Project: Reset?

[chippy1722]

I wonder what it must feel like, getting your payslip at the end of the month and the top line says

Gross pay £400,000

and you know you haven't earned it or deserved it?

The windows open soon so Marcel might put a few weeks work in and earn some back.

 

[TheBigIguana]

I wonder what it must feel like, getting your payslip at the end of the month and the top line says

Gross pay £400,000

and you know you haven't earned it or deserved it?

Probably somewhere between great and NEA. It isn't like these guys didn't work hard to get to this point anyway. I'm sure Oumar just loved having monkey sounds changed at him playing for Lokomotiv and that Martina enjoyed flying to Curacao so he could say he was an international but they worked through it and got a break to make good money.

 

[Armaghtoffee]

Not many new threads about at the moment.

Hello users of number one Everton-themed fansite GrandOldTeam.com.

And the slow, slow rumble through the remaining fixtures of Project Restart (I've included a Guardian link to explain what this is because all fans of the Eff love the Guardian), a series of televised placid summer kickabouts exhibited against the backdrop of artificial sound noises and false hype - perhaps even falser than usual. People want you to care - and YOU SHOULD BECAUSE THE NATION'S MORALE DEPENDS ON IT!!! - but really, it's something to do of an evening now that the clapping isn't fashionable any more. Michael Keane scored and we won yesterday.

View attachment 92001

There's been a lot drafted in recent weeks - some true, some hyperbole - that Project Restart represents the worst of modern football. Product over common sense; league rules changed mid-competition; the inequalities of the league pyramid laid bare by governance decisions made in silo. Multi-million pound clubs, often the guady totems of social excess, relying on the financial crutches of furloughing, reductions and deferred payments. For many this version of football doesn't need a restart, but a resuscitation.

For the Blues, it's difficult to restart something that never really started in the first place. We've never been in any real danger of triumph or despair this season. Photoshop some PPE on this picture of Marco Silva and you'll have our souless stasis pre-Ancellotti anthromorphised.

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What this Club really needs is a Project Restart. And we're well on the way.

The bizarre financial netherworld that football inhabits encourages, even incubates, waste and excess on a, well, pandemic scale. And it's infectious - there's not a club in the Premier League that hasn't needed its temperature checked in recent years, with many, including us, being in IOU ICU. We all understand it's a squad game, but the modern game funnels vast fortunes out to individuals who will, over the course of the season, give very little back to their parent organisations in exchange for their bit of silver. Truly bizarre; no serious organisations with these turnovers would carry so many non-contributors for so great an outlay. And yet football clubs do so every year.

Earlier in the week I compiled a list of players I would happily see metaphorically flung a furlong away from the sustaining teet of Everton - the process of which has begun this week:

Gylfi
Niasse
Martina
Davies
Garbutt
Walcott
Delph
Bolasie
Sidibe
Tosun
Stek
Sandro
Besic
Dowell
Schneiderlin
Pickford

Ok - there's probably several there can already pick their locker for next season, safe in the knowledge that they'll wander onto the pitch at some stage to varying levels of delivery. And to be fair, of the possible cumulative 155 appearances these five could have made this year, they have made 119. Performance levels notwithstanding, their absence would have been at least moderately impactful, and so we can at least say we have had some value for our outlay.

Let's look at the rest in terms of Premier League appearances for their main employers this season [in brackets]:

Niasse [3]
Martina [0]
Garbutt [0]
Bolasie [0]
Sidibe [21]
Tosun [5]
Stek [0]
Sandro [0]
Besic [0]
Dowell [0]
Schneiderlin [15]

11 players who have, at some stage, been considered members of the first team squad in their time here - and several of whom will be among the mid-to-high range of earners. Of a potential cumulative appearance of 341, this motley crew have turned out a mere 44 times. Perhaps this is harsh on Stekelenburg to be included here, but most of the rest have been in no danger of being needed by a side that still runs at more losses than wins for the season (at time of writing). Seven of those named here have made fewer appearances than Jean-Philippe Gbamin this season.

But why does this matter? Because we are shelling out, per week, a mind-collapsing amount of money to them for negligible return. Apart from perhaps Sidibe (debatable) and Schneiderlin (highly debatable), they could all have left last summer with zero impact on our football, their entire reason for being gainfully employed. Or perhaps people like Bolasie's Twitter giveaways enough to keep him going.

But just how much wong are we wanging their way? Disclaimer: I have no idea about the veracity for this football wages site. The sentiment is probably broadly right.

Niasse [£55,000 per week]
Martina [£35,000]
Garbutt [£28,000]
Bolasie [£75,000]
Sidibe [???]
Tosun [£60,000]
Stek [£30,000]
Sandro [£65,000]
Besic [£27,500]
Dowell [£15,000]
Schneiderlin [£100,000]

I'll leave Sidibe out here because I couldn't find the info - which is even more damning for this process, because he's got the most appearances. So for the rest, we have spent roughly £490,000 a week for virtually no material impact. Or £390,000 a week for a total of 8 appearances from everyone who isn't Morgan Schneiderlin. So top end, £2m a month, £24m a year. We sell 31,000 season tickets a season, and even if we sold them all at top rate (~£565), that's about £17.5m. It's genuinely that broken a system. Sure, some of those wages will have been picked up by loan clubs, but Ipswich wouldn't have been able to carry Garbutt's wage, and Sporting weren't getting anywhere near Bolasie's largesse, pun intended.

