Jamie Carragher knocks Everton to heap praise on Eddie Howe and Newcastle
Everton are “going backwards” since they were taken over by Farhad Moshiri in contrast to how Newcastle have grown, according to Jamie Carragher.
The Sky Sports pundit is highly impressed with how Eddie Howe has taken the Magpies into the top four of the Premier League under the club’s new Saudi owners, and the speed with which they have done so.
And he has pointed to the Toffees as an example of how a takeover shouldn’t be done, with the money spent since Moshiri took charge currently leaving the club staring down a second relegation battle in two seasons.
In his Telegraph column on Friday (30 December) Carragher said: “Most presumed a Newcastle top-four challenge would be two or three years away, not a matter of months, and there are enough recent examples of clubs spending big under new ownership and going backwards because of poor recruitment. Everton are proof of that.”
Poster boys
It is a measure of how badly wrong things have gone in recent years around Goodison Park that the club can be held up as a demonstration of how not to spend new investment.
The £500million-plus that has gone on players and managers has objectively seen the club regress, and continues to hamper Frank Lampard’s attempts to turn things around with the current financial constraints.
There is nowhere near the same level of financial backing to Everton as there is at Newcastle now, but the signings they have made have taken them from close to the bottom of the table to pushing the leaders.
How well Howe, Carragher’s manager of the season, would do in Lampard’s position is open to debate, despite growing questions over whether the former Chelsea boss is the right man for the job.
But the coherence with which the plan at St James’ Park appears to be being implemented will make Toffees fans wince when they consider that it could have been so different on Merseyside over the past seven years.
Further investment is badly needed to the Everton team in the form of attacking firepower, but until the squad can be thinned out of high-priced peripheral players it will remain difficult for the club to spend on new recruits as they need.