The Friedkin Group, Everton’s new owner, has placed former player David Weir among their chief targets to take over as the club’s new director of football – a position he currently holds at fellow Premier League club Brighton and Hove Albion.

Weir, 54, succeeded Dan Ashworth as technical director at Brighton when the latter left for Newcastle United in the summer of 2022, and has remained at the club despite a high turnover of staff in the interim – particularly to Chelsea. He was captain under David Moyes when the recently reappointed Everton manager was in his first spell at the club.

The Friedkin Group is planning major changes to the club and the position of the current director of football Kevin Thelwell remains unclear although he was in charge for the most recent transfer window, following Moyes’s arrival in December.

Thelwell has a fixed-term contract that runs until the end of this season and there has been no comment made on his future. Weir, who has managed briefly at Sheffield United in 2013, originally joined Brighton as the loans manager in 2019 and has been promoted since then.

Brighton staff have been poached on a regular basis over recent years, given their many recruitment successes under owner Tony Bloom and the data-analysis revolution he has introduced at the club. Chelsea appointed Brighton’s head of recruitment Paul Winstanley as sporting director in November 2022 and later Sam Jewell, who was briefly Winstanley’s successor at Brighton. Should Weir leave then a major role at Brighton would once again be available.

Moyes’s effect on Everton – three Premier League wins from four games ahead of tonight’s Merseyside derby – has given renewed hope to the club. In a review of the January transfer window with Everton’s in-house media, Thelwell said this week that the Friedkin Group had “kept their powder dry” for the summer window.

The £16 million summer signing of Iliman Ndiaye, who came back to the Premier League from Marseille, has been the club’s biggest success in the market in the last two windows. Last month, the Argentina international midfielder Carlos Alcaraz arrived on loan from Flamengo in Brazil.

Thelwell’s hands have been tied

Thelwell said that he was planning for the summer window, pointing out that over his three years at Everton, financial controls and the club’s uncertain ownership situation had necessitated the selling of the best players.

“[We have] generated £225 million in transfer income and only spent £145 million on the team. It has not been what any of us have ever wanted for Everton. But it’s something we have had to do unfortunately to stay afloat or be on the right side of PSR [profitability and sustainability rules].”

Thelwell said that Everton had been “outspent by everybody in the league” in recent seasons. He said that the Friedkin Group would be “strategic and conservative” in its approach in the future.

“We are coming out of a tunnel,” Thelwell said. “We can see the light but, in our reality, we are not quite there yet. I feel we are in fairly good shape and that gives us an opportunity to attack the market, to develop a team that is capable of winning trophies, playing in Europe and be befitting of playing in that world-class stadium we are moving into.

“I was keen in this window not to put all that work in jeopardy by doing something daft in the market that meant we… had less to spend in the summer.”