A chink of light for Everton after years of scandalous decline... and dismal 777's record suggests they should be nowhere near, writes IAN HERBERT

They were packing them in at the famous Winslow pub on Goodison Road last Friday evening, as the Everton FC we used to know was remembered.

Neville Southall, Derek Mountfield, Peter Reid and Paul Bracewell were signing old photographs and shirts, ahead of an event over the road at the People’s Club bar, in Goodison’s Park End stand. 

There, Reid and Bracewell, engine room of that side, discussed some great days and nights in the old ground. There was a reverential hush as they lingered on the legendary 3-1 win over Bayern Munich, which helped Everton win the European Cup Winners' Cup, in 1985. The talk was a sell-out, of course.

Looking back is something Everton fans are having to do more and more these days, because the future doesn’t really bear thinking about.

The headlines have all been about sustainability rules and points deductions, with the club in front of a Premier League independent commission for a third time this week. But that noise has obscured the more significant scandal of how Everton have been brought to the brink of insolvency by Iranian-born, Monaco-based Farhad Moshiri, a fool at the wheel of the club since 2016, whose custodianship has made the Glazers look highly competent proprietors by comparison.

We discovered at the weekend that Moshiri, who burnt through £750million to no material effect before his Putin-supporting business associate Alisher Usmanov was sanctioned and the cash dried up, is demanding to walk away with at least £64m, rising to a possible £130m, from American investment company 777. 

The sum is far higher than anyone else is prepared to pay Moshiri, which explains why all credible buyers have walked away and 777 have been swanning around the directors’ box, entertaining the idea of being the keeper of the keys, when their dismal track record at other clubs suggests that they should be nowhere near the place.

There are unpaid wages at Standard Liege. The threat of a transfer ban at Brazilian club Vasco da Gama. Genoa having to crowd-fund for a £4million training ground. 777 are run by Josh Wander, who was recently subpoenaed by a Danish model who alleges that he took and shared a ‘non-consensual explicit photograph’ of her. Wander denies this.

On Saturday morning, there was a glimmer of light through all this gloom for Everton, though supporters needed to be supreme optimists to spot it.

The Premier League have spent six months considering whether 777 are fit to own the club and the Bloomberg agency revealed details of the financial guarantees they have been ordered to provide. 

The numbers are meaningless to many fans - £185m in cash, a loan facility of £345m - but the demands are so substantial that 777 will likely be unable to meet them. The leading Everton financial analyst, The Esk, tells me he believes there is a mere five per cent chance of the takeover happening. ‘The way 777 are viewed in the investment community, I also find it hard to believe another company will come in with them,’ he says.

The short-term consequences could be grave. If no other buyer can be found to pay what Moshiri is demanding, the club could become insolvent and fall into administration, bringing a further points deduction - because a major loan repayment falls in April and Moshiri is certainly not paying it. That would still be preferable to 777.

The legacy of the Moshiri era at Everton could be a first period outside of the top-flight since the early 1950s and the job losses that come with insolvency. That is not a certainty, though. 

There are other potential buyers in the wings – including a US investor, with the funds, management experience and a track record with US sports franchises and European football. And administration is not the end. 

‘Everton has the capacity to recover, given that we’ve got a near-complete new stadium, a huge fan base and so much untapped potential,’ says The Esk. ‘If we technically went out of business, we would survive it. We would come back.’

So much of the collateral damage of this wretched Moshiri period cannot be undone, though. Consider Graeme Sharp - legend of that ‘80s side and Everton’s top post-war goalscorer. 

By accepting a request by the late Bill Kenwright to join the board as an ‘advisor’ and link back to better times, he unfairly found himself associated with the club’s mismanagement, was discredited and ultimately told to stay away for his own safety.

Sharp was devastated and is still estranged from the club he loves; a legend whose appearance at a recent reunion of members of the 1984 FA Cup winning team was actually a surprise to some of those old teammates, who feared this fracture meant he wouldn’t join them. 

‘So glad you’re out!’ they told the man whose image dominates the stadium exterior wall on Goodison Road. Sharp’s boardroom role was not one of decision-maker, though those who screamed ‘Sharp Out’ hadn’t the remotest appreciation of it.

A few doors down from the Winslow on Friday, a poster in the window of one of the redbrick terraces said everything about the fate that has threatened the terribly diminished and vulnerable Everton. ‘Burglary Hotspot.’ 

It looks like Everton might avoid daylight robbery and that somewhere down the road, a new dawn will break for them. After these long years of hell and with more bumps to come, it’s currently just hard to see it that way.

Pele picture explains England woes 

I wrote about the history of the England v Brazil fixture last week, speaking to people who might help me understand why England had won so few. 

Reader Matthew Rimmer, whose father, Warwick, was a defender for Bolton, then sent me this picture of Pele training in the rain in the old Lancashire town, during the 1966 World Cup, and it all became clear. 

Brazil thrived because of a blissful, uncomplicated love of the game, which radiates out from that Burnden Park image.

Timing is everything 

Curious that Umbro’s decision to change the colour of the St George flag on the England jersey in 2011, dotting it with mini crosses in four colours, did not cause a murmur. 

And the Team GB kit for the 2016 Olympics included a union flag without any red, barely registered. Proof that timing is everything.

barely registered.

Morning ritual will never be the same 

The letter, typed on blue notepaper, was heartbreaking in its own way. It revealed that our newsagents is to close from next month. 

They’ve delivered our papers for the best part of 20 years, though it was on our ritual Saturday morning visit to the place that my grandson and I spotted Panini stickers and decided to collect. 

The thud of the papers on the mat provides a thrill of anticipation which has never receded over time. Thanks for so much, Marian and Linda, of Woods Paper Shop, Handforth, Cheshire. The morning ritual will never be quite the same.