To help offset the losses majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri pumped in £50m of his own cash during the last financial year up to June 2020 and has already put in a further £50m for the current period.

That took his investment in the club since assuming control in February 2016 to £400m with plans for a further £50m to be injected by the end of this season.

As a result the club have taken steps to create and propose a new share issue to Moshiri’s Blue Heaven Holdings Limited up to a value of £250m, with the conversion of previous shareholder loans into equity equating to £150m of that total.

That would potentially take his share in the club from 77.2 per cent to 93.3 per cent.

Everton chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale said: “Clearly this has been a very challenging year, not least from a financial perspective with the impact of Covid-19 having a profound, wide-reaching and material impact on our figures.

“Prior to the pandemic, we were forecasting record revenues in excess of £200m. Our final accounts show that a significant proportion of our losses have been directly attributable to the pandemic.

“However, in this period, it is encouraging that our commercial performance has improved markedly, and this will continue to be a priority moving forward.

“We have also continued our investment into both our new stadium project – which continues to progress in line with our project plan – and, importantly, in strengthening our management and playing staff through the arrival of Carlo Ancelotti and some key additions to our first-team squad.

“These strategically important projects have been enabled by our majority shareholder, who has further underlined his commitment with additional investment into the club, in 2019-20 and into this financial year.”

Due to Moshiri’s continued investment, net debt was reduced to £2.3m (down from £9.2m in 2018-19), while the club’s sponsorship, advertising and merchandising revenue of £64m was more than double the previous year (£29m), with total commercial revenue increasing to £76m.

However, there was a £113m investment in the squad during 2019-20 – with a further £70m subsequently – and the pay-off of former manager Marco Silva and his backroom team last December amounted to £6.6m.

Almost £20m was spent on preparation for a new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, which included the submission of a full planning application.