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.
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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.
