GRAEME SOUNESS: People thought I hated Everton but it breaks my heart to see them run into the ground – and here’s who the blame should come down to

It’s been another extremely tough week for Everton. On Monday, their financial results showed they’d doubled their losses, to £89.1million, last season. On Tuesday, they set a club record for games without a win in the Premier League.

Their supposed No 1 striker, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, scored his first goal since October, 24 games ago, in that draw at Newcastle. And there, in a nutshell, is your problem. They don’t score enough goals. Only Sheffield United have scored fewer in this season’s Premier League. Please don’t look any further than that.

Because of my history and association with Liverpool Football Club, it might be perceived by some that I don’t like Everton. But I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

I lived in that city for eight years as a player and some of my close pals were Evertonians. Of course there was banter – there always is in Liverpool – but I would always want them to do well, so long as it was not as well as Liverpool. It grieves me to see the state they are in now.

This club have given a masterclass in how not to recruit players. And why is that? Because of the scandalous way they have been run into the ground by those at the top of the club.

The club’s total debt now stands at £330.6m though that does not include care packages offered by prospective owners 777 Partners

This club’s crisis comes down to total – and I mean total – mismanagement by those further up the food chain. By that, of course, I mean owner Farhad Moshiri, listening to the wrong so-called ‘football advisers/agents’ telling him which footballers are worthy of playing for Everton. I cannot reinforce strongly enough the folly of taking such poor advice. It has brought years of purgatory to one of our most distinguished clubs.

The fact that Carlo Ancelotti, one of the most successful managers in the game, made very little difference at Everton during his 18 months in charge from 2019, emphasises a point about running football clubs which I will say until I’m blue in the face: that recruiting good players is paramount. And that it can be even more important than getting the manager right.

Ancelotti subsequently got a better offer from Real Madrid. (Everton or Real Madrid? Let me think about that one for a nanosecond.) The manager would have a big say in most things in my day but now he is so reliant on the people above him doing their job properly.

There’ll be a lively atmosphere there again on Saturday afternoon but how many more times can the club’s long-suffering fans be asked to provide the inspiration to lift the team?

I never felt there was a new-manager surge under Sean Dyche. He comes across really well in the media but I think he’s found it very hard to get a new tune out of those players. A lot of it is on confidence. If you’re not scoring goals, not winning games and getting beaten, having not played well, it’s a hard thing to reverse. People stop believing they can win games.

When Everton lost at Turf Moor from a winning position two years ago, during another relegation battle, Dyche told his Burnley players at half-time that Frank Lampard’s team ‘don’t know how to win.’ That assessment has come back to haunt him now that he is managing many of those same Everton players.

Everton’s situation is a product of the bad advice taken by chairman Farhad Moshiri 

It’s no wonder that one of football’s greatest coaches – Carlo Ancelotti – struggled at the club

We have a unique situation going into the last seven weekends of the season. Everton and Nottingham Forest could potentially put a run together and think they’ve done enough to survive, only to be hit by the decision-makers who have deemed them to be in breach of financial rules. Somehow the managers, staff and players have to keep their focus. Good luck with that.

A lot of old friends of mine on Merseyside will be praying for the right result against Burnley, who have put together a four-match unbeaten run. For such a football-mad city, it’s so important that Everton maintain their Premier League status. I think most Liverpudlians would agree that you don’t want them in the Championship.

Robson’s plans to educate players 

My friend and old sparring partner Bryan Robson is involved in a project to educate players on finance pitfalls. I can certainly see the need for the right messages to be delivered. 

So-called ‘investment opportunities’ have been fraught with danger for players for a long time, but the big sums of money washing around the game are attracting a lot of the wrong types.

When I was manager at Blackburn Rovers, an ex-player turned up at the training ground with a couple of Americans who were selling a revolutionary coffee bean. I poked my head around the door as these guys gave a presentation about this bean which was supposedly going to revolutionize the coffee business. 

Bryan Robson is involved in a project to educate players on potential financial pitfalls

‘Are you really investing?’ I asked. I was astonished to find that one player had invested £30,000, on the basis of the pitch from these snake oil salesmen. It was a giant con.

I got lucky when I was a young player at Middlesbrough because I encountered an accountant, Gordon Brooks, 20 years older than me, who became a lifelong friend had an enormous influence on me not spending beyond my means. 

That said, there were not the kind of influences around the edges when I was playing that there are now. And we weren’t earning the kind of generation-changing money that these boys earn today.

The money changes the lives of players’ children and grandchildren these days and that’s attracting some sleazy people. I wish Bryan well in guiding players away from them.