FAN ARTICLES
One step forward, two steps back...

The club lied to us. The stadium was not going to be state-of-the-art. The area was never anyone's FIRST choice. Poor transport. But, maybe, just maybe, it could have led to more income. Made us more investable. It gave us a direction (perhaps not the one we ALL wanted) but a direction none the less.
Too many businessmen are sitting next to BK and advising him that it would make the club richer in the longer term, for it actually to be a bad business move. More bums on seats. Someone wrote it only the other day; we have excellent season ticket sales but severely lack in the walk up ticket sales on match days. This is mostly down to poor/restricted view seats being left (Or fans thinking that's all that will be left so don't bother).
So where do we go from here? Why do we have to settle for second best? Mediocrity is all we can expect from our great club in the near future. I hear one or two now saying "well let's spend the £78m on Goodison". I just want to shake them a shout that not how it works! What £78m??? That would have been borrowed money - obviously!
And how many fans out there will say GOOD now we don't have to go to Kirkby! How many are prepared to settle for average? Kirkby is bloody miles for me and my son, but I'd be there. I'd go the extra mile, the extra 4 miles as it goes, to ensure that my club is moving forward, trying to catch the clubs ahead of us.
Already this summer it is evident that the club cannot compete and go and sign the players that DM wants/needs to take the squad onto the next level. That's a shame. In DM we have the best manager we have had for years. Will he stick around waiting for 12-18 months to findout if the club can compete in the future?
Think about the senario; DM leaves due to no money and the ability to only sign crap players. Steve Round is still there, who will BK turn to? Who is apt at signing old players for no money? Turning a crap team into a slightly above crap? Who knows Steve Round..... Big Sam.
Lump it up there lads, route one......
Reader Comments
Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer
God help us next season. Davo you’re spot on, If we’re not in the championship and Moyes, Lescott and Arteta are still at the club it will be a miracle.
GET OVER IT!!!!
YES MEN - GET OVER IT
Oh and obstructed view? Only a cheapskate might have one, got myself a lovely unrestricted seat in the Park End, been there for years, before that the Gwladys Street just above the cross bar right in the middle again unrestricted, before that when a lot younger various other parts including the Main Stand before the arseholes that don’t even bother turning up land grabbed the seats again not a restricted view. If you got yourself a restricted view why not try harder and get yourself a decent seat? Yeah patronising when the boot is on the other foot isn’t it?
GET IN THERE.
The catering, or lack of, both before and after the sell off, this is a management problem, that and peoples changing tastes, I think we have moved on from pie and oxo. There is this thing called fast food, I hear it might catch on....again management cock up.
The ticketing, back in the day, you had a cup tie on Sat.and the replay was on Tuesday, a big team in the 6th round (remember the 6th round ) so all ticket, yet we all manages to get one of the 50K, this was with taking cash and no computers, just people in the office who knew what they were doing....
So we have 2 things, or in our case we don’t, good management who appoint people who know what they are doing.
Seems simple when you say it quick.
Or is it a case of....’ you don’t get what you deserve but you usually deserve what you get’
I hear the benevolent Tesco shareholders often give millions of pounds away...In fact I hear that’s how they became the behemoth they are..
Can you give me an ETA on when you intend to stop taking through your crack?
Kirkby was nothing more than a fabric of deceit, lies and propoganda that was designed to line the pockets of the club directors...without actually providing any fiscal benefit to the team..YOU KNOW ALAN, THE TEAM - the thing most of us have the association with - not BK, not wyness...not any of the other faceless cretins.
now KIRKBY can add to its long list of negatives - the fact that it is more than likely illegal..
Kirkby is dead, the sooner it’s buried the better.
The NO camp have attempted to flood every bulletin board with their protest - for much of this year seeming to work on the principle ’if you say
something often enough they will believe you’.
I was initially in favour of the move because
a) I have thought for many years while attending GP that it is a bit like an old stately home - nice to visit and think of the history but you wouldn’t set up a modern business there. Corporate facilities are embarrasingly outdated and limited.
b) I do not live near GP so have to travel no matter what happens
I waited to be convinced by either side. We had very little put to us by the YES side other than club figures so I undertook to investigate that myself. I looked at as many new stadium projects as I could and found that they all increased attendance and turnover, often by amounts agreeing with club estimates. We had massively rich partners and a willing council - this is a huge plus point for me.
On the NO side:
Stadium is poor quality. I don’t see that we can afford hardwood flooring etc, nor can I see the benefit to the team of overspending on the stadium. The design looks great to me considering it is also 3-4 times the size of GP!
