The Friedkin Group have only been at Everton for a couple of weeks but the changes are already to arrive.
The group, led by Dan Friedkin, have already installed two new senior leaders in long-term confidant Marc Watts to serve as Executive Chairman and Ana Dunkel, TFG’s Chief Financial Officer. It has also secured a loan facility with respected lender JP Morgan Chase, signalling an end to the ‘loan shark’ days of high interest loans from shady Cayman Islands companies under the previous regime.
Plans to secure naming rights for Bramley Moore Stadium are underway and the search for a new CEO is ongoing, while staff were delighted to be awarded a £50 Christmas bonus as a gesture of good will from the incoming owners.
The first changes that could impact the playing side of the club are also underway after the club launched a major recruitment drive in the area of data and analytics.
A new data engineer for the men’s first team will report into Charlie Reeves’ team. The Head of Performance Insights has been at the club for seven years and was promoted into the position in November 2023 but it seems financial issues at the club has hindered the team’s growth in recent times.
The new data engineer will, says the club, “Lead on the entire football data pipeline – building from source to ‘gold’ standard ready-to-use datasets and ensure key datasets are available at all times for analysis by stakeholders across the Club.”
It follows the recruitment of a first team data analyst late last year focused on opposition scouting, set piece analysis and training evaluation as the data team continues to be overhauled under new ownership.
The role of the data department could be key for Everton given recent on-pitch struggles. In an interview in the summer with Training Guru, Everton’s Director of Football Kevin Thelwell said: “Charlie (Reeves) is our Head of Insights. Again, a very very capable individual. We work closely with him – as do Sean and all departments. We have regular reviews around what the data is telling us how it can help us. Where we want to get to and are getting to is, if we have a performance problem, lets go to the insights team first and help them to help us to make more informed and better decisions.”
Everton certainly have a problem. The club won just eight games last calendar year and have some of the worst attacking figures in the country after several insipid performances. Manager Sean Dyche has come under pressure in recent weeks after mocking calls to appoint attacking coaches and analysts who can help his toothless side score goals, instead suggesting players from Nottingham Forest 40 years ago did not use attacking coaches and therefore neither should he.
The changes to how to the data team are also taking place at youth levels with two new roles designed specifically to help develop academy players.
The club is also recruiting for a Youth Football Data Analyst, tasked with: “delivering high-quality performance analysis support to colleagues and players across the Academy, including pre-match opposition analysis, coding all youth matches using the Everton FC game model code window, and collecting and analyzing performance data.”
The club is also recruiting for a specialist academy data analyst focused on the u18s group, which boasts talents such as striker Braiden Graham, attacking midfielder Justin Clarke and Wales youth defender Aled Thomas.