Im under the impression we either get a billionaire owner to run the club to fund our improvement on and off the pitch, or we keep the structure in place and get this Kirkby stadim i.e Facility based. If the new Kirkby stadium is all we need to help us compete financially rather than a new owner (as stated by Blue Bill) then i’m all for it, but maybe im being naive. But the new stadium is a must....then lets take it from there.

I actually like Kenwright to be honest, but i’ll stop there!

Its a salient point Ian. Frankly I don’t want to be a Chelsea or Man City, the whole thing is ridiculous and theres a nice article pointing this out on WSAG today.

But if someone were to step in the Villa approach is more palatable. However, it doesn’t seem like its imminent does it?

It’s a no-brainer (for me).

One route delivers potentially immense satisfaction and a sense of ownership, attachment and the feeling that something has been built & earned.

The other route turns a once noble club into a circus run solely by money and for money. Some Chelski fans may disagree. Most Citeh fans are still living the wet dream. But the reality is that what has happened at both clubs is transforming what was once the people’s sport into a grotesque caricature.

So, from this Evertonian, all the sheikhs can stay where they are, or maybe buy the devil’s sperm across the park. If there was ever a way that Paul McCartney decided to invest about £250m in EFC then that would be perfect for me. Then we could build from that with good management, on AND OFF the field.

It’s inescapable that the sense of achievement we would get by winning the EPL, or UEFA cup, and certainly the CL, would be orders of magnitude more orgasmic than the expectation brought about when your club decides to chuck obscene amounts of money at charmless fuckwits who can barely string two words together but can run up & down a park and score the occasional goal.

No sheikhs here thanks. If that means missing out on trophies for a while longer, so be it.

And one final thing, loosely related. There have been contributors too numerous to mention who have not only assassinated Kenwright’s character & motives in unpleasant ways, but ventured to suggest that he would adopt the Russian approach to communication & diplomacy at the EGM yesterday. IMHO, the willingness to engage on just about everything, the candour and clear honesty on show, and the inconvenient (for some) truth about the options available to us at Goodison, reflect the true character of Bill Kenwright.

He may have made mistakes (unlike some of the contributors to this forum), he may have been badky advised, he may even have bitten off more than he can chew with this big blue monster, but I believe he deserves a break. He did what almost everyone wanted him to do because he was/is a blue and because he was felt to be trustworthy with our club. I think that has been proved, lest it was ever in doubt.

"I am pretty sure if Moyes had O?Neil?s resources he would have followed Villa?s transfer policy, so here is hoping for a new owner and following Villa?s approach."

There’s one problem with this Ian - exactly where Villa get their money from. It isn’t Lerner. They borrow it, exactly like we do.

Villa appear at present to have more money than us. It’s an illusion, however. When Lerner took over at Villa, they had zero debt, thanks to the tight ship Ellis ran / tight fistedness of Ellis (delete as per your opinion).

Villa’s debt now exceeds ours.

Lerner hasn’t done anything that Kenwright didn’t do; he just inherited a football club in much better financial shape than we did.

So let me get this straight you DO want investment but now you want to pick and choose who puts money into the club?
Jesus some people just cant be pleased personally I couldnt give a shit if Osama bin Laden wanted to invest as long as we can "compete"

It truly doesnt matter. It?s like a ladder whose bottom rungs keep breaking when you step on it. The money being paid to the players and the agents and the other clubs keeps going up faster than we are capable of keeping up with it. It actually goes back a couple of years ago to the Kid. In hindsight, ManU overpaid for him because they COULD. And as it turned out, they needed to buy another 30 million pound forward because the 28 million pound forward is just okay. We can?t make that mistake even once, for a fraction of that money. Look at Darren Bent...25+ million for that? Can you imagine the outcry if we had done that?

The serious problem is we have a house (Goodison) that is on the market for a lot of money. And the place is falling down, and it?s mortgaged to the absolute brink. Think about it in real terms...if this was you looking for a property to buy and your realtor took you to see Goodison would you get out of the car? It?s a teardown, and we all know it. It?s not even a fixer-upper anymore. that was 10 years ago. That?s why the Arabs went to Manchester. They have a brand new house and a million more people in the GReater Manchester Area to draw from. What do we have? We are the second class team according to Liverpool Council who could care less if we folded our tent and moved 100 miles away, let alone 4. Randy Lerner is a god send for Villa, and I can see him growing old in Birmingham with that club. Villa Park is a house you would get out of the car to look at. I?m crushed by the weight of this, and there are no easy solutions or quick fixes. This is a battle for our survival, and we better realize it before the oxygen runs out.

Good piece Ian and I could never agree with a line that it doesn’t matter who owns the club.

It matters to me whether the money being used to pay the players was swindled away from Siberian miners or Thai peasants.

Call me a bleeding-heart, but this matters more than football doesn’t it?

Clyde McPhat

Thank you for speaking (or typing!) a bit of sense. The big problem with the anti-Kirkby brigade, and that includes certain aspects of Liverpool City Council, is they have no viable alternative.

If only they had.

