Ratcliffe criticises Kenwright over Moyes's free passage

We got lucky with Moyes, as he could defy the trend of decline on the pitch, but was powerless to do anything off the pitch. Assets stripped, no corporate plan for the future except waiting for a billionaire to buy us. No surprises we are struggling to replace him.

Did the Moyes out brigade put any thought into who was going to replace him and the consequences of him leaving? I doubt it.

What a ridiculous thing to append to that post. Bill Kenwright is the one at fault here.

Having a preference for a new manager, in no way makes one liable for the failure by the club to deal with that situation whenever it arises.

We now have a situation where the club could kick on... any failure to do that will not, I REPEAT, WILL NOT be the fault of those supporters who felt David Moyes had 'run his course'...

I don’t know if it would be the right decision but could it be the person close to Everton I keep reading and hearing about as now he is a TalkSport host and commentator?

On the occasions when callers talk about the clubs finances and commercial activities their (Sharpy & Snods) ignorance of the facts becomes startlingly clear. There is enough info on this site (which maintains a neutrality) to form your own negative opinion on the board. Yet these people closer to the club say nothing. I understand Sharpy is an Everton employee but I don't think Snods is.

It's nothing to do what anyone thinks of Moyes or Kenwright, it's just not right!!

Fergie recently admitted in an article that he knew he was going to retire at Xmas. It was very hard to believe that one night a couple of weeks ago that he suddenly decided to retire. He's a dedicated man and would never have wanted to leave Man Utd in a potentially difficult situation of suddenly looking for a new manager.

Link: http://arabia.msn.com/sports/football/leagues/english-premier-league-news/1846580/sir-alex-decided-retire-christmas/

The retirement was kept very tight to avoid the circus surrounding the last announcement of his retirement.

So I reckon Moyes was tapped up months ago. This backs up the amazing speed to which he was appointed. He may have then informed BK that he WAS going to leave at the end of the season, so allowing Everton time to consider a new man. Again Moyes is dedicated and would not have wanted to leave us in a tight spot. BK looked shocked and emotional at the official announcement, however reality was biting and don't forget that he was an actor.

So was Moyes also tapped up at about Xmas? I have seen a report alleging Vitor Pereira was a guest at Goodison at Xmas - he, as we know has also not signed a new contract.

Link http://m.goal.com/s/en-gb/news/3887719

I am seriously hoping this theory works out as firstly I do strongly think Pereira would be the man to take us forward, secondly that the above may be near the truth and thirdly I have just been down Ladbrokes and taken 25-1 on Vitor!

More worryingly is all our former players talking up other former players for the managers job, Unsworth was on the radio this morning doing the same, kinda like a blue old boys club - nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

Will all former blues kindly shut up and fuck off until this managerial situation is played out UNLESS you are going to break the mould and say 'all my former colleagues are top lads but I wouldn't trust 'em to manage their way out of a paper bags.

Actually, you quite often find that people called Kevin (or variations thereof) are blessed with remarkably good judgement.

It makes you wonder what the boardroom was thinking... I bet they are hoping we get relegated next season they can sell up for a profit (Parachute Payment and most of the squad leaving would wipe the debt).

Kenwright and cronies would make a quick buck out of the club and the fans left picking up the pieces... I have we seen this before somewhere...

When the shit hits the fan next season Kenwright has his script ready "Moyes leaving so sudden really hit Everton Hard and we didn't have time to plan to get the next manager, also selling Baines, Fellaini and Jags 15 minutes before the transfer window shut left us no time to replace them."

Like a script of a soap. Watch this space!

More like pot-bound with shrivelled up leaves and no sign of growth!

Strange really — you would have thought that all the bullshit that the Everton hierarchy produce that we would be growing like a triffid.

Maybe Gijelka will help us out

The only manager available this summer without a compensation fee that makes sense is Vitor Pereira, I have read about this guy, and he is an amazing candidate. We should be offering him the job.

Let's hope so, and if the odds are 25-1 at Ladbrokes, I know what I am doing later!

