Everton’s £750m-£800m Sale Price Emerges as Man City’s Case Dominates the Build-Up to Anfield
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Everton’s owners, the Friedkin Group, are expected to seek between £750m and £800m for a full sale of the club, including roughly £468m of existing debt, football finance expert Kieran Maguire told BBC Sport. The report detailed how chairman Dan Friedkin — who also owns Roma and has never attended an Everton match or spoken to manager David Moyes since his January 2025 return — presided over a botched summer window that saw a £40m deal to sell academy prospect Harrison Armstrong to Nottingham Forest provoke fan fury before being scrapped, alongside sales of Iliman Ndiaye to Manchester City for £65m and Beto to Fiorentina.
Manchester City manager Enzo Maresca said the club’s titles are “absolutely not” tainted by the guilty verdict on financial rule breaches, telling reporters he has “100%” trust in the owners, CEO and sporting director ahead of Sunday’s trip to Liverpool. Maresca, who succeeded Pep Guardiola in June after serving as his assistant during City’s 2022-23 treble, has won each of his first five league games in charge and could become only the fourth manager to win his opening six matches of a Premier League spell.
Transfer and squad notes
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said his conscience was “clear” when directly asked about his three-and-a-half years as Manchester City assistant manager between 2016 and 2019, a period that overlaps with City’s guilty verdict on breaches dated 2009-10 to 2017-18, BBC Sport reported. Arteta otherwise declined to comment further on the case, including whether he had spoken to Pep Guardiola, as Arsenal prepare to host fifth-placed Leeds on Saturday three points behind league leaders City.
Manchester United manager Michael Carrick said the Manchester City case “affected me personally,” recalling that he was on the pitch at Sunderland in 2012 when Sergio Aguero’s injury-time goal won City the title, and that he finished runner-up to City sides as a player in 2018 and as a coach in 2020-21, BBC Sport reported. Carrick said a retrospective title or medal years later “doesn’t bring the feeling” of winning in the moment, and called for a swift resolution to City’s appeal, which is expected to conclude by Christmas.
What it means for the league
Everton’s likely £750m-£800m price tag gives the first concrete sense of scale for what could be a major Premier League ownership change, with the Armstrong saga standing as the clearest illustration yet of how badly relations between TFG and supporters deteriorated. On the Manchester City front, the contrasting but related responses from Maresca, Arteta and Carrick show how deeply the case has embedded itself across the league’s biggest clubs, with Sunday’s Liverpool-City fixture now carrying extra weight as City’s first match since the guilty verdict and a test of how hostile away atmospheres will be for the rest of the season.