Record-breaking transfers, relegation battles and a whole host of managerial sackings – Farhad Moshiri’s tenure as Everton owner was chaotic.
The Iranian businessman’s arrival on Merseyside was welcomed with much optimism due to his well-documented wealth. That money, however, has not been spent well to say the least, with just over £600m worth of transfers seemingly going to waste in recent years.
Moshiri’s spell of eight turbulent years came to an end when he was replaced by the Friedkin Group in December 2024.
Here, we take a closer look at some of the worst Everton signings under Moshiri’s ownership.
10 Salomon Rondon
Now, this was a move that had flop written all over it, and the only reason it isn’t higher on this list is that there was no fee involved.
The only reason Rondon joined the club in August 2021 is due to Rafael Benitez, whom he had played under at Newcastle United and Chinese Super League outfit Dalian Pro.
In all, the Venezuelan striker made 31 appearances for the Merseysiders, scoring just three goals and providing a single assist. Those are atrocious numbers, and when it was clear that he wasn’t at the required level, he agreed to terminate his contract with the club six months early.
Poor decisions were rife during the short-lived Benitez era, and Rondon’s signing was chief among them. Granted, the Spanish boss will have been hamstrung by Financial Fair Play constraints at the time, but this only serves to point the finger at Moshiri once more, as his catalogue of previous expensive mistakes is clearly continuing to hurt the club to this day.
9 Theo Walcott
Now, there is no denying that Theo Walcott had a rather excellent career in the Premier League; you can’t spend 12 years at a club like Arsenal and not have something special about you.
However, when he finally left north London and joined Everton, he was undeniably past his best, and his record for the Toffees shows that.
In total, the former Gunner made 85 appearances for the Toffees, in which he scored 11 goals and notched nine assists, giving him a goal involvement on average every 4.25 games. Were he signed on a free, those kinds of numbers could be seen as good enough, but he wasn’t free. In fact, he cost the club a whopping £20m when they signed him in the summer of 2018.
Ultimately, Walcott wasn’t an atrocious signing for the club, but you would generally want to get more out of an experienced attacker who costs £20m, so he has to make this list. Whoever sanctioned this has a lot of explaining to do.
8 Moise Kean
Moise Kean was destined for Everton greatness when the club signed him from Juventus for an initial fee of £29m in August 2019, but after just 39 appearances for the club and three seasons on loan, he was sold back to the Old Lady.
Admittedly, the fact that Everton were able to sell the player for £25m – practically erasing the cost of signing him in the first place – is rather impressive, but it doesn’t make that transfer any less of a failure.
In his 39 appearances, the young Italian scored just four goals and provided two assists, which is well below what was expected of him. He also picked up a straight red during his time with the Toffees.
In all, he failed to live up to the hype, and the four years he spent at the club were a waste of time for all involved.
7 Fabian Delph
Now, this might seem a little bit harsh to some; after all, Fabian Delph was a Premier League winner at Manchester City and could well have been a difference-maker at Everton had it not been for injuries that weren’t his fault – but that is the problem: he was always injured.
Delph signed for the Toffees in July 2019 for a reported fee of £8.5m, which for someone of his experience, seemed like a reasonable deal, especially as he signed a three-year contract at the club.
However, injury problems quickly arose, and before he had even seen his first Christmas as an Everton player, he had already missed 25 games for club and country through a myriad of injuries. In total, Delph would miss 63 games through injury as an Everton player and make just 41 appearances across three campaigns.
This signing was only made worse by the fact that it was well-known just how injury-prone he was before Everton signed him, but they did it anyway.
6 Jean-Philippe Gbamin
Gbamin joined the club in the summer of 2019 for a reported £25m from German outfit Mainz.
Hopes were high when the midfielder first arrived on Merseyside, with Everton having reportedly shrugged off interest from the likes of Arsenal and Tottenham to land the Ivory Coast international.
Sadly for both Everton and Gbamin, the midfielder’s time in England has been constantly plagued by injury, with the player’s agent recently describing his Everton spell as ‘a nightmare’.
Racking up only six Premier League appearances to date, Gbamin’s body has prevented him from making the impact he would have desired.
Recent loan moves to CSKA Moscow and Trabzonspor have not changed the midfielder’s fortunes, as he remains without a club after leaving Goodison Park in the summer.
5 4 Yannick Bolasie
One of the first signings of the Moshiri era, Bolasie’s flair and unpredictability during his time at Crystal Palace got a lot of Everton fans excited ahead of his move.
Joining for around £25m, the winger had an impressive start to life on Merseyside, contributing to five goals in his first 13 games. Bolasie then, however, would sustain a cruciate ligament rupture just four months after arriving at Goodison Park – an injury that would ultimately derail his Everton career.
Bolasie would only go on to make a further 16 appearances for Everton the next season and then headed out on a number of loans to clubs such as Aston Villa and Sporting CP, later leaving the club on a free transfer in 2021.
3 Davy Klaassen
Regarded as one of the most talented players in the Netherlands at the time of the move, Klaassen joined Everton for £23.6m from Dutch giants Ajax in the summer of 2017.
However, the midfielder, could not replicate the form that he had shown back in his homeland, ultimately failing to make an impact on Merseyside.
Seemingly struggling with the pace of the English game, the Dutchman only went on to make seven league appearances in his one season at the club.
He later left the Toffees to join Werder Bremen in a deal that saw Everton lose £13m on the player in the space of a year.
2 Cenk Tosun
Following the departure of Romelu Lukaku to Manchester United, the Toffees were in dire need of a goalscorer back in 2017. This led to them signing Turkish striker Cenk Tosun in a deal just shy of £30m.
After notching six goal contributions during the Champions League group stage earlier that season, Everton fans will have been hopeful that Tosun could fill the void left by Lukaku.
With four goals in his first seven games, the striker started well under the stewardship of Sam Allardyce. However, that is as good as it got for Tosun, as following the departure of Big Sam, the Turkiye international struggled for goals and game time under his successor, Marco Silva.
Scoring four league goals over the next two seasons, Tosun fell down the pecking order at Goodison Park – heading out on two loan moves at Crystal Palace and Besiktas in search of minutes.
Tosun eventually left Everton to join Besiktas permanently on a free transfer in 2022, meaning the Toffees did not recoup a single penny of the £28m they paid for the striker.
1 Sandro Ramirez
First hailed as an astute piece of business, the La Masia graduate joined the Toffees back in 2017 for what was an apparent bargain £5.25m fee.
The Spaniard’s performances on Merseyside soon changed those opinions, as the striker struggled to resemble anything like a top-flight striker – scoring only one goal in 16 disappointing appearances for the club.
Sandro would head out on numerous loan moves to clubs such as Sevilla and Real Sociedad, before leaving Everton permanently in 2020 to join SD Huesca on a free transfer.
