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Best interests of the Club?

The answer is, I suspect, that he thinks he does. Let's face it, do any of you not think that you have the best interests of the club at heart? Do you all agree with each other? Nevertheless, I cannot quite seem to understand how he can maintain a belief that he is the best man for the job — and for me, this is the burning issue.
What really sticks in my craw is the fact that the man continues in his position as Chairman when he fails to meet his own objectives. He doesn't seem to have found the investment for which he is tirelessly searching, he cannot provide David Moyes with the funds he would like to in order to build the squad, and I suspect he is aware that he is not particularly highly thought of at the moment — so why is he still there?
It is my belief that the majority of contributors to this website believe wholeheartedly that Kenwright is making a cock-up of the whole affair — a point of view which I share — but what do we know about it? No really, what do we know about running a football club?
The truth is that it doesn't really matter what we know about it — what matters is what Blue Bill knows about it and I have to conclude from what I read and see that what he knows about it is not a lot either. We are talking about a club which publicly stated that it had no Plan B for a new stadium, a club which not only supported but re-printed on its own website an article from the local MP saying that the community in which it was based would be better off without it! This is a club which starts a war of words with its own city council!
I don't so much mind that Blue Bill hasn't got a clue, but I do object to him being in charge when he says so. But what do I know, I'm only a fan...
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If the Big so-called 4 fail in their Champions League pursuits, the income ramifications would be huge for these clubs. I have a feeling that we aren’t too far away from seeing this happen. Remember the Leeds experiment? "Better the devil you know" ... "The grass isn’t always greener" springs to mind.
I would love investment into Everton but not at all costs, and — as you put it above — we don’t always know, do we!
http://www.keioc.net/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=263&cntnt01returnid=15
In light of all the criticism of Bill Kenwright and all the criticism of those who show any support to him on this site, I was just wondering what people's realistic thoughts were on what other options we have?
Not every club has an Arab Sheikh or Russian oligarch at the helm willing to bankroll £100 million spending sprees ever transfer window. Can we realistically expect someone to come in and do the same for us? Are they really queuing up to take over Premier League clubs?
Should we expect someone to come in and plunge us into massive debt in the way the RS and Man U have been managed. They seemingly get away with it because of their world wide appeal and almost guaranteed Champions League football every year. For a club of our size this would be like 'doing a Leeds' and is far too risky for the long term future. Even with the guaranteed income at Liverpool, they're still walking a tightrope financially.
Do we hope for someone like Randy at Villa? For him it's been fairly simple: he's had no stadium issue to deal with and did not inherit massive debt. From what I've seen, he's not bankrolled Villa with massive amounts to spend. Who's their most expensive signing? Young or Downing? They cost less than Fellaini. If anything, Lerner seems to be following Everton's example. They've not added to their squad of 21 having lost their two best players in Laursen and Barry and they seem to be waiting for their Sky cheque to clear before buying any new players.
I don't like Kenwright because I feel utterly betrayed as an Evertonian on the whole Kirkby issue... but what are our realistic options? A fans' buy out? Do we have enough money between us all? I spoke to a Stockport County fan recently who spoke of the lunatics running the asylum when their fans bought out the club, which ended up with them going into administration and owning no assets whatsoever.
I won't name names but there are those who seem to feel utterly let down by Evertonians' apparent apathy towards Kenwright even though the general feeling is he's not the right man for the job. Instead of all the moaning about Kenwright, I'd really like someone to offer a realistic alternative to him. Dare I say it, as much as the lack of transfer funds is frustrating me, everything inside Everton seems fairly settled.
When Kirkby fails maybe Bill will put some effort into finding that buyer.
I can also add that there are plenty of folk on the planet with plenty of cash, an example of just one which really does drive BK’s arrogance and uselessness home is the fact that Peter Trembling, a former employee of Everton Football Club, left and found substantial buyers and backers for Notts County, yes the oldest club going. But besides that tag (remember so many apologists claim history means fuck all to buyers), sitting pretty in the 2nd Division (that’s the 4th division in old money), yet they find wealthy buyers.
Maybe they aren’t as wealthy as BK wants, but then again he won't answer that question either and a club that employs Sven Goran Eriksson aren’t exactly shopping at Lidl are they? The whole thing stinks and the quicker BK is gone the better and he can take his unwanted poxy cowshed drawings with him back to luvvie land.
Many have written that he’s rejected serious approaches before, and I know there was serious interest from Asia through a private equity company I was involved with, but for whatever reason, nothing moved.
In my opinion he’s somewhat painted himself into a corner with the likes of Tesco Terry (who’s only interest is the Mutli National Company he runs - despite playing on his Everton credentials in the "open letter") and Arcadia Phil, and Hollywood Bob on board.
Those guys are only interested in what DK can bring to their business interests. Loans etc. that were put up / guaranteed by them will disappear whether or not DK gets the green light.
