Everton - A Monument to All Their Sins

"If you will not hear the truth, then I will show it to you. There is still time to stop the key from turning."

*Disclaimer - if you were a PlayStation kid and have never played Halo you might think I’m talking nonsense*

As a tentacle drags you into the depths of the Delta Halo during the campaign of ‘Halo 2’, you wonder what horrors await you in the darkness.

Throughout the course of the game so far, you’ve been fighting the colourful and at times goofy Covenant in a bid to stop them from activating the Halo rings. But this is something different; a much greater evil.

You do not have to wait long for your answer. As the cutscene begins to play you are greeted by a hulking mutated mass; a monster of this universe’s own creation, the Gravemind.

But that’s not how this tangled mess of grotesque flesh greets you.

Your companion Cortana exclaims as it emerges from the shadows: ‘What… is that?’ The creature replies in a low growling voice: “I… I am a monument to all your sins.”

It begins by trying to bargain with the Masterchief, seeking to work together despite the fact you know that it is a threat to your existence, but of course, it shouldn’t be trusted and shouldn’t be left alone to fester. To ignore it would be a grave mistake.

The Gravemind (and the Flood it controls) is the result of twisted ambition and thoughtless decision after thoughtless decision. It will be the end of the universe if left unchecked and cause the complete collapse of all life.

So as Farhad Moshiri, Bill Kenwright and the rest of the board enter into Goodison Park, it’s unlikely they’ll be greeted by the physical embodiment of their failings like Masterchief was in Halo 2.

However, they have on their hands a problem of their own creation that threatens the future of Everton as they know it… The monument to all their sins that they can’t afford to ignore any longer.

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The issue of who is going to replace Frank Lampard, a manager who was ill-equipped for the job put in front of him, will be what dominates the headlines for Everton currently.

Lampard was in charge for 38 games, winning only nine of them. The manager never found his feet while he was at Goodison Park, but this was partly because the floor he was looking to stand on didn’t exist.

Sometimes the manager is the problem (and most of the time they are at least part of it), but other times they are merely the scapegoat for a much bigger issue.

In the tangled web Everton has created, Lampard’s management was merely a thread hanging from one of the corners; the strand that we often see first hanging in the corner of our room and clear because it’s the easiest to reach.

Everton fans however are tired of clearing away the odd strands. Protests have raged as they ask Moshiri, Kenwright & Co. to sell the club, but every time it reaches a boiling point, the board comes out and defends their actions.

When reports emerged on Tuesday night that Everton was up for sale, Moshiri was quick to shut them down. He told the media:

"The club is not for sale but I've been talking to top investors ... to bridge the gap on the stadium. I can't do it myself and ... I want to bring top sport investors into Everton [to provide] more talent and we are close to having the deal done. It's not selling the club at all,it's just bring more expertise in terms of global sponsorship and commercial development."

Ironically in the novel ‘Making Money’, Terry Pratchett wrote: “A weapon you held and didn't know how to use belonged to your enemy.”

Investment is not Everton’s problem, they have spent over £500m on transfers and sanctioned the building of a new stadium under Moshiri’s ownership; their issue is that their approach to project building has been scattergun at best.

Three managers in as many years started off the Moshiri era at Goodison Park. Combine that with an unfocused transfer policy that saw the club spend too much money on the likes of Yannick Bolasie, Cenk Tosun and Davy Klaasen and you understand why the phrase ‘poisoned chalice’ starts to get thrown around.

Most would go back to the drawing board after a false start this bad and in some ways Moshiri did, but his new plan was built on the same flawed principles. He was trying to build a palace on foundations made of sand.

Marcel Brands was appointed as an experienced and knowledgeable Director of Football in 2018. His expertise, however, would not be needed.

The footballing world stood still when Everton were able to convince multi-Champions League-winning manager Carlo Ancelotti to sit in the dugout in December 2019. The following summer, the club then set about signing all the signings he desired; financial fair play be damned.

He got them to 10th, two places higher than they had managed the season before and not in Europe.

Then in an entirely predictable series of events, a big club (Real Madrid) realised that Ancelotti should not be managing Everton and stole him away from the club. Moshiri had flown too close to the sun with very expensive wings and now had crashed back to earth.

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The thing about rock bottom is that it can be a solid foundation on which to build anew.

Everton had no money because of FFP, no manager and a number of expensive players who were earning way too much money for how much they were contributing to the squad.

But they also had a number of talented young players, some sellable assets and Brands at the helm of their project. It could have worked.

In his most recent piece for The Athletic, Patrick Boyland states that Brands wanted a project builder, someone like Graham Potter or Roger Schmidt (the latter would have great success at PSV after being appointed by Brands), to be the manager that he would work alongside to build a new look Everton.

Moshiri pulled rank and brought in his own choice, Rafa Benitez, the polar opposite of everything Brands was trying to achieve. The monument grew bigger and more grotesque.

Brands left, Benitez nearly got the club relegated and you know the rest of the story up till now.

Two things are incredibly clear from this tale, Moshiri tried to rush his way to the top and he ignored the advice of better-equipped footballing minds while he was doing it.

‘Twisted ambition and thoughtless decisions’ are how you build a monument of sins and the issue is once they stand before you they are incredibly hard to tear down.

Ironically a new state-of-the-art stadium for a club crashing into the Championship would provide the physical metaphor the Everton board currently lacks.

The spirit of Everton football club stands on the edge of oblivion; they are locked in the room with their metaphorical Gravemind.

They are 19th in the table, managerless and without the means to spend money on the signings they need because they have backed themselves into a corner with financial fair play.

If they drop down to the Championship, their best players are sure to leave and the ones they are ‘stuck’ with are on big contracts that likely do not include relegation clauses given the big ambitions Moshiri has promised throughout his tenure.

If they are to have any chance of untangling their mess, they need to start appointing the right people in positions of influence and allowing them to do their job.

The question is whether it is too late to focus. Given that the three main reported targets for a new manager are Marcelo Bielsa, Sean Dyche and Ralph Hasenhuttl (aka three completely different managers) it seems that it might be.

They only seem to be going in one direction, the issue is it’s unclear where their descent into the darkness, dragged ankle first by the tendril of their own failings, stops.

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