Poor location. Many clubs are in poor locations and the fans always manage. No fan doesn’t go because of 4 miles, especially not the fanatical Everton fan. If they are still going after 14 years of rubbish they will travel 4 miles.
Poor transport. Most go by car or taxi. Parking is going to be chaotic at GP very soon with park and rides suggested for both Liverpool and Everton (have you seen the criticisms of LFC’s transport proposals?). It makes little difference when park and riding whether the bus turns right to GP or left to Kirkby. Its a pain in the ass but we will get used to it/find a way round.
Its not in the city. Discussions quickly showed that its not about keeping the stadium in the city, its about keeping it in North Liverpool. This amounts to a group of fans wanting to keep ’their’ club in their neighbourhood. I have never had that luxury and i suspect more than half don’t.
Redevelop GP. Expensive and cramped with complications such as knocking down houses/church/school & moving roads. Might have to be done (certainly better than waiting another 10 years for a new project) but is a compromise solution rather than the best solution.
Bottom line is what is best for the first team and that translates into money. Kirkby will generate more money more quickly than trying to ask people trying to impress corporate clients for £100 a pop to eat in a tent.
We are looking at a delay for at least a year before something starts to happen and whatever way you look at it that is bad news for the club. We can pretty competently stay in a top 10 position while still at GP but we need more income - and in the main that means ticket prices will go up cos corporates aren’t going to flood into GP no matter how we dress it up.
New owners? We need £100’s of millions invested in the squad to be consistently in the top 4. Noticed anyone doing that recently outside of London?
For years and years I was in a vast army of fans who travelled across the Mersey from the Wirral. It was a considerably longer journey to make than that which kirby would have posed to many in the No camp.
All this crap that the new stadium was not a Wembley or an Emirates incences me. Is G.P. such a wonderful stadium. For years now, its been a pig sty. It was built going on for 100 years ago, for goodness sake and it looks like it.
Its situated in a really run down area surrounded by old Victorian dwellings that look like they were built for a Hollywood film of Liverpool in the 19th century.
Have you people no ambition. Its patently obvious that even if it were possible to rebuild in this depressing area, our ground would not attract the money we want. I like the idea of Kirby, a green field site, not a dreary run down area such as it is situated in today
Are you suggesting Kirkby represeted the pinnacle of Everton’s ambition?
That’s funny...no, it really is!
Kirkby wasn’t/isn’t the pinnacle of anyone’s ambition.
It was BK trying to work with what he has got. Or what he can get! The world is full of people who borrow much more than they can afford...... they usually end up getting repossessed. We would all love the Emirates. But hey, let’s float down and plant our feet back on solid ground for a second. DK would have been the fourth biggest PL ground in the country.
That hardly lacks ambition.
There are the people who never wanted us to move to Kirkby and they would be quite happy for everton to stay mid table if it meant that their club was local to them. They are not interested in progression...well not as much as they are interested in being able to comfortably access their team and in some ways this is understandable. These people do not want to sacrifice the history of the club and locality just for cups and progression.
The second viewpoint, which i support from my own point of view is that Everton need a direction and progression and if that means as said in this article that I have to travel extra to see the blues then thats fine by me. I want to see us competing with Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United and showing that we are the pride of merseyside and the others accross the park are misplaced in the league.
Both viewpoints are equally as valid but i think its becoming clearer that progression at Goodison Park is going to be severely limited.
The question was directed at Tim, as he clearly implief that those who opposed Kirkby had no ambition.
To return the question to me as a attack on realism, really smacks of desperation.
1 Posted 06/08/2008 at 22:14:58
Report abuse
How many years has it taken BK to fail to find long term investment and get to the point where he is now seen as a pariah by many fans?
Would anyone jump out of an aeroplane without a reserve chute? Dramatic but for a multi-million pound business to embark on such a significant project with no plan B is suicidal.
I doubt given BK’s record he would be capable of raising £78m but then that’s not our job, it’s his and the board’s, to raise the business, generate revenue streams and if they so decide sell up when they acknowledge they can take the club no further in line with the overused "I’m a fan" and want the best for the club, etc.
If DM walks then it will not be down tp the fanbase who have remained the one constant during this whole debacle it will be the board who will have failed as temporary custodians of the club - the whole way this has been conducted has been atrocious irrelevant if you were a yes or no voter with inconsistencies and blatant lies.
And Barry, Autoroute 2007 makes the proposed site 5.3 miles from Goodison Park of which you could well have had to walk a minimum 2.5 miles if you found parking at the limit of the proposed exclusion zone.