Everton director Sasha Ryazantsev, a long-time business associate of new majority shareholder, Farhad Moshiri believes the appointment of Ronald Koeman has made a statement about the Club’s ambition for the future.

In an interview with evertontv, Ryazantsev said “He [Ronald Koeman] was our number one choice from day one of the search project, it took us a while to get to him but in the end we have absolutely no doubt that we made the right decision.

“He [Bill Kenwright] is a passionate man, he is the driving force for the last many years and obviously an Evertonian and it’s very important for us to keep that culture and we very much hope that the new manager will be the guardian of that culture as well and we all move forward as a big Everton family.

On being asked whether “Clearly everybody involved is fully confident that this will be a successful, long term project” – Ryazantsev interestingly rebuffed the term ‘project’

“Well I don’t know if it’s the right word to use, project here. It’s probably more than that but of course we have the team, the performance on the pitch and of course with the appointment of Ronald, that’s the very first step we had to make in that regard but we have other projects like the stadium going forward as well. We very much want to win and be successful in whatever we do.

“We are now part of the four north-western clubs that have brilliant managers and it’s such a big concentration in the north west and we couldn’t have fallen behind and therefore it was very important to get some of that stature in the club”.