At last weeks ESCALA dinner, Bill stood up & took a Q&A session, amongst some rather bizarre answers (that have already been the subject of much debate) when asked if he was looking to sell the club – he answered – yes.

He maintained that there’d been plenty of interest – but no takers. He also said that he’d taken the club as far as he could, as he didn’t have a spare £100M to throw at it.

The question now is – who would want it? Who will be prepared to come in and take over the club and take us on to the next level? Everton FC finished last season in the “best of the rest” position and the logical next step is to try and break into the Top 4, but when you take a look at the numbers – they make depressing reading and would have most potential investors running for the hills.

In the last set of accounts the club reported a loss of £9.4M, based on a turnover of £54.1M – our debt had reached £58.8M and our wage bill alone was £38.4M. Not looking good so far…….when you compare our wage bill to the “Big 4” – the lowest of which is Liverpool’s – there’s stood at £77.6M or 1.5 times our total turnover, given that fact, how can we realistically break into that elite group?

Given that shortly we’re going to have to invest in a new stadium, whether that ends up being Kirkby or another option, the bleak picture is becoming even gloomier. The figures for Kirkby are unsubstantiated, but the best “guesstimates” come out at around £78M – given that this is a subsided build – it’s highly unlikely that even if we don’t end up taking this option – that a future alternative will cost any less (more realistically more).

So based on the last reported borrowing levels, that would leave our total debt at £136.8M – with a business that’s losing money virtually every year, in the last 9 (the only year we made a substantial profit was the year we sold Rooney).

So given those numbers – who in their right mind would want to buy Everton FC? Surely any venture capitalist wouldn’t be interested? Which leaves who exactly?

Surely our only hope of moving forward is some “Sugar Daddy” Abramovich type tycoon, as any businessman who prefers his businesses to report their annual bottom line numbers in black rather than red – would laugh at the prospect of Everton FC as an “investment”.

As David Moyes has continued to perform wonders with a shoestring budget – Evertonians expectation levels are constantly rising and the demand for huge transfer budgets and star name arrivals has grown to the point were fans are now no longer accepting of the budgets we’ve survived on for the last few years – unfortunately the business is currently unable to match those expectations, as the numbers simply don’t add up. The days of Everton FC being the Bank of England club are long gone – whilst we’re on the shirt tails of the “Big 4” on the pitch, off it, we’re light years behind.

Yes he loves the club, and yes he does care, but somethings you just have to do.

So if you know any Bluenose Multi Millionaires, who’d be quite happy to throw a large portion of their children’s inheritance at Everton FC – drop Bill a line with their name and address, I reckon he’d be glad of it………..