Use your head and sign up now for the Everton FC newsletter Sign up now Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Hollywood A-lister Sylvester Stallone has admitted that he regrets not buying his beloved Blues after becoming a loyal Evertonian during his famous visit to Goodison Park in 2007 but how about all the other great takeover bids that never happened?

Despite a steady flow of speculation that he was selling up at various points during his 15-year ownership of the club, current chairman Bill Kenwright remains at the helm in the Blues boardroom.

Just how many of these wild and wacky rumours do you recall from supposed ‘interested parties’ many of whom, unlike Sly, never actually made it to Walton in order to wave their scarf to the crowd and pump a fist in the direction of the Gwladys Street.

The Sultan of Brunei

As one of the world’s richest men, the Sultan’s apparent dalliance with the Blues had Evertonians’ pulses racing in the late 1990s.

Given that this was before Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour were on the scene at Chelsea and Manchester City respectively who knows what Everton’s fortunes could have been if they’d been able to steal a march on the Premier League’s nouveau riche?

The Sultan of Brunei stories surfaced in the 1997/98 season around about the time when the Blues were at their lowest ebb.

Peter Johnson was looking to sell up and the Sultan – whose personal fortune was estimated at £38billion at the time – was linked with a £60million takeover at Goodison as a present for his then teenage football-mad sons Billah and Malik.

Former Blues striker Jim Pearson worked as a personal sports consultant for the Sultan’s family and alerted him to reports that Johnson was ready to part with his 68% stake in the club while Goodison stalwart Mick Lyons had coached in Brunei earlier in the decade.

The Sultan also invited big Blue John Parrott down to his London mansion to teach his son to play snooker but Everton never potted this potentially massive deal.

Chris Evans

The Gwladys Street used to sing about manager David Moyes: “He’s got red hair but we don’t care” but what would they have thought about another famous ginger Chris Evans taking control of their club?

Ahead of Moyes leading the Blues to the 2009 FA Cup final at Wembley, his fellow carrot top Evans revealed that he nearly bought Everton in the late 1990s before Kenwright took control.

The radio and television presenter, who became a 90s icon on the Big Breakfast and now hosts Radio 2’s Breakfast Show, said: “We could have got it for £13.5million. It [Everton] hardly had any debt at the time, this was 1998, ’99, maybe 2000.

“We had a media group our remit was to grow the company and we had to try and give the investors the return that we had promised them.

“One thing we did was looking at buying a newspaper and the other thing we did was look at buying Everton Football Club.”

Warrington-born Evans is a curious beast in that he has a general appreciation of football but claims not to support any particular team.

His close friend Danny Baker is of course a lifelong Millwall supporter while the pair were also pals with English football legend Paul Gascoigne who went on to turn out for the Blues between 2000-02.

(Image: (C) BBC. Ray Burmiston)

Fortress Sports Fund

Chris Samuelson was the fall guy for the mysterious body promising to invest in Everton back in 2004 who ended up with egg on his face.

Reportedly representing the Russian businessman Boris Zingarevich, father of Anton Zingarevich who later went on to buy Reading FC, Samuelson tried to pass himself of as a lifelong fan of the Blues.

He even stood up in front of a packed room in the Alex Young Lounge at Goodison at a club AGM and waxed lyrical on his love of all things Everton until a canny fan asked him: “Who scored the winning goal in the 1966 FA Cup final?”

Unable to tell his Derek Temple from his Derek Mountfield or even Derek Hatton one suspects, Samuelson was caught out and could only offer the lame response of: “Err, I was a student in Munich in ‘66.”

Does that mean he’s heard of Geoff Hurst?

When involved in the deal at Reading in 2012 and safely far away from any pesky Evertonians, save for perhaps John Madejski’s chum the turncoat Cilla Black, a former Blue who switched side because of late husband Bobby Willis, Samuelson declared: “It was a minority stake to help the club survive at the time.

“There was a very good reason why we had to withdraw, but it is not something I’m willing to go into because it is confidential between me, the Zingarevichs and Bill Kenwright.

“I saw Bill Kenwright last week. I know him well and he was fine with it. He knows exactly why it happened and there were sound reasons why it did. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the money.”

Oleg Bakhmatyuk/Paul McCartney

One of the world’s youngest billionaires, the Ukrainian who made his fortune in egg production before he was 40, was supposedly at the head of a consortium that approached the Blues as recently as 2013 but a group of Evertonians were unimpressed and launched an online petition urging former Beatle Paul McCartney to buy their club instead.

The supporters message read: “We, the fans, have started a petition to appeal to Beatles legend and Liverpool native son Paul McCartney to purchase our illustrious football club.“We believe the team could face serious financial disaster in the hands of Mr Bakhmatyuk and Bakhmatyuk’s company, Avangardco Investments.”

Despite travelling to Wembley to see the Blues lose the 1968 FA Cup final to West Bromwich Albion, a diplomatic McCartney has often maintained that he supports both the major clubs in his home city although when push comes to shove on Derby day he has to side with Everton as that’s where his dad was from.

Red Bull

Red Bull Everton! There’s a non-starter if ever you heard one.

The Austrian energy drinks firm who own Red Bull Salzburg in their native country along with other clubs in New York, Germany, Brazil and Ghana were reputedly looking for a suitable English team in 2013 to ‘give it wings’ and guide into the Champions League.

Both Everton and neighbours Liverpool were allegedly on their shortlist but you couldn’t envisage the Blues – who forced then club sponsors One 2 One to remove all the red livery on their company logo from the team’s jerseys during their partnership – to ever entertain a name change that involved the primary colour of their main rivals.

Red Bull Salzburg’s sporting director Ralf Rangnick who impressed during interview to replace Moyes before losing out to Roberto Martinez was said to have been heading the search for a suitable club.

An insider in the proposed deal said: “Red Bull want a team to take into the Champions League. It is the only market they have not reached yet. Ideally this would be in the London area, but both Everton and Liverpool interest them too because it would not take much to get them to that level.

“They have looked at the Championship, but you can spend fortunes there and not make any progress.”