Everton stand at the start of a new era, one we all hope will be a bright one. There is no escaping the fact the takeover of the club by The Friedkin Group, confirmed this week, was desperately needed.

Assessing the legacy of outgoing owner Farhad Moshiri is a significant challenge and one that will be undertaken in these pages, just not in this piece. But it is not unfair to say that it was a period of turbulence, turmoil and crisis.

Whatever his intentions may have been, this great club, this great institution, this invaluable part of Liverpool and Merseyside in life, community and sport, regressed on his watch. As I wrote earlier this week, as a billionaire’s millions were spent with reckless abandon it was the supporters who had to push through the exhaustion to pull the club to safety time and again.

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Chelsea, Leicester City, Crystal Palace under Frank Lampard, Bournemouth and the post-points deduction fury under Sean Dyche, the story of this fanbase refusing to abandon the club they love is THE story of the Moshiri years and, ultimately, the main reason the Blues are still in the Premier League and that Moshiri had something left to sell and TFG saw something in this club that was worth investing in.

Everton is a club that has not been run well over recent years, something the ECHO has not shied away from highlighting.

But as the club enters a new chapter in its history, a moment has to be taken to acknowledge that many, many wonderful people have done a good job in the most trying circumstances. For all the failures identified by the Premier League investigations and revealed on the club’s balance sheets there are staff who have kept going amid intense pressure to ensure the Blues have survived the crises of recent years.

That cannot be easy. Many are supporters themselves who have had to fight through the pain of watching their club suffer to keep doing what they can to help.

One high-profile figure who deserves credit is Colin Chong. There is still a lot that is unknown about the inner-workings at Everton during the later years of Moshiri, particularly since the appointment of an interim board that lasted 18 months before being disbanded on Thursday.

But it appears clear that Chong has been a pillar of stability through the turbulence of PSR investigations, relegation fights, the long and chaotic search for investment and, what should not be forgotten, his original job of overseeing the delivery of the stunning new stadium on the Liverpool waterfront.

That role has been immediately acknowledged by the Friedkins. Yes, they plan to finalise the appointment of a permanent CEO as a priority, but the decision to initially retain Chong speaks volumes about the value they place on his institutional knowledge.

There are other high profile figures who deserve credit too. Club captain Seamus Coleman has been the link between the dressing room and the stands throughout the strife of recent years and the survival battles of the past few years are littered with managers, staff and players speaking of the enormous role he has played at pivotal moments - on and off the pitch.

But the hard work - and good work - runs far deeper than the upper echelons of the club and through people and positions those of us on the outside rarely get to glimpse. All of them have been impacted by the turmoil and yet so many have delivered. I showcased the work of just some of them earlier this season in a series looking at the efforts of the likes of Bob Lennon, Jon Howell and Tony Balshaw to tend to the Goodison pitch in her last season and Elle Barnes-Reen as she attempts to make the historic stadium as accessible as possible before Everton move to the waterfront.

That shiny Fourth Grace on the banks of the Mersey is another example of the positive work that has continued behind the scenes. The transition to that new future is complex but some big issues have already been overcome, with the management of the move of season tickets - and the pricing of them - deserving credit. There will always be some people who lose out but that is a process that appears to have been handled with care and sensitivity, not easy as some of Everton’s rivals pursue ruthless and exploitative efforts to make as much money as they can from those who love their clubs the most.

There have been huge problems at Everton that have been well-documented in these pages, and rightly so. But where praise is deserved it should also be provided and, while it might not be possible to identify all those whose work has helped to save the club during such difficult times, this is an attempt to recognise that many people deserve credit for their role in getting Everton to the point where new owners saw value in it.