The message was clear, loud and passionate.
“Don’t sell Armstrong! Don’t sell Armstrong! I just don’t think you understand,” the away end sang at Bournemouth. “If you sell Armstrong, Harrison Armstrong, you’re gonna have a riot on your hands.”
The news that prompted this outpouring, as broken by The Athletic earlier on Saturday, was that 19-year-old midfielder Armstrong, the finest player produced by Everton’s youth academy in years, was close to a move to Nottingham Forest. Wary of breaching squad cost ratio rules (SCR), the club’s leadership were reluctantly willing to sanction the England youth international’s exit for some £40million.
Everton owner and chairman Dan Friedkin was not present at this weekend’s game on the south coast. Physical attendance was not a prerequisite for understanding the depth of anger felt by a fanbase at the prospect of their top talent’s departure — a pain particularly keenly felt by the notion of a club who finished lower-mid-table last season, rather than a member of the ‘Big Six’, taking away that jewel.
Armstrong is one of the most promising Everton academy graduates in years (Peter Tarry/PA Images via Getty Images)
Friedkin and the club’s leadership spent much of Saturday locked in discussions. That evening, they accepted a written offer from Forest, giving the teenager permission to travel to the East Midlands for a medical. The decision was made — until it was not.
Early on Sunday morning, The Athletic reported that Everton had opted to pull out of the deal — citing Armstrong’s importance to the club’s project — a move that in turn blindsided Forest’s decision-makers, who were convinced they had landed their top target.
Had the Bournemouth game not taken place, giving Everton supporters the platform to vent their frustrations, Armstrong would likely be posing for photos holding a Garibaldi-red Forest shirt now. Instead, he will remain in the royal blue of Everton.
For all of the owners’ billions, the episode shows that fan power remains in the Premier League — and represents somewhat of a marker.
Over the past three years, dozens of academy players have left their home clubs because of their outsized financial importance to those teams — because these youngsters are not signed for a fee, which then has to be amortised against any sale, their exits represent “pure profit” to the selling side.
Forest had exploited before, signing Elliot Anderson from Newcastle United in summer 2024 on a cut-price deal, with the Tyneside club desperate to sell to avoid a significant penalty from the Premier League for breaching its financial regulations. The City Ground brains trust saw Armstrong as the new Anderson — in more ways than one.
Anderson was sold by Newcastle to Forest for £35million in 2024 before joining City for £116m this summer (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
But the examples of these players are numerous, and their absences diminish something of the club at which they were schooled. Jacob Ramsey’s move from Aston Villa to Newcastle; Conor Gallagher of Chelsea joining Atletico Madrid. Alongside Anderson leaving Newcastle, these three deals, in total, represent sales of £110million combined. All three, at the time, were deeply unpopular among the fanbases they left behind.
The Everton supporters’ protests in Bournemouth were a symbol that things do not have to be this way.
That said, the unintended consequence of them, discovered a few hours after Armstrong’s future was resolved, is that Senegal international winger Iliman Ndiaye, the club’s key creative force in the past two seasons, will now join Tottenham Hotspur for some £60million.
More than half the Premier League’s clubs are now American-owned — a sporting culture in which, by contrast to English football, fans wield far less influence. Franchises are moved from one city to another (more than once in some cases); supporter groups have limited recourse by which to protest against ticket-price rises; there are no examples of a fanbase preventing a team from signing or drafting a player.
Two years ago, The Friedkin Group discovered the flipside.
The American consortium also owns Serie A side Roma, a club who, like Everton, boast some of the most vocal and demonstrative supporters in their league.
In September 2024, they decided to sack manager Daniele De Rossi, a club legend from his days as a player, just three months after extending his contract. The Curva Sud at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico, home of their ultras, responded by boycotting the first 30 minutes of the following game.
“You don’t respect our values and our flags,” the group wrote on a banner. “From today, we return to the old ways.”
“Yankee go home,” read another.
Everton’s protests over Armstrong never reached that level of ferocity — but perhaps it was the memory of those months at Roma that provoked the owners’ unprecedented decision to pull out of the deal with Forest in the final moments.
Had the England youth international’s departure been confirmed, The Friedkin Group would have lost virtually all the credibility it had built up since stabilising the club over the past couple of years following Farhad Moshiri’s turbulent near-decade of ownership.
Because for all the security they had provided to Everton, there is a certain logic to player sales (or the prospect of them) that is felt rather than calculated.
Homegrown players have an outsized financial importance to a club, but also an outsized emotional importance; the presence of a local player is the string between the team and the fans. It is some shift from the big four American sports and their college draft systems that largely erase such geographical concerns.
That connection between supporters and the fabric of their club is fragile these days, made of gossamer and tissue-paper rather than steel. Its preservation in this instance deserves to be celebrated.