He did not. And why would Moyes sign a contract just so Everton could receive some compensation? That's some twisted thinking.

We're stuck with Everton, Moyes isn't... sorry, wasn't.

But does that really restrict our choice for a manager? I don't think any new manager is going to cost an unbelievable amount. I mean, is Martinez really going to cost that much if we want him?

2) I suspect the answer to Rat's points are clear. Moyes informed BK around Dec/Jan last year that he couldn't sign a new deal until there's proof of funds to spend – that would allow us to challenge top 4. The proof never arrived (though I have no doubt there was a lot of fluster from BK). DM never re-signed and subsequently got an offer elsewhere.

DM under a 4- or 5-year contract would've cost United £15M to buy him out. I believe they would've paid it as they identified him as the right man for the long term.

Today is the day Man Utd should have made a formal approach to the Club for permission to speak to Moyes. Kenwright and Moyes deserve each other. Moyes made enough of a do about players running their contracts down and informal approaches etc. Pity he didn't do what he preached!

As for Kevin Ratcliffe, He didn't go far enough for me. still, it's good to hear people who have a genuine affinity for the club speak up. There's too many people involved with us who have no vision because they just don't give a shit as long as they can pick up their wages at the end of the month.

Why have we employed a RS fan to communicate with the fans???? Is there not an Evertonian in the country who could do that job? Un-fucking-believable, the whole sorry mess.

As for "dour", well, may be it is a national characteristic north of the Border (that adjective always brings Walter Smith to mind - dourest of the dour! ;-)

Hence £29M on Van Perise the injury prone 29 year old with less than a year on his contract.

£10-15M on the most important person at the club as a long term investment is peanuts (for them).

The difference in ages was just about perfect, the financial situation at the two clubs meant that any ambitious manager would be willing to move down the M62 as soon as the opportunity arose.

Finally, both managers ran teams with a strong but not exclusive British presence (unlike Arsenal, Chelsea or the RS, but then I am not even sure of the species of many of the players in the last, Skrtl is half Orc isn't he? and they also have a naked mole rat up front) with a

That Moyes contract ran out just after Ferguson resigned was probably not actually planned, but can hardly have counted against the move.

Frankly the whole thing was the least surprising thing in football I have ever seen.

Mark Eaton #228 - interesting detective work there fella! Hope there's something in it, even if it does prove what many of us believe - that Moyes leaving was a done deal months ago.

The only realistic stand out candidate for me and he's free!

Would prove for once that the club are trying to move forward and not stand still which would only end up in us going backwards!

Good to hear someone (Ratcliffe) speaking out against the boards failings, just wish a few more would do the same!

I personally think his heart is in right place but he doesn't have the stern solid front that an owner needs to push a club forward; too emotional for his own good. This should be about Everton but it feels more about David Moyes thanks to Kenwright and his boys. Strap yourself in for the ride!

Suppose that will be the last of Rats hosting match days in the exec lounges.

Ian , I suppose all they could do is set a deadline for Moyes to sign any new contract & if that passed withdraw the offer & start planning for the post-Moyes era. This would only exert pressure on Moyes if he wasn't planning on leaving anyway, of course.

There is something BK could have done, he could pulled DM into his office and say something like

" Dave, theres only a year to run on your contract and I need to know where the club stands. You've never let a player you wanted to keep to run his contract down and I don't see why you should be any different. If you haven't signed a new deal by the end of August the offer will be withdrawn for good and we'll be looking for a new manager to be in place by the end of the season. ".

If, as you say Moyes would have called his bluff then we're still in the same situation but least we wouldn't look like mugs.

Incredible silly question, when everyone including the dog has put names forward, even well before Moyes left.

It isn't the fans who are reponsible for hiring coaches / managers, it's down to the board and ultimately it rests at the chairman's door. It is he, you must ask this question to, you can't go around blaming the Moyes out brigade for something Moyes had chosen to do for a long time.

