Home » Fan Articles »
The decline of Bill Kenwright apologism
There has been a clear and noticeable shift in attitudes towards Bill Kenwright and his board in the past few weeks. The clubs hierarchy will claim that they’re a vocal minority as will their supporters, but the fact is that they’ve lost the debate, and lost it from a seemingly insurmountable position.
In the beginning backing Bill Kenwright and his board was the default position after the chaos of Peter Johnson’s chairmanship. Bill and his board offered stability, we accepted that he had no money to take the club forward and that he would look for investment. There was also the Kings Dock move on the horizon. The fact that Bill Kenwright was a blue appealed to us all, he would of course be much better than that Red Peter Johnson.
Twelve years later and the support for Bill Kenwright and his board has dwindled to a militant rump of true believers and David Prentice. But just how has this happened?
A lot can happen in twelve years. Under Kenwright’s chairmanship, there have been two ground move failures in the shape of the Kings Dock waterfront and Kirkby. There has also been the NTL farce and the wondrous pack of lies that was the Fortress Sports Fund. Last, but not least, we have the Everton Place fiasco.
Quite simply, if it was anyone other than Bill Kenwright, they would have been chased from the ground like Peter Johnson was back in 1998. Blue romanticism has allowed Kenwright to build up a lot of emotional capital amongst the support that has led many of us to back him despite the repeated failures, multiple lies and contempt that he has shown Evertonians down the years.
Unfortunately for Bill he has squandered this emotional capital that he had cultivated for many years, by pushing through the move to Kirkby. This attempt to relocate the club to a cowshed with a supermarket attached for the benefit of two retail behemoths with minimal benefit for the club if not the majority shareholders, shattered the pro-Kenwright consensus for good.
As a result many supporters have questioned their previous support for him and have reviewed the historical record and consequently adopted a hostile/sceptical stance towards the board. They have been willing to consider alternative views and re-evaluate the clubs recent history.
Based on the facts and the clubs current predicament, many supporters are now asking questions of the board and the clubs future under the current incumbents. They acknowledge that the club is in serious trouble, requiring as it does investment in its team and infrastructure if it hopes to have a future as a competitive Premier League club.
This fans revolt has thus far been limited to leafleting the fans conference; a scarf and a media campaign that has taken place in the last six months. The board and their defenders may want to claim that it’s only a minority, and it’s true, if you don’t want to listen to them.
Bizarrely enough, there has been little to nothing offered in substantive support for Bill Kenwright and his board; the facts are against them and they have nothing to offer apart from making a ludicrous claim that the Kenwright critics are a minority. Kenwright’s biggest backers have been reduced to mocking scarf sellers because they can’t make a decent case for the board. A board that has been in charge for twelve years and made no significant improvements to the clubs balance sheet or put a penny into the club.
Kenwright apologism is effectively dead because few are willing to give it a hearing anymore, no-one cares that Bill is a blue, no-one believes that he is the stability candidate after Kirkby and no investment in the smallest squad in the Premier League for three years. I would like to claim some responsibility for breaking the Kenwright consensus, but the responsibility belongs to Bill Kenwright and his board.
My final words to the Kenwright apologists be they supporters, owners of websites or lazy echo journalists is to think of their futures, if you want to maintain some credibility stop making excuses for Bill Kenwright and his board. The facts are against you and so is the future.
David O’Keefe
Leave a Comment
Loading ...
16 Comments
Well done on winning ‘the debate’, but at what point do the far too fragmentised EFC protest group movement stop patting themselves on the back and start planning a course of action, in terms of bonafide marches to a match, protests and actual sit ins at the ground on a matchday?
That will be the true test of who is in the minority and who is in the majority.
I am not attacking anyone by the way; I completely agree Kenwright needs to go, as do the board, and that Everton will not improve as a club until they do.
The hard part remains though – putting enough pressure on Kenwright to the point he lessens his grip and drops his asking price. And lets be honest – actually find a willing, viable buyer for the club who will actually improve us more than Kenwright does.
On the surface that should not be hard; but delving deeping, a Mike Ashley type figure who is supposedly very rich but all he seems to do is asset strip his club FOR HIS OWN PERSONAL WEALTH, as well as install his cronies would be, for Everton, jumping from the frying pan and into the fire.
