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2019/20 Marcel Brands

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I think Brands as done mostly as well as can be expected so far, although failure to address a striker this season has hurt and must be No.1 priority to address now.

But there was always going to be plenty left undone this year given the sheer amount of remedial work needed.

This is the critical summer for him, the defining one in many respects. The players signed and sold will in many ways dictate the future of Silva and the club as a whole over the next 3-4 years and possibly beyond.

He is the pivotal football figure at the club, not only can he not afford on our behalf to get any strategic decision wrong, in essence we are also depending on him and his staff, as well as the structures in place, to be amongst the best in the PL as we cannot compete like for like with the elite clubs.

I am pleased so far, and the ire at the whole array of issues should be directed in the main towards Koeman and Walsh. Brands must feel he can do a job here over the long-term, I'm sure there were more glossy opportunities offering a much quicker win on offer to him last year.
 
davek said:
Well I doubt very much the remit he agreed with Moshiri when joing Everton was to be straitjacketed into a balancing the books, hand to mouth existence where he has to sell every player not in the manager's plans in order to get fionances into the club for rebuilding. He was coming from a paupers league in Holland to the money doped PL. I'm pretty sure he didn't think he was going to be underfunded.

Yes, he no doubt has signed up to shift players out, but he must be experienced enough to know that cant be the only means to finance a restructuring of the squad. I dont think it's unreasonable to expect him to be looking to the owner to release more funds if the fees aren't forthcoming for unwanted players.
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That's all fine, but it's not directly within his control is it? It's not his money and as with most things he who pays the piper calls the shots. If money is not available that is on Moshiri (and to a degree the Chariman of the board Kenwright) not Brands.

I also think the above situation you have described is literally what he would have signed up too, in as much as the only direct way he can raise funds through sales. He has no remit to oversea commercial performance. That's the elephant in the room with all of this too. The issue for Everton is they largely get money from TV and a secondary expectation has then always been player trading can help top this up. Far more scrutiny needs to be placed upon the commercial side of the club who continue to lag behind.
 
MarcelsGoat said:
We have seen ZERO evidence of a sell to buy only strategy under Moshiri.

ZERO evidence, in fact since he took us over only the Manchester Clubs and Chelsea have spent more on players.
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I suspect we will see more of a "sell to buy" approach but probably not in the same way outlined by Dave (or the one we saw under Moyes) who never truly bought into the concept.

Moshiri is an investor and clearly he wants to have a return on what he invests. The best return on investment, if footballers are to be viewed as assets is to buy young, develop and move them on at a bigger cost. There is also better value buying from abroad

I don't foresee any difficulties in money being made available, but it needs to be for players that will ultimately gain value.

We have had problems in implementing this since Moshiri has arrived. Firstly we had a weak DOF and a manager who did pretty much the opposite of this by buying several domestic players at ages where they were unlikely to gain much value (Schneiderlin, Gueye, Williams, Bolasie, Martina, Walcott, Sigurdsson). They've not all been terrible but it was an opposite strategy to what was outlined. I wonder if Moshiri wasn't clear enough in outlining it to Koeman, Koeman paid lip service to it and once here refused to go along with it, or whether Moshiri had hoped a DOF would set that direction so he didn't need too.

Either way it was chaotic and I think it was made clear there would be no more of that.

The 2nd problem, allied to this was Koeman didn't prove particularly willing (or even capable) of developing young players. While results haven't been great, the players have undoubtedly improved under Silva and he seems to accept and enjoy this side of the job. We now also have the stability in both the coach, the DOF and the relationship between the two to have the right conditions to both attract and develop younger players.

The necessary end will be that some are sold. Most clubs in our situation (Outside the top 10 of Europe but generally in the top 50) operate on this basis. They develop players and look to sell to the top 10 (our top 5, Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG & Bayern). Dortmund do it, Monaco do it, Leipzig do it, Lyon do it etc. They are quite open about it. Ajax and PSV do it as well. That Ajax team will be broken up, but for a huge profit which can be re-invested.

The next stage of the evolution will be selling players, in all likelihood at good profits to help reinvest. Whether we like it or not that will be the plan. I do think there is now a plan to be the best though and it's worthwhile being on board with it.
 
