Michael Ball fears the failure to conclude the Everton takeover is now going to impact on the personnel situation at the club. Writing in his 26 March Liverpool Echo column the former Goodison full-back insisted 777 Partners and Farhad Moshiri needed to move the matter forward in some way and pointed to the difficulty that director of football Kevin Thelwell will be faced with ahead of the summer offseason when the future of the club is completely up in the air. It is now more than 27 weeks without resolution since the American company agreed a deal with the Toffees’ majority shareholder in September so Thelwell still doesn’t know who will be signing off on new contracts or new arrivals for Sean Dyche’s squad.
Ball wrote: “We want this situation over and done with. We’ve got players whose contracts are running out and others who we need to bring in over the summer, Kevin Thelwell has to start organising our transfer policy but everything is unknown and up in the air because the takeover is dragging on.” It goes without saying that with the current owner seemingly checked out of running or funding the club any further, and the prospective new owners helping with the latter in the form of loans but unable to do the former since they aren’t actually in charge, that poses a problem for the likes of Thelwell and Dyche. The squad is already thin after multiple transfer windows of relative austerity, despite back-to-back profit and sustainability charges that have already saddled the Toffees with one points deduction and the threat of a second. And a host of players are currently headed for the exit in June as things stand before potential reinforcements can even be considered and it is unclear how moves are supposed to be made at the moment. Jack Harrison and Arnaut Danjuma’s loans are due to end while the likes of captain Seamus Coleman, Idrissa Gana Gueye, Ashley Young, Andre Gomes and Dele Alli’s contracts are expiring. Thankfully for Dyche that group arguably doesn’t include any indispensable regular starters but if they all departed it would still be a blow. There must be some amount of action possible under the current situation as Everton apparently tried to make moves during the January window, although the lack of success isn’t an encouraging sign. An answer one way or another on the 777 bid is seemingly not far off after the Premier League’s letter setting out the necessary conditions, but if it fails and an alternative bidder has to be turned to it remains to be seen who will be signing off on the squad decisions for the summer. And even if the current bid does miraculously get over the line at this late stage it may have risked Thelwell’s plans for it to have even dragged on this far. In other Everton news, the Premier League have made a commitment for the Toffees’ second hearing in desperation to avoid a certain outcome.
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