John Textor has compared the chance to become the new owner of Everton to being elected as president of the United States and said he is confident of completing the takeover before the 30 November deadline set in his exclusivity agreement with Farhad Moshiri.
The American businessman became the fifth bidder to be granted a period of exclusivity by Blue Heaven Holdings, the company that owns Everton, last month, having initially been overlooked by Moshiri. But the £600m takeover rests on Textor – who the Guardian revealed on Tuesday is considering giving Everton fans the chance to buy shares in the club if the deal goes through – selling his 45% stake in Crystal Palace.
He told Sky Sports in an interview on Wednesday that he had received two serious offers to buy his shares in Palace, with the co-owners David Blitzer and Josh Harris also potentially an option. But despite Everton being docked a total of eight points for separate breaches of the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) last season, Textor admitted he had been unable to fully assess the club’s financial situation due to Premier League restrictions.
Asked about the challenges around the deal, he said: “I’m in an awkward spot but we’re working through it. The awkward spot is that I can understand the club’s position … the accounting position and I feel it’s manageable in terms of the PSR problem.
“I don’t quite know the Premier League’s perspective on that because there’s a bit of a Chinese wall between me as an owner of Crystal Palace and what I’m really allowed to know as a prospective owner of another team in the same division. But I do think we’re developing solutions for that information gap and I feel we’re in the very last days of getting our comfort around that. We just hope from the moment we arrive, we can start looking up the table, not down it.”
Textor also owns stakes in the Ligue 1 club Lyon, the Brazilian side Botafogo and Molenbeek in Belgium through his holding company, Eagle Football, and is planning to float on the New York stock exchange in the coming weeks. It is understood he is planning to use his own money and that of several unknown partners to fund the Everton purchase before absorbing the club into Eagle Football.
“Nobody wakes up and thinks: ‘I get to buy Everton,’” added Textor. “But if you decide football is what you want in your life and then somebody comes along and asks you if you want to become the owner of Everton, it’s like someone asking you if you want to be president of the United States. Of course you do.”
Textor dismissed a report that he would target the Palmeiras manager, Abel Ferreira, to replace Sean Dyche if his takeover is successful despite a poor start to the season with three defeats. “I haven’t spoken to any coaches about the Everton job,” he said. “There’s no truth to that. I don’t know Sean personally but I watched him for so many years at Burnley doing wonders with no budget and so obviously he’s a guy who knows how to coach in the Premier League.
“I’d sit down with him at some point in the future and say that I’m going to bring him a very different profile of player from any corner of the world and ask him if he is interested. I’d ask him if he could coach this squad.”
Textor said moving to the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock would help to make the club more competitive. “We don’t want Everton to be bouncing around eighth place for ever. We want to win a title and so to do that you need serious capital. I’ve always been very good at accessing it in my life and so the stadium is huge in that respect.”