Football, as a modern game and modern business, must embark on its own Project Restart with its approach to wages and waste. "In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity", another quote perhaps erroneously attributed to Einstein. But now it must address the gravity of its fiscal danger, and restart before a big bang.

For it change there must be a collective will for it to change but at least all clubs can agree on the common denominator of money.

Covid has done its bit to highlight that every thing can change in an instant but even so, English football’s true reset button may be the creation of a European league and the departure of the trough hogging select.

 

[Brownie]

Good article but could have used a joke.

 

[OneTrueLegend]

Niasse [£55,000 per week]
Martina [£35,000]
Garbutt [£28,000]
Bolasie [£75,000]
Sidibe [???]
Tosun [£60,000]
Stek [£30,000]
Sandro [£65,000]
Besic [£27,500]
Dowell [£15,000]
Schneiderlin [£100,000]

250k a week freed up now, don't imagine we'll be taking Sidibe back, can probably get Dowell, Besic and Sandro out on loan for another year. Massive shame about Tosun's injury but slight hopes of him being fit enough for a move by October. Pretty much leaves Bolasie.

Terrible recruitment but we're moving back in the right direction now.

I think the hardest ones to move out will be Bolasie, Sandro and Tosun, because of the wages they are on. Maybe Palace would be back in for Tosun, when he's fit again, but probably only on loan, Sandro could possibly move back to Spain again, but he hasn't been very good on loan there and no one will pay him the wages. Then there's Bolasie, probably another loan to a lesser European league again. But I would imagine with all these loans, we will be paying part of the wages.

If Brands can get them all gone and totally off the wage bill I would be very impressed

 

[mrb85]

Yeah that's definitely right. I do also think we will likely also sell one of either Digne or Richarlison this summer (likely the former who seems a bit out of sorts). We'll bring in, of course, but it's the time to make some drastic corrections to the club's financial health. The whole point of the above, of course, is we can do that with virtually no impact on the footy side.

Digne, top of the PL chances created this season apparently. Surprised me that. Way above the much praised Robertson.

 

[orly]

Digne, top of the PL chances created this season apparently. Surprised me that. Way above the much praised Robertson.

Digne is one of my favourite players in recent years. I wouldn't want him sold if avoidable, but I think he'll get picked up by one of the big CL clubs again

 

[DanEFC92]

We still have Shani Tarashaj on the books ffs

 

[matty1878]

Digne is one of my favourite players in recent years. I wouldn't want him sold if avoidable, but I think he'll get picked up by one of the big CL clubs again

but if we can grow then he won’t want to go

 

[Brownie]

I saw an article the other day listing the players Liverpool had signed under Klopp, and the most obvious difference between theirs and ours was the value they'd got out of their big-money signings. Pretty much every player they've signed for £20mil+ since 2016 has been a success, whereas ours have been a mixture of average to poor.

Alisson
Keita
Fabinho
Van Dijk
Salah
Ox-Cham
Mane
Wijnaldum

vs

Iwobi
Kean
Gbamin
Gomes
Richarlison
Mina
Sigurdsson
Pickford
Keane
Klaassen
Walcott
Tosun
Bolasie
Schneiderlin

They'd tended to spend higher fees on a lower number of players, which you could argue is what we should have done. Then again, the one massive-money signing we've made was Sigurdsson, which was clearly not worth it.

The good news is that, prior to Klopp, they famously spent loads of money on absolute garbage too. It is possible to turn it around, but our recruitment needs to be a hell of a lot better than it has been. If we get three or four signings absolutely right in the next couple of windows (and continue to discard the unwanted high earners), we could start to generate a bit of momentum under Ancelotti and get much better overall value out of the squad.

 

[Goat]

I saw an article the other day listing the players Liverpool had signed under Klopp, and the most obvious difference between theirs and ours was the value they'd got out of their big-money signings. Pretty much every player they've signed for £20mil+ since 2016 has been a success, whereas ours have been a mixture of average to poor.

Alisson
Keita
Fabinho
Van Dijk
Salah
Ox-Cham
Mane
Wijnaldum

vs

Iwobi
Kean
Gbamin
Gomes
Richarlison
Mina
Sigurdsson
Pickford
Keane
Klaassen
Walcott
Tosun
Bolasie
Schneiderlin

They'd tended to spend higher fees on a lower number of players, which you could argue is what we should have done. Then again, the one massive-money signing we've made was Sigurdsson, which was clearly not worth it.

The good news is that, prior to Klopp, they famously spent loads of money on absolute garbage too. It is possible to turn it around, but our recruitment needs to be a hell of a lot better than it has been. If we get three or four signings absolutely right in the next couple of windows (and continue to discard the unwanted high earners), we could start to generate a bit of momentum under Ancelotti and get much better overall value out of the squad.

Keita is utter garbo.

 

[Brownie]

Keita is utter garbo.

I don't really have an opinion on him to be honest, haven't seen him much.