Brands signs contract extension to stay at Everton until 2024
Brands has been at Everton since June 2018
Written by Simon Austin — April 23, 2021
EVERTON have extended the contract of Director of Football Marcel Brands to 2024.
The Dutchman joined from PSV Eindhoven in June 2018 and became a member of the club’s Board in January 2019.
Brands said: “Everton is a very special football club and a club with clear and exciting ambitions. We are making good progress and I believe we have everything in place for us to be successful.
“I am delighted to continue to work alongside such supportive and ambitious colleagues on our Board and Executive team and this, together with such a talented manager and supportive owner and Chairman, puts us in a really strong position for the future.”
Chairman Bill Kenwright said the decision to offer the extension had been an easy one for he and majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri to make.
“There hasn’t really been any doubt for some time that Marcel and I would sit down and agree a new contract,” he said. “With Farhad’s blessing it took us around about one play of Z Cars to reach an agreement.
“As well as being terrific at his job, Marcel has an excellent working relationship with Carlo and with our CEO, Denise, and myself and it was important to maintain the structure and stability we have put in place over recent years.
"Farhad and I both wish our leadership team success and happiness as we all work together to build an exciting future for our great club."
ASSESSING BRANDS’ THREE YEARS AT EVERTON
When Brands arrived at Everton in June 2018, the club had just finished 8th in the Premier League under Sam Allardyce, who was subsequently sacked.
So far, the club haven’t managed to improve on that during Brands’ time at the club. Marco Silva led them to 8th in 2018/19 and Carlo Ancelotti, who had taken over from Silva in December 2019, to 12th in 2019/20.
Currently, they sit 8th in the table.
However, their transfer spending during the period has been huge. In February, the CIES Football Observatory assessed net transfer spend in the top five European leagues over the last 10 windows, going back to the summer of 2016 and Everton came out sixth, behind only Manchester City, Manchester United, Barcelona, PSG and Inter Milan.
Their €346m net loss was more than the likes of Chelsea, AC Milan, Juventus and Bayern Munich over the same period. Of course Brands was only responsible for spending from the January 2019 window onwards (so five of the 10 windows), but he has still overseen some massive spend on the likes of Richarlison (reported £40m), Yerry Mina (£27m), Alex Iwobi (potentially rising to £34m) and Andre Gomes (£22m).
The Dutchman was also clear, from the outset, that promoting homegrown players would be a key part of his philosophy. He had gained a reputation for doing this at PSV and in May 2018, shortly before he arrived at Everton, said: “It is also important, maybe not now this summer, but the summers after, that our own Academy plays an important part in that philosophy.”
Again, there’s a lot of work to be done in this area. This season, Everton are third bottom in the Premier League, behind only Wolves and Fulham, for fielding club-trained players.
CIES count these as players who have been at the club for at least three seasons between the ages of 15 and 21 and, up to March 26th, Everton had given only 4.1% of their minutes to club-trained players.