It did not mean we where screwed with him for that length of time, because it had become apparent for a good 5 or so years that fergie was due to retire, almost every year the world papers had him retiring. You sign someone for whatever eventuality might come, you try to sign high quality players on lengthy contracts, so if you do sell them, you will be compensated for the length of the remaining on contract and whatever else you decided at the time of the player' initial contract.

If Moyes who had been dithering over his last contract would have said no, then it wouldn't have been so different to now..except we would have got shut of him earlier.

It is much harder to re-sign a new contract, than it is to sign a long term contract..short term contracts can be very expensive, look at how much Moyes took out of the club...12 million in 3 odd years, which would have brought in another player..and he was moaning about the cost of players..double standards from him?

He is gone, nothing more we can do about it really..but the more noise these butt lickers of kenwright make, the more stupid will appear...shame ratcliffe and co did not have the common decency to expose this board to the media.

The Blue Union was aimed at getting kenwrong and co out of office, it's these numpties you need vent your hate at.

Moyes has gone and we are going into a new era. granted most new everton's haven't got a clue what it was like under previous managers, this football club is bigger than any manager. ...just unfortunately all the happy faces who clap these clowns should be dragged through the streets along with the board!

If BK has been aware of the likely exit of DM for a while now I hope and expect he has been working hard to line up a suitable replacement. Am I naive about the boardroom shenanigans? Possibly, but I have faith in Everton as a club and I think we can continue to progress with a new manager. Fingers crossed!

I think we'll be fine, might even win some silverware, but honestly I am not afraid of the future, we've been here before, not as if we have a relegation team, and not as if Moyes tactics where that brilliant in the first place.

We will be okay :)

Until they are removed, how are we ever to move forward and actually sell the club or challenge for the title again?

Still at some point these people cannot stay in power forever.

Their silence is deafening. I'm so willing to support them but it has always seemed to me that they're in for themselves. It hurts me right to my unmentionables to say this but 'the spirit of shankly' would be vocal and demonstrative enough to get in the national press if they were experiencing the same thing as us right now.

I just can't believe we're allowing ourselves to be trodden down like this. How can we expect players to be competitive next season when, right from the top on down, we've allowed ourselves to be 'put in our place'.

Pride at Everton appears to be in short supply at the moment and this is all because the people who have been trusted the most have turned out to be egomaniacal dickheads.

Can one of our Chinese fans get a shovel? because Dixie has spun so much in his grave that he will need to be reburied on this side of the planet.

We won't finish 10th, we will sign Martinez and play wonderful football and be in the Champions League. He is a better manager than Moyes and plays better football but is Spanish not Scottish and that is why United wanted Moyes not Martinez.

The only way we could of maximised the position was if Spurs would have hired him last year. The board could have planned who would replace him, but surely the board should have discussed this privately anyway. What the hell do they discuss..... I suspect the conversation then, would be as of now, there are no outstanding candidates, just pith.

We can still find a manager who can take us forward. Moyes was well paid. We can get a manager who can actually make changes when the game is going away from us. We can get a manager that will have the team try get number two instead of getting 10 behind the ball when we are one-up.

I too have the view that Kenwright is far worse than Johnson ever was. And by a million miles too.

Had BK been a former red like Johnson, or just a businessman with no real allegiance to the club, he'd have been chased out years ago but he's cynically used his Blue credentials to gain support.

This is rock-bottom, as bad it gets, poverty, poverty, poverty. Is it really worth responding to this level of misconceived haughty bollocks? Can't help it, it's so mind-numbingly arid and sterile and vacuous.

Okay.

(1) it is my recollection that post-after-post suggesting that we might be better off without Moyes in the driving seat.

(2) It was precisely because so many posters came up with so many alternatives that we had an at times quite heated exchange of words about one pick after another

(3) So, yes, elementary mistake #1 - a lot of people did put a fair amount of 'thought into who was going to replace him'

(4) elementary mistake #2: the so-called MOB (yawn Mr. Regan, yawn, eye rolls) put no thought into 'The consequences of his leaving'. 100 per cent wrong. People asking for Moyes to exit did so in the belief they strongly held that this would be a change for the better. Now Mr. Regan, 'change for the better' is a 'consequence', not the one that you might have selected from your 'be careful what you wish for' status-quo sterility, but a 'consequence' nonetheless. Time will tell about the rights and wrongs of the tapestry of positions we have had on these boards for so long now.

