Farhad Moshiri had right man at wrong time at Everton but made unforgivable choice

With a deal to sell his entire 94.1% stake in Everton to the Friedkin Group now in place, majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri is looking to finally get out of the Blues. By his own admission, the Monaco-based businessman’s tenure at Goodison Park has witnessed unparalleled levels of profligacy.

Moshiri once said, “we have not always spent large amounts of money wisely,” and a decline in on-field fortunes has been exacerbated by off-the-pitch chaos with the club hit by a brace of separate points deductions for PSR rule breaches last season.

Having churned through eight managers in as many years, though, who has been Everton’s luckiest manager and who has been the unluckiest?

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Our writes have their say...

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The luckiest manager was Rafael Benitez, given that he was a former Liverpool manager. For Farhad Moshiri to make the most controversial appointment in the history of the most passionate football city in the country.

He wasn’t any old Liverpool manager, I don’t think there would have been the same sort of uproar if it had been Brendan Rodgers, not matter what you might think of his abilities. It was the fact that it was a manager who had petulantly described Everton as “a small club” after a goalless draw in a Merseyside Derby at Anfield.

As much as I agree with what Gavin Buckland has said about it being an appointment where ultimately both parties were out of their depth, I’d say the unluckiest Everton manager was Carlo Ancelotti, because most of his reign ended up behind closed doors because of the global coronavirus pandemic, so it was a strange environment.

I guess given that Real Madrid came calling, he was always going to go back there, and there was the PSR stuff on the horizon, so it might have been a moot point, but just that the bulk of his tenure was behind closed doors.

Matt Jones: Dyche could be both! But unluckiest has proven his worth

While he obviously arrived in testing circumstances, you could argue the luckiest manager is the current incumbent, Sean Dyche.

As much as Dyche has done well to keep Everton's head above water in PSR-stirred seas, had there been any sort of active leadership at the club in recent months then he probably would've been sacked. Last season's four-month winless run would've surely triggered a change under Farhad Moshiri previously, while the four-game losing streak to start this campaign would've no doubt teased the current owner into opening the managerial trapdoor again.

Compared to his predecessors, expectations are much lower for Dyche due to the farcical running of the football club. So while that's offered him a fair degree of fortune in 'meeting expectations' and keeping his job, it has of course complicated matters too. Perhaps he could actually fit both categories here with that in mind!?

But in terms of the unluckiest? It's hard to look at any manager appointed by Everton under Moshiri and think anything other than they only had themselves to blame for their eventual exit. But perhaps Marco Silva can feel hardest done by. The Portuguese had an encouraging first full season in charge, finishing the campaign with a lot of momentum and a clear style of play.

WATCH: Chris Beesley debates Everton's luckiest/unluckiest manager with Gavin Buckland and Ian Croll

That summer the club got it wrong in the transfer market though, as they failed to sign Kurt Zouma on a permanent deal despite pushing throughout the window. They also embarked on a wild and unsuccessful pursuit of Wilfried Zaha.

One of the players they did eventually sign was Jean-Philippe Gbamin, who was earmarked as the replacement for the irrepressible Idrissa Gueye after he departed for Paris Saint-Germain. But the Ivorian was besieged by injury problems, while other arriving midfielders Fabian Delph and Andre Gomes also suffered badly with fitness issues.

So Silva was left with a scarcity of options throughout the spine of the team - Moise Kean was ultimately a flop as the new centre-forward acquisition too - and as a result the Blues were rotten in the early months of the season. He was sent packing in December after a heavy derby defeat, paving the way for Duncan Ferguson's lightning-in-a-bottle stint.

Of course, the Portuguese was not blameless for the plight - remember the terror when any opposition team got a corner against Everton? - but perhaps more so than at any time in the Moshiri era, after his first season the framework appeared to be there for the Blues to push on. Silva's performance at Fulham since departing would add further credence to the theory that he may have been the right man at the wrong time for the Toffees.

Paul Wheelock: Cast of managers say everything about Moshiri

Where to start? For all the criticism Farhad Moshiri rightly receives, every manager he has sacked at Everton had what was coming. And, bar from when Rafa Benitez replaced Carlo Ancelotti, who was the one boss the vast majority of Blues did not want to lose, there is an argument to suggest that the replacements had the desired effect, even if the eventual outcome ultimately proved to be the same.

That's why I can see the argument for Sean Dyche being the luckiest. Because as Matt rightly argues above, at other points in Moshiri's reign, some of the runs of results he has overseen would have got him the sack. However, no Everton manager has had to lead the club under the circumstances in which he has. Which, of course, gives credence to the idea that he is the Blues' unluckiest boss.

But's let's try and go with someone different. So... the luckiest... it has to be Ronald Koeman. Long before the war in Ukraine led to the end of Alisher Usmanov's sponsorship, and long before the spectre of PSR, Koeman was given carte blanche to bring in the players he wanted. Ultimately, he made a complete mess of it, although in fairness, it appears that there were too many contrasting voices and views in the recruitment process that infamously saw the club sign not one, not two, not three but four No.10s in the summer of 2018 when what Everton really needed was a No.9.

Koeman had his chance and he blew it. Which you could possibly say the same about Ancelotti. After all, he was extravagantly backed in the transfer market, too, and after leading the Blues to second place in the table at Christmas 2020, he oversaw some miserable results that matched the times we were living in, which ensured the club finished 10th and away from the European qualification places that could have eased the PSR problems that soon were to come. But, no, like Chris argues, we can only wonder what difference Ancelotti would have made with crowds in Goodison Park and, as he has proven at Real Madrid since his return to the Spanish capital, he truly is one of the game's greatest bosses.

Perhaps it was Koeman's replacement Sam Allardyce who could be considered to be the unluckiest. Now, like many supporters, I was happy to see him go after his side served up some instantly forgettable football after a bright start on Merseyside. But Allardyce would argue that he did what he came in to do and his eighth-placed finish is better than any of the managers who have followed him since.

However, he can't go down to be the unluckiest. Instead, I will side with Matt and go with Silva, who has proved what a capable coach he is at Fulham and whose time at Goodison Park, with more fortune and with an owner who actually empowered the director of football to do the job he was brought into do, may well have been different.

Instead, he went the way of 99% of the managers Moshiri has appointed. Which, ultimately, says a lot about him and the way he has ran the club.