David Moyes has returned to Everton after 12 years and gone back to find a club in crisis.
Everton Football Club: A Decade of Disappointment
Here we chronicle a decade of disappointment at one of the proudest clubs in the rich history of the English game.
Everton: Merseyside Pride Under Moyes
Everton had known plenty of lows in their recent past, lows that were all the more pronounced because of the highs they had enjoyed under Howard Kendall in the 1980s. But under David Moyes there was stability with a string of top-half finishes, regular excursions in European competition and a run to the final of the 2009 FA Cup where they would lose to Chelsea.
Roberto Martinez succeeded Moyes in 2013 when Manchester United recruited the Scot, and the transition was largely a seamless one. Everton fans offer different verdicts on Martinez’s reign but what has united Toffees’ fans was that Farhad Moshiri’s arrival in 2016 changed everything – and not for the good.
Everton: Ownership Odd Couple
Moshiri, a British-Iranian businessman, sold a stake in Arsenal to snare a 49.9 percent ownership of Everton, effectively joining then chairman Bill Kenwright as partners. They promised the best of both worlds – Everton got the worst of either. Player recruitment under Kenwright had become increasingly chaotic and that carried on through Martinez’s reign and into Ronald Koeman’s, which many Everton observers regard as the decisive period between June 2016 and October 2017 when the rot really set in.
Moshiri was providing the funding but Koeman, in the eyes of many, simply wasn’t spending it wisely with big sums splashed out on the likes of Morgan Schneiderlin, Davy Klaassen and Gylfi Sigurdsson. Koeman did get them into the Europa League but a poor start to 2017/18 cost him his job and the subsequent appointment of Sam Allardyce in his stead did little to appease fans.
Everton: New Stadium
While the team was in decline, there was more positive news off the pitch with Moshiri a key player in driving forward plans to relocate from Goodison Park to Bramley-Moore Dock. Plans for the 52,000 stadium were revealed in 2018 and even though the cost of the build of the stadium soared from around £220m to £780m and the funding model was constantly questioned, it felt like a new dawn for the club.
Almost by accident, on the pitch things were looking up, first Marco Silva providing some stability and then Moshiri somehow managing to persuade Carlo Ancelotti to take the reins.
Everton: Back to (Moyes) Square One
Ancelotti took over following a 5-2 drubbing by Liverpool in December 2019 – six months later he had taken them to a safe mid-table finish. When Real Madrid came calling Ancelotti couldn’t resist and that was when Moshiri pretty much sealed his fate in the eyes of Everton diehards, by appointing former Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez, a man who had once famously dubbed Everton a “small club”.
Those same Everton fans did not take kindly to that. The Benitez experiment didn’t last long with Frank Lampard the next cab off the rank, followed by Sean Dyche, their reigns coinciding with the points deductions for chronic over-spending which genuinely put their top-flight status in jeopardy.
Everton survived, Dyche didn’t, nor did Moshiri with Americans the Friedkin Group acquiring majority ownership status in December 2024. And the first thing they did? They decided that David Moyes, the man who had brought stability to the club over a decade before, was the right man again to take the Toffees – a very different outfit to the one the Scot left behind – forward. Everton fans have a new stadium to look forward to and with recent relics of a chaotic past gone, maybe a bright future. Maybe.
Please note that the information provided in this Everton FC article is for entertainment purposes only. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information provided. Any action you take upon the information on this article is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any losses and damages in connection with the use of our article. We do not encourage gambling and remind you to gamble responsibly.
18+ | BeGambleAware.org