So, conclusion, your remarks are to put it mildly up there with Teary Billy bollocks.

Let's press refresh shall we?

'In fact the Moyes out brigade [yawn, shakes head with a sort of deprecating smile, yawn] did put a lot of thought into who was going to replace him and they also talked at lenght of the consequences of him leaving'

Okay?

Point (1) should have read

(1) it is my recollection that post-after-post suggesting that we might be better off without Moyes in the driving seat did come up with alternative suggestions to fill his shoes.

"the BU and people like them face such a difficult task in showing the fall from grace this great club is going through"

Please explain to me the fall from grace, when did it start and from where did we fall?

Goodison Park has had one new stand built - the Park End by Peter Johnson of all people - and Bellfield once an asset has been sold so that we can rent Finch Farm - Everton FC used to be associated with breaking transfer records and now we have to scrape around bargain hunting.

We have failed miserably to exploit the commercial side of the club and have wasted every single penny of the Sky money on wages because we didn't think it prudent to find other income streams. To add insult to injury we have also managed to see our debt grow every year and it never seems to improve.

I would claim that to be a failure of enormous proportions.

If he'd simply left on June 30 people wouldn't consider it. But because he's going to Utd everyone gets greedy and starts thinking "they've got loads of money, why can't we have some of it?".

Less than 16 hours after the final whistle had blown on Everton’s season, Moyes drove into Manchester United’s training headquarters at Carrington just before 9.20am to open a new chapter in his life.

He is not due to officially succeed Ferguson until July 1, but the new manager is clearly in no mood to stand on ceremony and Everton have given Moyes their blessing to get started."

That last sentence encapsulates all thats wrong at Everton and with Billy Liar and Dire davey. It seems that everyone thinks Man U are far too important to suffer any gap in leadership and BK is acknowledging this by grovelling at their feet.

What about Everton BK ?- Ho Hum lets WAIT and see plenty of time left before the new season.

And Moyes Boys just know this makes sense.

In fact I can only think of one that might and that's Spurs.

Peter Johnson - the man who almost took us down every season, yes, built the park end but should have been a double tier stand with corporate boxes. He did nothing for the club. If you think he did, watch some of the season reviews from his era and see some the shit served up week in week out. Would make this season's side look like Brazil.

Failure of enormous proportions? - would you rather us be relegated like Newcastle, West Ham, come back up and then circulate around the lower half of the league - what kind of failure would that be?

Look, I want Everton to win every week and win all the trophies but I am also anchored in reality. Since I've been watching Everton in the 70s, we had 5 or 6 good seasons 1984-89 or so and one good season in the 90s.

We just don't have the money to compete - and many teams that do have more money than us are worse. Would you really want to swap places with Newcastle or Villa? How about Wigan, a well run club, visionary of a young manager, just won the FA Cup. Great, they just got relegated. And I'll bet you a hundred bucks they won't get up next season.

Yes, let's get Kenwright to sell the club, there's bound to be some Venkys out there with some cash, let's see where that takes us.

Even still in the Prem, Villa and Sunderland have 13 titles between them, both have larger stadiums & wealthy backers. Both have shite squads, one that has over the past 2 season seen virtually every decent player sold off, the other re stocked every season with shite Man Utd cast offs (again an area where Everton do well!)

More pointless Stats.....12 of the 23 teams that have won the English title no longer play at the highest level. History, it would seem, is not as powerful as we would like it to be.

Now, I want titles, top players, the best coach, a new stadium... But it just ain't gonna happen, no matter what BK does. Investment would need to be on an unprecedented level, more than any of the current batch of billionaires have spent to really put Everton back in the big time proper.

