Reality check: are we small-time?

[Jeff Jones]

Riiiiight...

Let's bid for their first-teamers and see if no one laughs at us: Vidic, Van Persie, Rooney, Hernandez, Carrick, Evra etc.

Whereas if they bid for our first-teamers? And what would we do with the money we get? We wouldn't be bidding for the likes of Bale, Mata or Aguero. We'd be scouring smaller clubs for talent.


I'd love our new manager to convince us and everyone else we're on the same level as the top 5 clubs. Just like Moyes tried to when he first came in, until reality soured his relationship with ambition.

It looks as though you've given us a usable, stand alone definition of 'Big club'. At last.

So, we can positively say that Manchester City and Chelsea are now big clubs and it's purely down to having had an awful
lot of money made available to them, recently.

The fact that they've had a pitiful amount of success in the previous hundred odd years can be discounted.

Money it is, then. Ah well, at least we can say that we used to be a big club.

 

[dholliday]

What are the terms of reference? It's easy to define a small club - Torquay Utd - but how do you define a big club?

I asked this question on another thread once, but haven't seen an answer. Maybe it's further on in this thread. I'll keep scrolling.

Relative to the Premiership and by extension Europe's top leagues and clubs. So the 20 clubs of the Prem, all the clubs from the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A...and the top few clubs of second-tier leagues like the French/Portugese/Dutch/Scotland.

Say about 100 clubs in all. Or you can take UEFA's top 100 ranking, and work out which of them are big clubs.

Out of those 100 clubs, which offer:

top-end turnover
massive wage bill
regular transfer funds
regular sold-out attendances
big worldwide fanbase
contemporary trophy haul
contemporary title challenges
regular European football
attracting biggest names in the game
not a sellers' club
not a club that takes on bigger club's rejects
able to find a buyer if the club is put on sale
significant social media presence


If all or most of these are ticked, then you can safely say that is a contemporary big club (as opposed to a historically big club, which we undoubtedly are).

 

[dholliday]

It looks as though you've given us a usable, stand alone definition of 'Big club'. At last.

So, we can positively say that Manchester City and Chelsea are now big clubs and it's purely down to having had an awful
lot of money made available to them, recently.

The fact that they've had a pitiful amount of success in the previous hundred odd years can be discounted.

Money it is, then. Ah well, at least we can say that we used to be a big club.

Yeah, pretty much. I expanded in my previous post just above.

Once we're recognised by the outside world as a contemporary big club (achieved largely via regular Champions League football), we should be able to attract bigger and better players, managers & investors. This increases our chances of trophies.

I'm confident this is possible without the big-money influx of a Man City or Chelsea. As I said in an earlier post, we just need to be a little more ambitious in our thinking (new Chief Exec, Director of Football & Manager specifically with this aim in mind).

 

[Quim]

Yeah, pretty much. I expanded in my previous post just above.

Once we're recognised by the outside world as a contemporary big club (achieved largely via regular Champions League football), we should be able to attract bigger and better players, managers & investors. This increases our chances of trophies.

I'm confident this is possible without the big-money influx of a Man City or Chelsea. As I said in an earlier post, we just need to be a little more ambitious in our thinking (new Chief Exec, Director of Football & Manager specifically with this aim in mind).

No way are you German lad your English is bett then mine. I personally don't think your a red on here to wind up, I just think you might be round the bend

 

[manxtoffee]

The post above made me chuckle.

Are we a big club? Yes.

Here is why

Because our history tells us we are a big club. Slight problem is we haven't a pot to p¡ss in. Put it this way I certainly don't see Man Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea as bigger than us; they just have a lot more money.

 

[anton66]

If we can't afford to pay compensation for a manager we are very small time.

 

[Jeff Jones]

Relative to the Premiership and by extension Europe's top leagues and clubs. So the 20 clubs of the Prem, all the clubs from the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A...and the top few clubs of second-tier leagues like the French/Portugese/Dutch/Scotland.

Say about 100 clubs in all. Or you can take UEFA's top 100 ranking, and work out which of them are big clubs.

