calibre of Nicola Cortese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Cortese

as CEO makes sense to Me.

Paul Kossoff
2 Posted 01/02/2023 at 14:22:08
Are all our woes down to sheer incompetence, or a Premier league rule that allows one club to spend over six hundred million on players and another to be unable to spend nothing?
Surely that leads to an unfair playing field in any sport.
Paul Jones
3 Posted 01/02/2023 at 20:03:56
Paul @2

Unfortunately for all of us, this incompetent board has sanctioned £600M worth of spending in the last few years and the personnel recruited for that outlay are pretty bad.

I wouldn't give them another chance to spaff that much up against the wall.

Peter Fearon
4 Posted 01/02/2023 at 20:04:17
The Doomsday Clock. Please! I'm disappointed we did not sign one or two of the players we were linked with and overjoyed we didn't sign others. This kind of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth does nothing to lift the clouds over the club and players - and it's part of the chorus of catastrophe that helps to convince players not to sign for us. A vicious circle. At any event, no single player we were likely to sign could have taken this responsibility on his shoulders and most would not be fit enough or experienced enough to have a decisive impact in the short term. The fact is that we have the players to get us out of this mess. It's up to Dyche to get a tune out of them. Keep the Faith. Nil Satis Nisi Salvos.
Paul Jones
5 Posted 01/02/2023 at 20:15:44
Hi Peter.

I'm not sure we're you get the idea from that this group of players can turn this around.

You only need to look at the end of last season when we managed to scrape safety in the penultimate game. Since then we've lost the talismanic goalscorer whose goals helped us get the points we needed. He's not been replaced. Gordon has gone. We can't score goals and our defending has become deeply suspect.

So where is the evidence that we will survive?

Tony Abrahams
6 Posted 01/02/2023 at 20:33:48
Good sentiments are starting to come through from a lot of sensible Evertonians, now. We need to get behind the team, and forget about the phoney’s, who have traded on the people’s club for years, whilst showing the true colours, what they possess deep down.

The board have always cared a lot more about themselves, so let them continue to do this, whilst staying away from Goodison Pk. If they can do this, then the supporters can get behind the players, and give our club a chance of staying up.

If you are not going to change the board Farhad Moshiri, then at least ban your toxic board from attending games at Goodison Pk, please… If you do this, then the fans will have no distractions, whilst trying to lift the team from our very precarious position, and if Everton survive, then you will make a lot more money when you finally sell us.

IT’S A NO BRAINER FARHAD, PLEASE HELP US TO KEEP THE TOXICITY AWAY FROM GOODISON PARK.

Mike Owen
7 Posted 02/02/2023 at 12:49:10
Peter, 4,

Big, big problems await us if we go down this season.

To start with, that Championship is like a swamp, can be very difficult to get out of.

Then there is the small matter of finding something like £200million or more to complete the new stadium.

And the EFL is much stricter in applying its financial rules than the PL. What's more, it doesn't shy away from deducting points.

Just had a quick look on internet and it seems Reading, Birmingham, Derby, Luton, Bournemouth, Rotherham and Leeds are clubs who have suffered EFL points deductions.

For example, I have just read that Reading were deducted six points in November 2021 for breaching the EFL's profit and sustainability rules, which permit a maximum loss of £39m across three seasons.

And it is Moshiri who said: "This is the most critical time in our history. It is almost an existential point."

He knows a bit more about the club's finances than any of us.

Alan J Thompson
8 Posted 02/02/2023 at 15:32:57
Mike(#7); You say that EFL's P&S rules allow only for a 39M loss over 3 years against EPL's 105M but if next year was to be our first then what would make up the 3 years in which we would be assessed as we would surely have a case that the years in EPL came under a different set of rules and therefore any penalty based on our time in EPL would be unfair and out of EFL's jurisdiction.
Mike Owen
9 Posted 03/02/2023 at 12:45:19
A good question, Alan.

I did wonder that myself. I had stumbled across that "£39M over three years" on the internet yesterday and thought it was worth mentioning, given that our losses in recent years have been a lot more.

As you say, must be two different sets of rules. Must be a rule already in place about clubs coming down from the Premier League. Quite possibly somewhere in the small print of the EFL website.

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