Interestingly enough, a mail on BlueKipper which I caught sight of accidentally (don’t normally read their mailbag) suggested someone was tipped off that DK would get the go ahead, part of an initiative to suggest that the govt is regenerating areas that may swing between red and yellow at next year’s GE), but that due to concerns over infrastructure, including transport, the stadium capacity would be limited to circa 40k.
The ’goss’ at the moment is that Ashley has turned down, quote, ’ A number of potential investors’ due to not meeting his price... A NUMBER ffs... so they are out there and so somewhere according to some is the truth. Likely we will just as in the X-Files never know.
Fans buy-out??? Or buy-in.... It needs organising. But Catch-22 applies... anybody who really really wants the job (ie in charge of a shit load of other people's cash), should be the last person you let near it.
As a wise man once said to me re the recurring pension scheme... behind every scheme is a schemer.
So where does that leave us? Short answer: fucked if I know. But so long as the wife doesn’t find out until after I have 1,500 quid to put in the pot and to hell with the risks of the schemer.
As for Bill... can nobody rid me of this turbulent priest??
Can't believe people defend this clown of a man, but then he got rid of Peter Johnson... blah blah blah. NTL, Kings Dock, Fortress Sports Fund, cheque in the morning, silence the shareholders, "I'm just a fan", "watch this space", "no-one's buying clubs", "Debt in football is a mystery to me", £10 million up front front the hottest prospect in world football at the time... and who could forget Kirkby?
The man is an incompetent liar.
And if Kenwright is in it to line his own pockets, how does that make him any different to anyone else who would takeover from him? I’m really torn on this one because as much as I’d like to see the back of Kenwright, unless we get some multi-billionaire owner in, I can’t see that the alternatives are much better.
Time the Everton motto was re-written to read the Latin equivalent of: ’nothing is ever good enough...’
Look at what we are achieving year-on-year under the current Kenwright/Moyes axis.
Can any of the Kenwright-out brigade suggest a more successful scenario and more importantly, one that befits our great club (which, by definition, excludes some anonymous Middle East moneyman)?
So easy to criticise and be keyboard-clever - but what do you want and what do you think is the answer?
Seems to be a lot of disapproving finger pointing at Eastlands at the moment, yet that foreign chairman would be nice wouldn’t he.
I’d still support Everton if we were in League 2.
I’m not sure I’d support the Everton Blue Sox playing in the McDonalds Stadium watching mercenary players "earning" £200k a week.
The good of the club is not ever going to be the fans' choice. I’ve yet to meet a fan of another team who hasn’t expressed their admiration of Bill Kenwright.
COYB!
I am convinced that if we had started last season with the vim and vigour we showed in our best spells, we would have been up there mincing about in the Champions League places on the last day. The fact that we squandered this incredible opportunity through an utterly ridiculous pre-season will take an awful long time for this Evertonian to forget.
And what exactly is different this pre-season? The squad is still under strength, and seriously depleted in key areas by long-term injuries to key players. Are we really gonna be in any shape at all to make a decent fist of it from Day One? I fear that losing to Arsenal will be tough to recover from, and a draw will simply not be good enough. (Although I am reminded of a 4-1 defeat to Arsenal on th opening day of the season that saw us clinch 4th! It’s a funny old game...)
You could argue that Peter Johnson was displaced by fan power, when the masses really turned against his "mismanagement" of the club. Will the same thing happen with Blue Bill? I seriously doubt it. While almost every post from Richard Dodd confirms he is on the lunatic fringe, there are enough fans buying into the BK bullshit to make sure he will never experience the heat that pushed Johson into a deal.
I wish I knew the definitive answer to Jay Harris’s oft-repeated claim that Bill Kenwright bought the club on the sly, burdening the club accounts with the loans taken out to enable the purchase of Peter Johnson’s shares. There was not even a hint of such shenanigans at the time, but it certainly does seem to be the modus operandi for club owners to secure ownership these days...
If more people know that was true in Bill's case... would it be enough to start the revolution? No matter... methinks he will still make out like a bandit (just as Johnson did) when it really becomes time to sell.
As far as I am concerned, it's all the lies that get to me, for example when he appeared on Sky last pre-season, I just don’t trust the man.
Is the club for sale or not? Just give us a straight answer. No, then fair enough, we will always support the club no matter what. Yes, then in the last couple of years a number of less attractive clubs have been sold, one twice!
If there is no money then tell us the truth, or is that too much to ask? I mean what are we going to do! If any of us could buy the club, most if not all of us would have!
Old Bill has done good in the past: Moyes... getting shot of Johnson and so on. However, everyone has their time and I believe in today's world his time is over.
Thought I’d woken up as a Leeds fan* for a moment, with all this gloom, doom and despondency.
Are things so bad that we have to kneecap Kenwright several times a week?
(* or supporter of the other 86 clubs that finished below us last season)
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1 Posted 01/08/2009 at 18:05:26
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It's still the People's Club... in a Brezhnev kind of way.