Marcel Brands Wanted Mikel Arteta To Manage Everton But Was Overruled

Former Everton director of football Marcel Brands has spoken about his time at the club, revealing some of the issues that caused current problems.

Everton finds itself battling relegation for the second season running on the back of failed transfer policy, poor recruitment, numerous managers, and an unbalanced squad, while also being investigated for potentially breaking the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules.

Everton’s problems have been there for all to see, but the exact goings-on behind the scenes have not always been known.

It did appear that the club’s owner, Farhad Moshiri, was going above the head of sporting directors or directors of football, especially when it came to the hiring of managers.

Those managers were subsequently given the power to sign their own players, also going above the head of the director of football.

A recent interview with Brands by Dutch newspaper NRC reveals to be true much of what had been guessed, mainly concerning the director of football facing obstacles when trying to do the job for which they were hired.

“In my second year, Marco Silva was fired and I tried to prevent that, but it was beyond my control,” Brands told NRC. “I knew he was a good coach and he is now proving that at Fulham.

“The owner also determined there should be an experienced successor, and while the chairman and I wanted Mikel Arteta, in the end, it was Carlo Ancelotti.”

Ancelotti was one of the more successful of Everton’s recent coaches, but that success, and the spending on player wages at that time, was evidently not sustainable.

Ancelotti departed Everton when Real Madrid came calling. The club’s remaining staff, and subsequent managers and coaches, were left with numerous problems to solve, not least the looming threat of those profit and sustainability issues.

Before he left Everton in the summer of 2021, Ancelotti commented that the club could “buy without selling players this summer for sure.”

Ancelotti’s replacement, Rafa Benitez, was hit with the reality. “The financial fair play rules were killing us in this window,” said the Spaniard during his first weeks with the club in September 2021.

Since then, the reality of financial issues, poor recruitment strategy, and careless squad building has hit each subsequent manager, including Benitez and Frank Lampard, with current boss Sean Dyche openly talking about the imbalance of the squad in a recent press conference.

There would not be such an imbalance had Brands been allowed to do his job.

That is not to say all his decisions would have been the right ones or all his signings would have worked out, but it is likely Everton would be in a much better position now had they not gone over the head of their director of football, whoever that might have been.

Looking back, Ancelotti seemed good for Everton, but it’s likely Arteta would have been much better long-term.

Arteta may have left eventually too, as Ancelotti did, but at least the director of football would have been working with a manager he had recommended and signing players to take the club forward, or at least keep it stable and in the Premier League.

“English culture is completely different and makes fans and media think that the manager deals with transfers,” added Brands.

“The owner determines a lot. He wanted Rafael Benítez as a coach in 2021, which was not my choice.

“Benítez wanted Salomon Rondon, and I couldn’t approve that. Rondon was already in his thirties, was not on the scouting list, and he was not going to bring Everton anything. His salary was way too high, too.

“I said I thought it was a bad idea. ‘Think of it as a present for the manager,’ responded the owner. Then you are powerless.”

One of the reasons Benitez did sign Rondon was that Everton had no money and Rondon was available on a free transfer. The Spaniard also signed Demarai Gray for $2.3 million, a tiny fee relative to most Premier League transfers.

It would have been interesting to see who Brands would have gone for instead of Rondon with no transfer funds available, but as with many of the decisions that should have been left to those hired to do the job in the first place but weren’t—we will never know.

The NRC article even mentions—albeit not via a direct quote from Brands—that on some occasions Everton coaches were being told who to pick in the team.

From Brands’ interview, it has become clear that the club’s owner has played as big a role in the club’s downfall as the rest of the much-maligned board, if not the biggest role.