Out of those 100 clubs, which offer:

top-end turnover
massive wage bill
regular transfer funds
regular sold-out attendances
big worldwide fanbase
contemporary trophy haul
contemporary title challenges
regular European football
attracting biggest names in the game
not a sellers' club
not a club that takes on bigger club's rejects
able to find a buyer if the club is put on sale
significant social media presence


If all or most of these are ticked, then you can safely say that is a contemporary big club (as opposed to a historically big club, which we undoubtedly are).

I wonder how many clubs from those leagues tick enough of those boxes to have them worthy of the label.

We had a European G16 fairly recently, though the number changed from time to time. How many of them still
qualify? What do you think?

The Scots will be delighted if they ever hear that you've anointed their league as second tier, so tell me, is Glasgow Rangers a
big club?

 

[dholliday]

No way are you German lad your English is bett then mine. I personally don't think your a red on here to wind up, I just think you might be round the bend

haha! round the bend is right

I'm dual-nationality. My english has been good enough to write for newspapers, and my german is good enough to deal with clients in my dayjob. Lucky to have family from both sides, so was brought up with both lingos...tried to learn a third language from scratch (czech)...failed miserably.

I wonder how many clubs from those leagues tick enough of those boxes to have them worthy of the label.

All aren't necessary, but if clubs can tick most of them (like the top 5 of the Prem do) then yes, they're classed as contemporary big clubs.

We had a European G16 fairly recently, though the number changed from time to time. How many of them still
qualify? What do you think?

I don't know anything about a European G16. What is that?

The Scots will be delighted if they ever hear that you've anointed their league as second tier, so tell me, is Glasgow Rangers a
big club?

Even a rabid scotsman would concede their league is second (or even third) tier in terms of European leagues.

Rangers are historically a big club, with still a large following. But they don't tick many (or any) of those boxes do they? So no, they're not classed as a big club right now. Celtic arguably aren't either, because of the (lack of) quality of the league they play in discredits their overall status a tad. Tho' they do offer Champions League.

Think from the view not of the fans, but of high-end players, managers and investors. That's the point. Of course, through the eyes of fans we're gonna have our romantic ideals. But those ideals aren't attracting the top talent. This thread came about to attempt to explain why we aren't attracting top talent. If we're a big club, the biggest talent should want to come here, no?


What does attract the biggest talent? (contemporary) Big Club status.

Are we a contemporary Big Club? No.
Are we a historically Big Club. Yes.

Does this distinction matter? Yes, see thread.

Are we small-time? Cheese on toast.

 

[dholliday]

How about, instead of focussing on whether we're a big club or not (as that's just going round in circles), we focus on suggestions on how to make us bigger? Or put differently, we focus on how not to appear small-time?

I know some of you feel we shouldn't care, but I for one want us to attract bigger and better talent, and by improving our status we improve our chance of doing that.


I suggested this earlier:

- new Chief Exec to oversee a global strategy to improve our status (marketing, sponsorship, stadium etc).
- new Director of Football to aid the Chief Exec in this strategy in football matters.
- new manager who refuses transfer deals which smack of small-time, who focusses on deals which appear big-time (of course, the player in the first instance has to fit the team, but his status/reputation should be a secondary consideration)

This strategy involves the employ of three key people who'll work closely together (plus any extra underlings they might need). The coaching staff (Stubbs and co) can by-and-large stay as it is. We know how well we can play.


We don't need the Sheikh/Oligarch buy-out (many of us don't even want that). We just need to employ a clever strategy. Levy, Wenger and Ferguson have achieved massively-improving their clubs' status by slowly implementing such clever management strategies.

We, famously, haven't done that. Elstone, Kenwright, the failed Kirkby project...this is one area where I'm sure most of us agree is lacking in coherence and progression.


(maybe it's getting boring now, feel free to ignore this thread if there's nothing left to say)

 

[Loz]

Eighteen years ago, before the 1995 cup final, Joe Royle was interviewed and the words "sleeping giant" were used to describe an Everton that had not won anything since winning the league eight years earlier.

It has been eighteen years since that cup final and we have won nothing since it and have seen our financial standing amongst the other "big clubs" fall significantly as our chairman and board have stood still since they took over the club. We now stand on the brink of maybe appointing a first time manager from the ranks of Phil Neville, David Weir, Duncan Ferguson, Alan Stubbs etc. All great servants of the club but none of them were particularly exciting players and none have managerial experience. It's the kind of decision that we could be expected to make if we were Kidderminster...not Everton.