Mikey_Fitzgerald said:
The mistake people are making is thinking that we need to sell players to have money to buy others

That isn't the case

The issue is that our wage bill is ridiculous, which in turn has a big effect on us keeping within FFP regulations

Paying transfer fees isn't the problem, it's managing all the money going out to pay salaries that's the issue (And why Brands needs to get so many players off the books who aren't playing)

We need players off the wage bill, that's the issue (Hence why we'll be selling players on the cheap and probably even just buying some of them out of their contracts)
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I think this is a good point.

What I'd also add Mikey is that we are also looking to change at a strategic level how we approach recruitment. He has been quite open in saying he wants younger players on lower wages.

The issue is we do not start at year dot. We currently have lots of players on higher wages who are older. It will take us a little time to remove most of them from the club (as in a lot of cases it is waiting until the contract is finished). The majority of the older players, I highly suspect would not have been signed and awarded those contracts under Brands so it is not an easy solution for him.

He is doing the right thing though, which is to have a hybrid approach. If we just bombed them out of the team we lose any little value they have. So at present we are at a transitional stage. With each year that goes by though, we are able to get closer to the position where he wants to build from. With the exception of Mina, all of the players we have bought this summer would could easily move on for a higher price than what we bought for, so it has been a good start.

Moyes faced a similar dilemma when he first came. Ginola, Gascoigne, Weir, Stubbs, Ferguson, Campbell all over 30 with Unsworth, Radzinski, Carsley & Watson all over 28. While some were let go he did not just get rid of all of the above and to do so would have been catastrophic for the club. There was a transitional period of 3-4 years where the above played a central role and were gradually moved on for better players. He was then able to build a team on his own principles.

We will likely see something similar here. The likes of Gana, Coleman & Sigurdsson have roles to play for a period of time.
 
catcherintherye said:
That's all fine, but it's not directly within his control is it? It's not his money and as with most things he who pays the piper calls the shots. If money is not available that is on Moshiri (and to a degree the Chariman of the board Kenwright) not Brands.

I also think the above situation you have described is literally what he would have signed up too, in as much as the only direct way he can raise funds through sales. He has no remit to oversea commercial performance. That's the elephant in the room with all of this too. The issue for Everton is they largely get money from TV and a secondary expectation has then always been player trading can help top this up. Far more scrutiny needs to be placed upon the commercial side of the club who continue to lag behind.
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There's no way Brands would have signed up to a model of operating whereby it is wholly dependent on sales to finance the restructuring of the squad. That is a suicide mission. His professional reputation depends on what he does here at Everton.

Before agreeing to the job I'm sure he'd have demanded to know what investment the owner was prepared to make above and beyond that. He stands at the head of the football side of the club and success and failure are his to own.
 

The truth probably lies in the middle here. I cannot see Moshiri financing further spending to the degree that has gone before. There is supposedly BMD to factor in (?), there will be continued pressure regarding short-term cost control, and an already bloated squad not likely to have European football.

I'm all for spending, but internal and external forces, timing, and circumstances seem to have aligned against it. I think there'll be modest spending only. Last summers signings, perhaps Mina excepted, and hopefully he does come good, have all been successful to a great or lesser degree though, and that should strengthen Brands' hand.

Seeing as they may as well have set fire to tens of millions of pounds such was the degree to which it was wasted (and for which we continue to pay for, paying twice in effect), we will have to live within our means.

The more pertinent question is the clubs continued failure to make any significant indent on its commercial performance. I suppose they will argue that it's chicken and egg in that only "successful" clubs can demand sponsorship and commercial deals of the sort we look upon with envy, but years on into the Moshiri regime, progress is painfully slow, if not stagnant.
 
Nymzee said:
Having Spurs numbers in this list is very sly though. They way they handle wages isn’t represented properly there. They’ll be far ahead of us in reality.
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Exactly, if you put in what they pay their players in bonus and performance incentives they would be at the top or near it.
 

Nymzee said:
Hmm surprising. I always thought it was known that Spurs base wages + all the bonuses dragged them on par with most of the Top 6.
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Think its regarded that they do pay small base wages, but they will still have to declare their wage bill for their accounts, they cant have another section for bonuses. Unless they are paying the bonuses off the books, which is VERY illegal and unlikely.
 

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