And yes, I do think we need to adjust our expectations! Expecting a squad that has nowhere near the talent pool of 4 of the 5 teams finishing above us to somehow defy logic and exceed expectations even further is just not realistic. My expectations? what could change the current situation? To really make Everton a force again? Investment in the team will help, but short term.

The revenue generated by getting into the top 4 would be significant, but enough to seriously and consistently challenge the current top 3? Probably not (See Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool). A new stadium would be a clincher, but to realistically get that investment the team would need to be getting into the top 4 to boost the revenue to a level that someone would see the venture as financially viable. Chicken. Egg.

You'll have to define 'years of erosion' for me - are we in a significantly weaker position than we were 10 years ago? 20 years ago? - I suspect not.

If Jelavic had had his shooting boots on this season (say 20 goals), then top 4, if not top 3 would have happened. It's a fine line.....

Also, don't forget, there are 19 other teams in the league trying to do exactly the same thing - and every year half a dozen of them are pretty damn good.

Yes, Yes they did. There's been inumerable posts about possible replacements for Moyes over the last 11 years, UTFSE.

Tell me what the debt was 20 years ago, 10 years ago and now.

Do the same for our fixed assets.

Then you'll understand the significatly weaker position we are in.

Ferguson also supplied advice to retiring players and insisted they had to earn their chance in the top flight by first working in the lower leagues. ‘Prepare to be a manager,’ he said. ‘It’s no use finishing one day and being a manager the next.

‘I’m dead against fast-tracking managers in the game. You’re not doing yourselves any favours. Prepare, get your badges, work for years at lower levels and earn the right to be a manager.’

Is that a warning to Pip I wonder?

I'm in my mid thirties and have only hazy memories of Kendall's team of the mid eighties. Since then all I have really known is Everton struggling to get back to the top, mostly with little real success. So my expectations may well be different to a fan in their mid forties or fifties who remembers the glory days clearly. Of course I want us to win trophies, but I can also find pleasure in the small victories and achievements. I just pray we can find a way to attract enough investment to get into a new stadium and become competitive within the new financial fair play rules!

The only way they could have got him to sign a deal was through buying Negredo or another 15-20 goal striker. That would have put at least some moral pressure on Moyes. And we may never know - or at least for some time - whether he knew he had the Man U job. But a couple of facts suggest he knew he at least had a big chance. Fergie had decided to leave by Xmas; they are friends and are bound to talk, Fergie wanted Moyes to succeed him, ...well, that's enough for me.

We couldn't get him to sign, because we're no longer a particularly big club, and he can attract such. We earn £80 m a year, and most of it is dependent on TV revenues. We need a sugar daddy.or a new ground. Our only hope is attracting a strong young manager who sees Everton as at least having a strong squad already in place.

"We just don't have the money to compete..."

Begs the question why?...surely?

I think I'd go back to 1987, at least, to start looking

It would be a gamble to assume that anyone could have got us that, and that it was all down simply to previous managers from 1992-2002 (minus one or, perhaps, two years under Royle) being incompetent that left us around 15th spot each year.

But on that point, the lower salary for the next boss will free up cash for the compensation. What we cannot afford is a dud who we have to pay off next year 'cos he wasn't good enough.

Moyes would have been offered the Man City job,Utd most likely knew this.

I do not believe him that he knew nothing.

I predict he will not be a roaring success @ Utd.

Kenwright,quite frankly is not a business man and his heart rules his head.

The next manager @ Everton will be one who costs us nothing,so take your pick

But the spectre of the old boys network - Neville, Stubbs, Weir, - or 'we have a project plan' managers scares the shit out of me.

Do we still have a credit rating of 'cash only'?

I have respect for Kevin Ratcliffe but I think that this time he is wrong.And whilst Kenwright has many faults I think that in this he is not to blame - sorry but I don't go for the let's blame Kenwright for all that goes wrong brigade.And as regards Kevin - well he hasn't actually set the football managerial world alight has he ? A great player - but crap manager - perhaps we should remember that fact before giving his opinions about the Everton manager more praise than he deserves.

Of course, the Rat is right.