Has it really come to this?? Maybe the brutal reality is that we are a famous old club, but no longer a big club. There is a difference.....as the likes of Notts County, Huddersfield, Bolton Wanderers etc could attest to.

 

[dholliday]

Eighteen years ago, before the 1995 cup final, Joe Royle was interviewed and the words "sleeping giant" were used to describe an Everton that had not won anything since winning the league eight years earlier.

It has been eighteen years since that cup final and we have won nothing since it and have seen our financial standing amongst the other "big clubs" fall significantly as our chairman and board have stood still since they took over the club. We now stand on the brink of maybe appointing a first time manager from the ranks of Phil Neville, David Weir, Duncan Ferguson, Alan Stubbs etc. All great servants of the club but none of them were particularly exciting players and none have managerial experience. It's the kind of decision that we could be expected to make if we were Kidderminster...not Everton.

Has it really come to this?? Maybe the brutal reality is that we are a famous old club, but no longer a big club. There is a difference.....as the likes of Notts County, Huddersfield, Bolton Wanderers etc could attest to.

Aye, tho' I wouldn't be quite so extreme in the clubs you're comparing us to. I'd say we compare more with the likes of Villa, Newcastle, Sunderland & West Ham regarding status.

But your general point is fair.

 

[Number_25]

We're massive in terms of history, but at the moment we're a 'small time club'.

Being a huge player in world football means two things.

• Winning trophies.
• Qualifying for European football.

We haven't done both for quite some time.

 

[dholliday]

We're massive in terms of history, but at the moment we're a 'small time club'.

Being a huge player in world football means two things.

• Winning trophies.
• Qualifying for European football.

We haven't done both for quite some time.

Yeah, at least that's how top players on the world transfer market see Everton.

How to improve our status then?

 

[Carlito]

Yeah, at least that's how top players on the world transfer market see Everton.

How to improve our status then?

I don't think there'll be any significant change until the owners' valuation is lowered. For them to expect £130-150m six years after Robert Earl was able to buy 23% for £7m is utterly absurd, especially when you consider the nonexistent input of the majority shareholders.

You'd think the one advantage of having a teary-eyed fan in charge would be that he'd be more inclined to settle for a somewhat modest profit on his investment. Unfortunately though, it seems nothing but a truly obscene amount of money will shift him and his mates.

I know people don't like to see/hear mean things being said about Kenwright, but the reality is that as long as he's here Everton will struggle to keep up with the other traditional big clubs.

 

[TraffordBlue]

We haven't won anything for years which makes us small time in today's game but other clubs that are considered big in this day and age likes Spurs and Newcastle haven't won anything either. I think since the Premier League began Spurs have won the League Cup and Newcastle have won nothing. You only have to take Liverpool as an example as well. Just like we claim to be bigger than the likes of Newcastle, Chelsea, Spurs and Man City for our past, Liverpool still put themselves alongside Man United, AC Milan and Barcelona. Well how many league titles have Liverpool won in the last 20 years, and how many have the others won? That still doesn't mean Liverpool's past achievements are irrelevant though in my opinion. The media also seem to "bend the rules" to class Liverpool as a big club too. Man United's "13 league titles" for example but Liverpool's "18". Conveniently selecting the Premier League era for Man United but the whole of history to count Liverpool's 18.

If you look at the past, we have made a massive impact on English Football, way more so than so many other clubs. We have 9 league titles, have been in the top flight more than any other club, still have English Footballs leading scorer in the record books with 60 goals, are the only English club to host a world cup semi final and are one of only 5 clubs to average over 50,000 in a single season. How many other clubs have records like that?

These days we don't have much money or success but we still have a top 6 team and have the 8th highest average attendance in England, despite obstructed views and a falling down stadium and being without a trophy in 18 years. Our away support is the biggest indication for me that we are a very big club. Only Man United, Arsenal, Liverpool and possibly Chelsea have taken more away over the season. Man City and Spurs haven't.