Whatever else is said about Dan Friedkin, he is a good golfer. He plays off a handicap of one and, if we are to trawl his scorecards, Friedkin handled himself well in the company of a few touring professionals in Scotland last week.

That was at the Alfred Dunhill Links event, where he contested the Pro-Am in the days before it was announced, rather abruptly on Friday, that he was seeking a way to sell his controlling stake in Everton. Having only bought the club 22 months ago, the latter landed as a surprise.

But we’ll return to that situation in a moment. First, we’ll touch on the golf, because it’s where the patriarch of an American business dynasty appears to channel his love. By that, we mean it’s how he chose to spend the bulk of his time on this recent visit to the UK, rather than chatting with, say, David Moyes.

To Friedkin, the concerns of an Everton manager were one thing but the prospect of tee times across four days at St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns was quite another. He chose golf.

His pro at the tournament was a Spanish player named Josele Ballester, better known for causing holy hell and hilarity at the Masters last year by taking a pee in Rae’s Creek. 

Together, they were among the 20 teams out of 168 to make the cut and Friedkin pulled his weight – on ten of their 72 holes, he returned the pair’s best score and eagled a couple on a blustery day at Carnoustie.

Again, Friedkin is a good golfer. But let’s now talk about swingers and those who seek a rapid escape in the small hours of the night.

If we are to assess Friedkin’s behaviour since he reached into the bowl of investment opportunities and pulled out the keys to a Premier League club, then we’d see a man whose commitment to Everton was exposed by one salient detail: if he said even a single word to Ballester across their four days together, that would be one more than Silent Dan has uttered to Moyes in his entire tenure at Everton. 

And 178 less than a note left on the pillow by The Friedkin Group on Friday, when that brief statement dropped and outlined their willingness to sell a club they only purchased on December 19, 2024.

I remember the relief around Everton when The Friedkin Group first rocked up. After the debacle and chaos and debts of the Moshiri era, they were hastily viewed as a saviour for a grand old club in hard times. That was an understandable reflex. And more so in review of who else was trying to take control – 777 Partners, a consortium whose head, Josh Wander, was later charged with fraud.

For one of British football’s most loved institutions, Everton were due a good turn. And they thought it had in Friedkin, who did nothing, initially, to disabuse anyone of that notion.

This was his statement when he took over: ‘I take immense pride in welcoming one of England's most historic football clubs to our global family, the Friedkin Group. Everton represents a proud legacy, and we are honoured to become custodians of this great institution. We are deeply committed to honouring this legacy while contributing positively to the community, economy, and people of this remarkable city.’

We now know what ‘deeply committed’ meant – 660 days, and far too few of them chimed with internal expectations at the club.

So here’s a question: what do we picture when we imagine a bad Premier League owner?

Is it the leeching Glazers at Manchester United? Is it the associations to a repressive state at Newcastle? Is it the cheats at Manchester City?

Is it the conflicted boardroom of Chelsea’s present, or the Russian oligarch of their past? Was it the frugality at yesteryear’s Tottenham or the mindless spending that followed the Daniel Levy era?

Is it the meddling and conspiracies of Evangelos Marinakis? Is it the price hikers? Is it anyone tied to the six mutineer clubs who wanted to cash in on a Super League, Arsenal and Liverpool among them?

I wouldn’t pitch Dan Friedkin in with the worst of them in the rogue’s gallery. Not even close. But he is representative of a festering and growing trend in the modern era of Premier League ownership – indifference. Never there, never cared. He attended as many games as he had conversations with Moyes.

There is a risk here of sounding naïve. Too idealistic. Too seduced by a social media post from the great Neville Southall on Friday, which read: ‘Maybe Everton will go back to being the people’s club. Not the corporate club.’

Wishful thinking, of course, because football’s horse bolted years ago. And, besides, there were never as many butchers, bakers and candlestick makers in charge as some nostalgic fans choose to remember. But Everton deserved better than to fall into the hands of those who flit in and flip on. They deserved better than prospectors, especially those whose longer-term ambitions may have been curtailed by shoddy due diligence.

The suggestion around the club on Friday was that this American consortium, long wedded to Roma in Serie A, simply did not fully appreciate the scale of what it costs to progress in the Premier League. The impression being that they were sucked in by the possibility of huge revenues and underestimated the complexities. The truth will inevitably be more nuanced.

But there is no disguising that the Friedkins failed to grasp a simple concept – clubs live and breathe and don’t take well to being strangled.

If you try to sell a homegrown gem to solve a cash-flow issue, as they did with Harrison Armstrong, there will be chaos among the fans. If you label 13th place a ‘failure’, as the Friedkins evidently did internally at the end of last season, then you are incapable of understanding even the simplest truths of your new environment. And if you oversee a shambolic transfer window, leaving the manager with 18 senior players, you are probably in the wrong line of work.

In time, the Friedkin reign might be viewed differently, because the group established the club and it is no longer a distressed asset. Doubtless it will be more appealing to the next group who authorise a meaningless press release about ‘honouring the legacy’ of this ‘great institution’ in a ‘remarkable city’.

But there is likely a good reason that Everton’s CEO Angus Kinnear only learned of the sale announcement two hours before it was published at the 8.22am on Friday – the Friedkins just weren’t fussed about anything other than their own agenda. Either that or their boss was too busy at the driving range.