The much heralded willingness of LCC to sit down with Everton and discuss options within the City came up with what? A regurgitation of the shared stadium idea. Absolutely fucking brilliant...just what we have been waiting for!!!! Is this what all the optimism was about when DK was called in? Elstone laid the LCC option to rest last night...at least for anybody with an open mind. It was clear that LCC offered sites to Everton which were never going to be viable and were not viable when the same sites were offered to Liverpool FC. If they were no good for them why should they be good enough for us?

This IS a matter of life and death for our Club. Kirkby is a lifeline not a cure-all but as much as we love the place Goodison is now a millstone around our necks in the context of the modern game and it cannot be redeveloped sufficiently or economically.

Some of the opposition to Kirkby that appears on this site is a lot like arguing the toss with a surgeon who offers your Granny a chance of continued fortified life with surgery while pointing out that without an operation she will probably die very soon. It is kneejerk in the extreme and reminds me of the old saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Any reason will do. The design is crap: it will cost us £78m: it is not in Liverpool: it will undermine our future support: it hands the City to LFC:Tesco are shite: Leahey is a dickhead and why should we trust him: BK is an incompetent liar: the vote was rigged: real Evertonians don?t want to go to Kirkby: Kirkby residents will suffer from hooliganism (strange that one because Walton residents never seem to!) Kirkby shops will close: Kirkby will suffer traffic problems and on and on and on ad infinitum. As one of the site editors wrote in a response to the first post regarding the EGM....he is glad the opposition is coming from somewhere...well that sounds like opposition has become more important than the cause to me. Opposition for its own sake, or denying your Granny a chance of life is sheer stupidity when she is dying slowly but inexorably before your eyes.

One final point. Over recent years no Club has been more consistent in challenging the top four than Everton. We even got there once. Why is it then that Arab investors have just chosen to pump millions into a Club that have done virtually nothing of note for decades and who have a fanbase no bigger than ours? Of course, the no voters will say it is because Billy Bullshit doesn?t want to sell his trainset or isn?t looking hard enough.

Bollocks.

It is for two reasons. Which overrides the other will depend on the views of individual investors but the reasons are the Stadium and the fact of our rubbing shoulders with neighbours who are far more powerful than we are at the moment and THAT is why investors choose Clubs like City, West Ham or Villa. Because they do not have those drawbacks which are a serious issue for anybody looking to plough money into a Football Club. We may not like it but that is the world we live and play our Premiership football in these days. It may not be the world we would like but it is the world we have got.

It’s all very emotive stuff again from Kenwright. In the same way he said Goodison is falling down and we won’t be given a safety certificate so we have to move, he’s now saying we have to move to attract a billionaire otherwise we’re stuffed.

Kenwright always uses this way of making statements - either you follow my advice or the future of the club is doomed. It’s rubbish and he only does it to make people panic into believing him and think that there is no other option. Don’t panic and try and think for yourselves fellow Evertonians. Don’t be led astray by more lies, there are always other options and that’s all the EGM was trying to do last night - make Everton look at other options.

Dave Roberts
"....but the reasons are the Stadium and the fact of our rubbing shoulders with neighbours who are far more powerful than we are at the moment and THAT is why investors choose Clubs like City, West Ham or Villa....."

Do I take it from that that you think City WEREN’T rubbing shoulders with neighbours far more powerful than they were ?

And to all those that think having a new stadium makes us a more attractive proposition, this Abu Dhabi group are talking of buying City’s ground so they own it outright. It’ll cost them in the region of £70 million to buy it. So they obviously weren’t put off by the fact they’ve got to invest £70 million for the stadium!

If you look at it from a property development point of view, you’d think someone would want to buy a shit heap as they stand to make more off it when they come to sell. Which is the exact reason Kenwright doesn’t want to sell yet, he stands to make far more money by selling Everton after he’s moved us to Kirkby. But people are still sucked in by this bullshit of Everton being for sale since the moment he took over.

Dave Roberts

Did you not think by strangling the vote the board guarenteed there can be no alternative ?

You advocate the exclusivity deal in one breathe, then moan about the lack of alternatives in the next ?

Which is it to be mate ?

Just for a little clarity.

I live in Birmingham and those Villa fans moaned all summer about the lack of transfer activity until nearly the end of the transfer period.

Those villa fans have been saying over the last few years that they should be doing it the Everton way. Go figure!

Do you think the Arabs think they bought United? I need a laugh after this week...think about it...they get back home in the desert and they look at the paperwork and it doesn’t say UNITED anywhere on it....holy shit.....we bought the wrong club!!!!

I actually would like to turn the tables around, what exactly does Lerner want from all this (Aston Villa)? What’s his motivation? It’s not like Villa is a money machine. He’s not using the media to promote his good looks looking for birds.

With the Arabs and Abramovich, it’s all about gloating to your mates and having a true scale Football Fantasy team. Making a fool of yourself on TV (that Dr. Arab bloke doesn’t appear too intellectual having seen him open his mouth).

What’s in if for Lerner? Answers on a postcard.. to Blue Bill!