Monthly Archives: October 2016

Labour MP for Chester, Chris Matheson has accused Sir Philip Green of being a shadow director at Everton.

He spoke at a Culture, Media and Sport committee on governance of football. The Everton season-ticket holder made the revelation when he discussed “offshore entities” involved with football clubs while addressing the chairman of the English Football Association.

“I understand that Sir Philip Green had something of a role of shadow director at Everton, including having PwC [big four accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers] conduct an audit of the club and summoning the chief executive and the team manager to BHS headquarters to discuss transfer budgets,” Matheson said.

Green is facing serious calls that he be stripped of his knighthood due to the collapse of one of his former firms BHS.

“If someone has paid for some shares through someone else and through an entity in the British Virgin Islands, but isn’t a director, would that be a problem?” Matheson asked. Chief executive Robert Elstone has addressed the issue before saying:

“Those questions were wrong and shouldn’t be asked. To repeatedly be asked about where we lend from and where Philip Green is in all this is just wrong.”

Elstone made the comment during the club’s general meeting late last year as the club steadfastly denies links to Green. Matheson also asked Clarke about offshore companies that were linked with Everton.

“Do you know who or what is Vibrac? Do you know who or what is BCR Sports? Vibrac is an offshore entity… which I believe provided finance to Everton, West Ham, Fulham, Reading and Southampton.

“And I understand it has provided £150 million worth of finance to European clubs, including those clubs I just stated in 2013,” he said.

Matheson made other revelations about the offshore companies but Clarke denied being aware of the companies.

The Netherlands man Ronald Koeman believes some aspects of the team is fine by him but not the aspect showed against Bournemouth on Saturday’s 1-0 awful loss.

“I like several aspects of the team, I don’t like some and we will change that,” said Koeman.

His first taste of defeat in the English Premiership with Everton was an unexpected one. He declined to publicly pore over the various things that went wrong during the 1-0 loss on the South Coast, but he knows there are several challenges to overcome. If the Blues rise to second in the table gave anyone outside Goodison the impression they could stay there or thereabouts, this seemed to be the reality check.

The Toffees boss feels he needs more bodies, more options and more clarity on some of the issues affecting the side of the team, such as the best position to play Barkley and how to get the best out of Kevin Mirallas regularly with visible improvement.

Koeman realizes that the squad needs further fine-tuning; both on the training ground and when transfer period comes in January. He never expected his men to lose to Bournemouth and not any tougher team, considering past results against other teams in the league. He feels if Bournemouth could defeat them, then he has a lot to do both in improving the performance of the players and also addition of new able men. Koeman will need all their strength of character to triumph as he looks to curb the ‘sluggish starts’ that mean Everton’s otherwise fine beginning to this season.

Before the defeat, Everton were in second place, behind Manchester City. City have maintained their perfect start in the Premier League this term. Everton’s loss means Spurs are new runners-up behind City.