Christopher Beesley assesses the pre-match mood among Evertonians for the Manchester United clash after a shambolic end to the transfer window and reports The Friedkin Group are seeking new investment in the club
Everton fans show their support at Hill Dickinson Stadium
Everton fans show their support at Hill Dickinson Stadium(Image: Gareth Copley/Getty Images)
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Back in 2008, it took a full-blooded tackle by Phil Neville on former team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo to rouse Goodison Park but in truth Evertonians seldom need much of a spark to light the blue touch paper whenever Manchester United make a trip to this end of the East Lancs Road.
Even Sir Alex Ferguson, the Red Devils’ most successful manager, who despite being on the receiving end of an FA Cup final defeat to Joe Royle’s ‘Dogs of War’ in the 1995 FA Cup final for what remains Everton’s last major trophy, brought more silverware to Old Trafford than they’d collected over the previous century, remarked of visits to Goodison: “It was always a nightmare going there... the atmosphere is fantastic.”
For too long now, Manchester United have presumed they can just come and take what they want from Everton, whether it’s Wayne Rooney, Marouane Fellaini, Romelu Lukaku, or even David Moyes himself. Hopefully the Blues’ rebuff of a couple of penny-pinching bids for Jarrad Branthwaite a couple of years ago shows the tide is turning on that score with the so-called ‘Theatre of Dreams’ and its leaky roof no longer the dream destination it once was, especially when you’ve got the best stadium in the country on the banks of the Mersey, complete with the biggest regular crowds in the club’s history.
On their annual trek to Dorset to the Premier League’s smallest venue, little more than 1,300 travelling Everton supporters made their voices and thoughts loud and clear last weekend when it came to the future of one of their own, Harrison Armstrong, and fan power forced the Blues’ absentee landlords to back down and reverse their decision to cash in on their latest home grown hero before he was even out of his teenage years.
So, imagine the power of over 50,000 Evertonians today for a showdown against their regional rivals from the North West’s other major city. United aren’t even the object of their ire on this occasion, but in many ways – despite their still considerable ability – they’re a handy opponent to have when the Blues are looking to pull together.
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As Moyes, whose final message to the fans before the window closed was to tell them “their manager is an Evertonian” remarked in his pre-match press conference for this fixture: “If ever we needed the supporters at the club, they showed their face at Bournemouth, they let everyone know they’re are a big part of the club and always will be and I hope they show their face again when it comes to Sunday afternoon.”
Someone who hasn’t shown his face to date, at either Goodison Park or Hill Dickinson Stadium, is Everton’s owner Dan Friedkin. Another bombshell from this traumatic week was Moyes, the manager who steered the Blues to nine top-eight finishes in his first spell in charge before returning to ensure the historic final season at the Grand Old Lady didn’t end in relegation, revealing that he’s never even spoken to the club’s chairman, let alone met him.
That’s in stark contrast, both to Moyes’ working relationship with the late Bill Kenwright and to the way that Friedkin senior conducts business at the other major European football club he owns, Roma. After Farhad Moshiri’s meddling – only Everton could receive a brace of points deductions for financial breaches with a billionaire accountant in charge – perhaps the Blues were initially relieved to have an owner who left the running of the football side of the club to the experts, but it feels like they have gone from one extreme to another.
When the latest piece of residue from Moshiri’s reign of chaos emerged in June as Everton were told they must pay Burnley £35million over the impact of a breach of the Premier League’s financial rules, a club statement bullishly and defiantly read: “Evertonians can be assured that ownership are focused, with strengthened resolve, on delivering their vision of returning Everton to the top echelon of English football.”
A couple of days later, speaking in an interview on talkSPORT, Moyes insisted he had been told the Burnley ruling would have no effect on the Blues’ summer transfer budget.
Yet, at some point between then and the window closing on September 1, something changed.
It’s not like Friedkin suffered a business setback. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s wealthiest people, currently places him at number 255 with an estimated fortune of $13.4billion (approximately £9.86billion), some two-and-a-half billion dollars up from where he was when Everton departed Goodison Park.
Yet Guela Doue, understood to be Moyes’ top target for right-back, the Blues’ long-standing problem position, left Strasbourg for Bayer Leverkusen for £25.72million on transfer deadline day. Club chiefs baulked at the fee, but even Brentford pay £35million for full-backs (El Hadji Malick Diouf from West Ham United) these days. Instead, after a crazy 48 hours of the window in which Kenny Tete’s name re-emerged like a bad penny, Everton were left scrambling around for Olympique Lyonnais’ Ainsley Maitland-Niles, for a £4million fee that had been eclipsed for stars like Andrei Kanchelskis over 31 years ago when the FA Cup was still in the Goodison Park trophy cabinet.
Despite pocketing over £100million on deadline day with Iliman Ndiaye, Beto, Tim Iroegbunam and Nathan Patterson all sold, plus Adam Aznou loaned out, following the late collapse of the purchase of USA World Cup star Folarin Balogun from Monaco, the Blues were left with a first team squad that contains just one striker, one left-back and one right-back.
Such a threadbare first team pool does not tally with chief executive Angus Kinnear’s claims as recently as August 19 that The Friedkin Group “have bought Everton to win football matches” and “this window again, I think we will spend more than most of our competitors, the owners are very keen to back us.”
While senior club insiders might continue to defiantly insist the transfer window was not a disaster and they did not panic, the vast majority of the rest of the football world, including a plethora of highly respected journalists and pundits plus the 1878s, Everton Fans’ Form and Everton Fan Advisory Board all think differently.
Then came the reports about The Friedkin Group seeking new investors. Even those at the very top of the club on this side of the Atlantic Ocean claim to be in the dark on whether Everton is up for sale. However, well-placed sources in Houston where the company is based have been hinting since the summer that the opportunity to acquire Hill Dickinson Stadium for a bargain price was too good a deal to miss, with TFG only having a modest interest in the club, its fans, history and culture.
Such suggestions seem lamentable when you consider that when it comes to pastimes of the super-rich Dan Friedkin was supposedly one of the good guys. He is chair of Project Recover, which uses modern technology to repatriate US Second World War soldiers missing in action in the Pacific Ocean while there is also the Friedkin Conservation Fund, which protects millions of acres of endangered wildlife areas and stimulates community development in East Africa.
But unlike the other major European football club he owns, Roma, where he has been pictured glad-handing management and players on numerous visits, other than payments to stop them sliding into the abyss, Friedkin appears unprepared to put in the time or money to do anything special with Everton. That a great shame not just for Blues but for him, his family and his corporation because after years of neglect, Everton represent a huge opportunity for someone willing to give them some proper TLC.
They possess one of the largest, most loyal, passionate and knowledgeable fanbases in the game. Despite sharing a city with a global football superpower, they are attracting the biggest regular crowds in their history (their average of 52,121 for 2025/26 topped their previous record of 51,603 in the 1962/63 title-winning campaign) and independent financial experts calculated the move to Hill Dickinson Stadium would bring the club an additional £60million a year in revenue.
Everything is there for an owner who has genuine aspirations and a strategy for the Blues, but unfortunately it now feels like TFG don’t possess such an appetite. The Texans are fortunate then that Moyes and Everton’s loyal but long-suffering supporters DO possess the stomach for a fight – even after suffering this latest punch to the gut.