View from the Blue
Columnist: Lyndon Lloyd

Money talks...
27 July, 2004

Bill Kenwright: The tide of opinion has emphatically turned against him.

It was just four years ago that Bill Kenwright rode into Goodison on a proverbial white horse to rescue Everton Football Club from the destructive Peter Johnson regime.  Back then I'm sure, having achieved a life's dream, not even he would have thought that by 2004 the grand future he no doubt had planned for his beloved Blues would be even further from fruition and that he would be facing the very real possibility of having to give up control.

From the moment he appeared from the shadows to lead the True Blue Holdings takeover, Kenwright has used his media savvy and the power of a loquacious tongue to paint himself as man of the [Everton] people.  Far from spin, Bill's passion for Everton is entirely genuine; no-one can deny that the theatre impresario has blue blood coursing through his veins but the manner in which the tide of opinion is turning against him is indicative of the trouble that the club is in at the moment.

Everton have been standing at a crossroads this close season, a stark realisation brought on by the way the facade obscuring the club's desperate financial straits has crumbled.  The hope for change that fuelled the supporters' desires to see the back of 2003/04 and usher in the summer has unravelled spectacularly as an increasingly important boardroom face-off between Kenwright and Paul Gregg has played out against the backdrop of the needlessly protracted Wayne Rooney saga.

If Rooney's personal failure to set his fellow Blues' minds to rest by giving at least some indication of his hopes and plans for the future has shown anything, it's that Everton FC is in desperate need of direction and, so far, there is only one man currently offering any kind of plan, and that is Gregg.  It's a situation crystallised by the fact that the man who was until very recently the object of much suspicion and criticism for his lack of further investment and lack of love for football has seemingly trumped Blue Bill himself simply by putting forward a blueprint for the future.

Kenwright, for whom the soundbyte is mightier than the sword, is losing the PR battle simply because he appears, rightly or wrongly, to have nothing concrete to offer.  Indeed, the perception is that he is scouring his black book for potential investors, from Philip Green and Sir Terry Leahy to mystery American money-men, with little signs of success.

Furthermore, Kenwright, far from appearing to be the key to future success at Goodison, is seen as part of the problems of the past.  Guilty by association as a board member during the ill-fated Johnson regime, during which time he is accused of standing idly by while the Park Foods magnate drove the club to the brink of bankruptcy, and responsible for the club's deepening debt, Bill has found himself painted into a corner by Gregg's sudden assumption of the reins.

Not only is he battling recent history and Gregg's increased motivation, but Kenwright is also struggling to fight off the charge that he is full of empty promises and worthless assurances.  His now infamous responses in the Echo to the questions demanded of the board by the fans in a leaflet at the final game of the season only seem to reinforce that perception.   Whether his comments were unknowingly based on false information and Trevor Birch later uncovered the horrifying financial realities at Everton is largely irrelevant because it looks as though he was telling us only what we wanted to hear — even if he genuinely believed, in particular, that David Moyes would be given £5M in transfer funds this season... when, in actual fact, he has been lucky to get half a million.

Where Paul Gregg is concerned, on the other hand, Evertonians have been rightly suspicious.  The glass-is-half-full angle is that Gregg had been content to dwell in the shadows and allow Kenwright to work the media until he grew impatient with his long-time associate and felt that by being more proactive he could move the club forward financially.  Hence his pivotal role in negotiating the Chang Beer sponsorship and his promise to deliver £30M in investment via further backers and a share issue if True Blue Holdings is dissolved and potential investors are permitted to join the Board.

The glass-is-half-empty aspect centres around Gregg's disinterest in football as a sport — and his consequent absence from Goodison since April 2003 — his reluctance to use any of his own £120M fortune to either ease the club's debt or provide desperately-needed funds for transfers, and the rumours that the Far Eastern investors he has waiting in the sidelines will expect the sale of Rooney for £30M to give them a quick return on their money and smooth both their passage and that of Gregg out of Everton at the first opportunity.

And yet such is the apprehension for the coming season among the supporters that they seem ready to abandon their Blue-blooded "saviour" for a bona fida businessman in the Peter Johnson mould.  There is a very real feeling that unless Kenwright can suddenly formulate both a rock-solid plan and the investment to support it, the smart money has to go on the man who seems intent on finally running Everton Football Club like a business as opposed to the Old Boys' club it has resembled for so long now.

Kenwright's task of winning back the supporters is now a Herculean one.  Engineering the capture of Marc van Bommell would perhaps be the coup of the summer for the club but even that might not be enough to convince the fans that he [Kenwright] can can provide the necessary leadership and investment the Blues need over the long term.  Much will become clearer on Friday when Kenwright will either release details of his strategy for the coming seasons or he will find himself estranged from his True Blue Holdings partner, be it as the encumbant Chairman or as an outsider looking back in on a dream that went sour.

The short-term future of our great club really does hinge on how the boardroom tussle shakes out; six months ago it would be unthinkable to back Gregg over Bill Kenwright, unfortunately for Bill it appears very much as though he is facing a do-or-die situation this week as he seeks to convince us that he has a master plan.

Lyndon Lloyd

Footnote: As if to confirm the thrust of this article, the latest ToffeeWeb Poll suggests that 4 in 5 Evertonians back Gregg over Kenwright.

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