The news of Dan Friedkin probably buying Everton seems to have generally gone down well.
During the course of a boring Italy v Albania match, I thought I’d have a look at how he has run Roma, as an indication of what might be in store for us. For those hoping to see a spending spree, the retention of Branthwaite, and the replacement of Dyche with a sexier manager, then be warned – this article isn’t for you…
Background
Friedkin bought Roma in August 2020 for around £465M. A few facts about Roma at that point:
- Roma had just finished 5th in Serie A, 8 points behind 4th-place Lazio – and so just missing out on a Champions League spot;
- They were rated (by Transfermarkt) as having the 4th most valuable squad in Serie A – €380M.
What has been the trend since?
Working backwards from the 2023-24 season to the 2020-21 season, it looks like this:
- League placings: 6th, 6th, 6th, 7th;
- Squad value: €320M (6th), €341M (6th), €411M (5th), €398M (6th)
So, on a very crude metric, Roma have been more or less matching the value of their squad in terms of performance. That’s fairly normal. And it’s a continuation of where they were pre-takeover – albeit falling further away from Champions League placings.
The managers
- Daniele DeRossi: 2023-24;
- Jose Mourinho: 2021-22 to 2023-24;
- Paulo Fonseca: 2019-20 to 2020-21.
I’ll give you a quote from ESPN on why Mourinho was sacked because it is pretty illuminating for us, I reckon:
Here’s the reality – Mourinho wasn’t sacked because he had lost the dressing room or because fans were calling for his head: …. Rather, he’s gone because the Friedkins are businessmen, and they made a business decision.
… Roma lost €184M ($200M) in 2020-21 and €219M ($238.1M) the following year, Mourinho’s first at the club. The record losses in 2021-22, when they were among the biggest net spenders on transfers in Europe, meant they breached UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations and were put under a settlement agreement, which restricted their spending.
Effectively, the club had gambled that investing heavily on the squad (initially on transfer fees, later in pricey veteran free agents, giving the club the third highest wage bill in the league) and on Mourinho himself (the second-highest-paid manager in Serie A) would deliver consistent Champions League football. That, in turn, would drive revenue, both in terms of prize money and commercial deals. Instead, they finished sixth in his first two seasons while winning the UEFA Europa Conference League in 2021-22 and reaching the Europa League final the following year.
To put it bluntly, the managerial position is very much driven by delivery against financial metrics rather than sporting success. A Europa Conference League trophy doesn’t really pass muster if you’re spending at Champions League level (exactly how Everton were behaving 2016 to 2020, albeit without any silverware).
The spending
Although the club has stayed very stable as one of the best of the rest in the Europa League places, it has been achieved against the backdrop of very different spending in the past couple of years:
2023-24: 18th lowest spenders at +€63M (6th) and finished 6th
2022-23: +€64M (6th) and finished 6th
2021-22: –€115M (5th) and finished 6th
2020-21: +€26M (6th) and finished 7th
2019-20: +€10M (6th) and finished 5th (in the season before Friedkin bought)
So the trend of the past two seasons is extremely heavy cost-cutting and players sales. Only a very small fraction of the proceeds of sales have been reinvested in the playing squad. However, it doesn’t seem to have hurt them. They’ve managed to maintain (albeit not improve) the value of the squad (relative to peers) and the league placings despite the extremely heavy cost cutting.
Wages
This information is harder to find (for me at least).
It looks as though Roma currently have the third biggest wage bill in Serie A at €111M. That is a deeply concerning position for the club – when you compare it to, say, Bologna who finished just above them in 5th this season and have a wage bill of only €28M.
I can’t tell what the trend is with this over the period of Friedkin’s ownership, because I can’t find the data. However, it looks as though high wages are a legacy of heavy spending in the early Mourinho years – that ties in with the ESPN article. They were probably hoping that his management combined with a bit of a spending gamble could get them competing at the top of the table. They were wrong. With their 5th to 7th finishes, they are underperforming their wage bill by some distance. In Serie A, 5th to 7th in wages terms is between €60M to €75M.
This creates an unsustainable position for the club and drives behaviour in the transfer market.
Transfers
This is probably the depressing bit for those hoping to see a spending spree to reinvigorate the Everton squad. In the past two seasons, Roma have only bought three players for a fee:
- Baldanzi – €10M from Empoli
- Celik – €7M from Lille
- Paredes – €2.5M from PSG
Otherwise, the squad has been bolstered by a very high volume of loans and free transfers. In fact, that’s very clearly the focus of their transfer activity.
They brought in 8 players on loan in the past 2 seasons and 7 free transfers. The free transfers have largely been good quality, including; Dybala, Ndicka, Aouar, Svilar, Belotti and Matic. The loans too, with the likes of Lukaku, Angelino, Kristiansen, Llorente, Azmoun, Sanches, Huijsen and Camara.
Especially with the frees of Ndicka, Aouar and Svilar, this looks like a fairly low-cost way of managing the squad and transfers. I do wonder though if the volume of free transfers hits the wage bill a bit, since players on a free can probably demand slightly higher wages than they might otherwise have got. The loans of Lukaku and Sanches will have cost big wages too.
The Squad
Interestingly, the First XI is not built on the players bought in the heavier spending days of a few seasons ago. A set of players bought for over €20M has either moved on already or failed to deliver. This is a consistent picture for transfers generally – except for those clubs who can afford to pay top dollar for genuine talent.
Roma (like Everton) have discovered that, for the less well-resourced clubs, there’s generally no point spending more than about €20M on a player – because there are almost always a good range of lower-cost options available for the same sort of quality.
Instead, they are very obviously building up a squad patiently on the cheap.
What does it mean for Everton?
Obviously, time will tell… but it seems to me that, this summer, any Friedkin-led ownership will simply carry on with what has always looked likely – sales of Branthwaite and Onana and reinvestment of no more than about 50% of the sales proceeds back into the squad.
Transfer activity will again revolve around a few lower-cost purchases and probably very heavy use of the free and loan market.
As I have maintained for a little while now, that is disappointing but need not be doom and gloom. The early Moshiri years showed us how pointless it is to spend big money on average players – when there are plenty of average players to be found at very low cost indeed. What is worthwhile is spending a bit more on genuine youth talent – like Roma have done with Baldanzi, a player who is not yet established in the First XI but could well be a really important player for them over the next 5 to 10 years.
In terms of management, I think Friedkin (and basically every interested party) will see Sean Dyche as an absolute diamond – a rare manager with a track record of outperforming the quality of the squad and level of investment. The idea of sacking him and replacing him with an inevitably higher-risk ‘name’ seems extremely unlikely.
So expect the likes of Adams, Brownhill, Bogle, McBurnie and Taylor – all likely targets on free transfers – and the likes of Phillips, Luiz, Broja, Ugochukwu, Fofana, Brereton Diaz, Ndiaye, Hutchison, Barranachea, McAtee, Norton-Cuffey, Nelson, Kabore and Doyle – all likely targets on loan.
And maybe no more than just two or three actual purchases. We’ll see.