Evertonians might wish they could turn back to clock to the mid-1980s when footballers had haircuts like Limahl but fast forward to 2024 and patience is wearing thin over “The Never Ending Story” of the club’s protracted takeover.

Now the Everton FC Shareholders Association has delivered a hard-hitting statement and told the Blues’ majority shareholder: “In the absence of the Premier League making a timely decision we insist that the Everton Board, and Farhad Moshiri in particular, stop this damaging process now and recognise that 777 Partners are not at this time fit-and-proper prospective owners of Everton Football Club.”

Last summer, Everton gave us the longest ‘48 hours’ in history after the statement they told the world would be made about interim appointments and the future of the chairman. Back on September 15, when Everton announced that 777 had signed an agreement with Moshiri to acquire his full 94.1% stake, the club stated that closing of the transaction was expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2023.

We’re now just a week shy of it being eight months on and the deal is still awaiting regulatory approval. Even when that deal was struck, hot on the heels of investment talks with another US group, MSP Sports Capital, collapsed, 777 were fighting a public relations battle with fan protests at several clubs among their global portfolio of clubs – as this piece was being written it emerged that Standard Liege players are still unpaid for April and the Belgian outfit’s former owners have filed complaint calling for 777 assets to be seized after failed payment for their purchase of the club.

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As the ECHO front page cautioned at the time when we produced a six-page special in the paper with further content online: “You can’t get this wrong.” Not only have the Miami-based private investment firm failed to get the green light from the Premier League board though, they have now been accused of running a complex “pattern of fraud” to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds, casting fresh doubts over their ability to complete the takeover.

While 777 themselves have always declined to comment publicly on either their prospective plans for Everton or the process itself, stating the requirements of the OaDT (Owners and Directors Test) to remain silent, even the charm offensive they have been engaging in since the deal was announced has now been turned off with one of the PR agencies it has used, walking away last week. Rather ominously it was over alleged payment issues.

Over the last few weeks we have seen the very best of Everton Football Club and Goodison Park as the team and its loyal but long-suffering supporters bounced back from being hit for six at Chelsea to rattle off a hat-trick of home league wins in a week for the first time in 120 years. Those results ensured that under Sean Dyche, despite being hit by two separate points deductions this season, Everton went into May with their Premier League status secure for the first time since crowds returned en masse following the global coronavirus pandemic.

As ECHO columnist, former player and lifelong Evertonian Michael Ball said: “The atmosphere has been absolutely fantastic and I am sure no other club in world football would be able to emulate what we do as a fanbase.” Every team and their supporters like to think that they’re special but Everton are a unique sporting institution in many ways.

The only founder members of both the Football League in 1888, before any of the so-called ‘Big Six’ were involved, and Premier League in 1992 to be ever-presents in the latter, with 2024/25 – the final campaign at Goodison Park – their 122nd season in the top flight (some 11 more than closest challengers Aston Villa) – they’re the closest thing the game has to a club who has competed at the elite level almost continually from the start. Their supporters have been the lifeblood of the club from the start and given that Everton enjoyed the highest gates over the first decade of the Football League, they can lay claim to being the game’s first major fanbase.

Even now, as the Blues endure their longest-ever silverware drought stretching back to 1995 – despite being raised on an attritional diet of relegation scraps the club say there are now over 30,000 people on the season ticket waiting list – only Manchester United and neighbours Liverpool can top their longevity of winning major trophies in nine separate decades. However, with Goodison Park generating the third-lowest revenues of any Premier League ground, the move to a magnificent 52,888 capacity stadium by the banks of the Mersey that will enable Everton to play in front of the biggest average crowds in their history, cannot come soon enough.

For all their recent trials and tribulations both on and off the pitch, Everton remain one of the most-prestigious names in football. Given that he played more matches for them than anyone else and won more honours than anyone else in doing so, being widely-regarded as being the best player in the world in his position at the peak of his powers, Neville Southall knows what the Blues are all about and shortly after the proposed 777 deal was announced, he admitted he was perplexed that others had not come forward.

Arguably his words are as poignant as ever right now. The former Wales international told the ECHO: “I don’t understand with the club, its history, with the successes it’s had in the past, the fanbase that we’ve got, why there’s not a queue of people lining up to buy Everton. Why are there only odds and ends coming out?

“Yes the team needs money pumping into it and everyone knows that but if you look at Everton as an overall brand with the new stadium, for me as an investor I’d be going ‘wow’, if we can get this right on the pitch, that club is going to fly, it could be Champions League.

“All you’ve got to do now is get a team to match the ground because they’ll always make money once they make the move. For me it isn’t ‘who is coming in as an investor?’ it’s why there aren’t more of them queueing up to take advantage of a potentially great opportunity.

“I can only come to two assumptions from all of that. Either I’m seeing something that nobody else can or we’re really bad at marketing the club.”

Despite his illustrious past with Everton, Southall’s forthright views have ensured he’s not always been a welcome guest of the club’s hierarchy in retirement but it was fitting that he returned to Goodison Park for the 1-0 victory over Burnley on April 6 as the team ended their longest-ever winless streak in the Premier League and took the first step towards achieving safety in the season’s penultimate month. The 65-year-old has always been a straight talker when it comes to those within the corridors of power though and when commenting on the 777 deal, he added: “There are enough people out there across the world with the kind of money to make a difference. It does make you wonder when a group can go to Newcastle United – and I don’t think they’re as big as Everton – why Everton are not viewed as a much better potential investment than many other clubs.

“In today’s world, when I look at Everton Football Club, it’s a bargain. We just need some good, solid recruitment and then upstairs you’ve got to hope that it goes to someone who actually gives a s**t and can take the club forward.”