David Moyes on Everton's Ownership and Squad Challenges
David Moyes has revealed he has still never met Everton owner Dan Friedkin, despite being back in the Goodison Park dugout since January 2025.
Friedkin, head of The Friedkin Group, runs the club from Houston and has not been at a home game since completing his takeover in December 2024. In a summer when every major decision has been pored over, the distance between boardroom and technical area has rarely felt more obvious.
‘My real contact is Angus’
Speaking before Everton’s home game against Manchester United on Sunday, Moyes was asked directly whether he had met or spoken to Friedkin at any point in the 20 months since his return.
His answer was blunt: “No.”
The day-to-day running of the club is left to Friedkin’s son-in-law, Rishi Majithia, who works alongside chief executive Angus Kinnear. For Moyes, that is where the chain of communication begins and ends.
“My real contact is Angus,” Moyes said. “Angus is the one who I would go to see. Rishi is the next one and then the head of the Friedkin family in America.
“I don't really get any direct conversations with them, but I do through Rishi, he is the one I would speak to.”
That hierarchy has come under heavy scrutiny after a chaotic end to the transfer window.
Anger over Armstrong and a stripped-back squad
Tension inside the fanbase boiled over at Bournemouth last weekend when news broke that Everton had accepted a £40m offer from Nottingham Forest for Harrison Armstrong, one of the club’s most highly rated young players and an England Under-19s midfielder.
Supporters reacted furiously in the away end. The club eventually pulled out of the deal, but the anger did not disappear with it. It simply shifted towards the way Everton are being run.
The final days of the window only deepened that frustration. Beto was sold to Fiorentina on deadline day on Tuesday before a replacement striker had been secured. USA forward Folarin Balogun then walked away from a move from Monaco at the last moment, leaving Moyes with a painfully thin squad.
Everton closed the window with just 18 senior players. Only one recognised striker. One right-back. One left-back. For a club trying to stabilise in the Premier League, it is a razor-edge gamble.
Moyes did not hide his sympathy with supporters last weekend when asked about the plan to sell Armstrong, stressing that the club is “managed by an Evertonian” and adding that “supporters aren't always wrong”.
On Friday, he admitted the structure behind the scenes still needs work.
“We've got new owners in who are still feeling their way in the club,” he said. “I think if we get to know each other more it will get better.”
‘I wouldn’t have come back for anybody but Everton’
Against that backdrop, the obvious question followed: had he thought about walking away?
“Everton's different,” Moyes replied. “I wouldn't have come back for anybody but Everton.”
This is the club he once guided to regular top-five finishes between 2002 and 2013, the club whose identity he clearly still feels bound to. The challenge now is not just to keep Everton in the division, but to pull together a fractured operation on and off the pitch.
“I think the club here has had enough days where the people find a way of recovering,” he said. “People saw the face of Evertonians last week and it can be really powerful. I would expect them to be really powerful now.
“But powerful for the team, powerful for the players. What we're going to need from them is extra because we're short, so we need them. If they're not with us, then it's terrible. And they are with us, I believe they are with us.”
The owner may be thousands of miles away in Houston. The squad may be down to the bare bones. For Moyes, the immediate hope is that the noise inside Goodison can bridge a gap that the boardroom, so far, has not.