I’m trying my best a) not to sound like a Kenwright apologist because I really am not; and b) trot out that worn out ‘better the devil you know’ excuse, but as bad as things are, they honestly could be a lot worse – Newcastle, Leeds, West Ham, Sheffield Wednesday, all clubs with big fanbases (not as big as us, but still in the 30000+ bracket) and less illustrious histories as us, all of which have ended up in the shit to varying degrees following relegation.
We all have the future in mind, but we really should tred carefully. In the absence of a sheik billionaire saviou ala Man City, the future is scary without the admittedly torn, tatty, full of holes and smelly ‘comfort blanket’ that is Kenwright.
^ Spot on Dixie
Spot on – couldn’t have put it better
Spot on article. Couldn’t agree more.
Kenwright doesn’t seem to be going anytime soon,or want to go for the good of our club.My biggest fear for is that we’ll be relegated within 5 years if Kenwright and his cronies stay in situ because our current team are mainly in the 29-33 age bracket and will need to be replaced in the next few years and if we don’t have money to replace them,were do we go from there? The Championship is the inevitable place.
Bill Kenwright’s ego and utter desperation to cling on at all costs will kill this club. This man doesn’t ‘love the club’ has he keeps reminding us. The only things he loves are 1) Himself 2) Power 3) Being in the limelight.
Being Everton Chairman gives this man all 3 of these.
What a load of rubbish!
I wouldn’t say that Kenwright and the board have done a great job – far from it – but when are you idiots going to realise that there is NO ALTERNATIVE!!!
I for one don’t want to be another Leeds, Portsmouth, Newcastle, selling out to asset strippers.
This is our club – not YOUR club – and what we need is an incentive for investors to come in – not swerve us because of the dickhead ranters who think we have a god given right to billionaire investment!
^ well said. We produce good young players, don’t worry morons. Why would you want a bunch of rag heads to come in and turn our club into a joke like city. I love the way our players battle for our club. The mercenary lightweights give up or start whinging if it doesn’t go their way. I don’t want to see everton become a toy for rich twat who doesn’t give a shit about our club. Fuck spending £40m on fairy, let davey have a little bit of cash and watch us fly.
City a joke club maybe in the mid-90 when they dropped into the third tier! The current FA cup holders not a chance. I’m sure they’re distressed to hear that some supporters of a club that hasn’t won a carrot for 16 years think that they’re a joke club because they have money and a trophy with the prospect of more to come. Cuts them to the core.
I’m also getting sick of this we need a billionaire fallacy promoted by Bill Kenwright and his apologists (both of whom have decided not to defend his record). We already have one and its not working.
Paying £200000 a week to a decent midfielder isn’t a joke?
Ps. It doesn’t bother me at all city have got loads of dough. Good luck to them, we’ve had a nice big slice of it for lescott. I just fear for them when mr money man gets bored and does one. City will have to give the players away and survive?
Really Paul? It clearly does.
I’m sorry to dissappoint his apologists but he is an asset stripper. BK has remortaged every asset the club has to fund the first team because the chairman/directors have neither put a penny into the club or developed a viable business plan to provide the necessary funds for the first team.
I think you’re all labouring under the assumption that BK is a plucky paragon of virtue in an EPL of billionaires/levraged buyouts. I’m afraid your all mistaken:
Few would want to defend Johnson � he was undoubtedly a liability, yet he put money into the club by organising a �15m rights issue and developed the club commercially through building and opening the megastore and developing the lounges. Nobody is denying that the team on the pitch, and the club off it, were in dire straits on his watch; yet when he sold his 68% shareholding for �20M, Everton had a turnover of �28M, a positive balance sheet of �18M and total debt of �20M. The 2010 accounts reveal turnover of �79M, a �30M negative balance sheet and total debt of �85M � in other words, no assets and debt greater than turnover; and we were apparently in dire straits under Johnson???
Honest.
Dave, we’re owned by asset strippers. All of our non-player assets are gone. The team will be next.
How hard is it to understand?
kenwright is a complete fake cunt
his public image = all sentiment and nostalga
his personal image = laughing at the supporters
the club is stale kenwright is stinking the place out he should just do the right thing and fuck off hes had a good run 12 years of offering fuck all to be chearful about
How can you sell out to asset strippers when there are no assets left to strip? People say they don’t want us to turn into Portsmouth or Leeds, but realistically what’s the difference between us and them? I’ll tell you what, it’s David Moyes. Without him, I fear for where we’d be. If anyone wants any proof of this, one of the Clubs we “don’t want to turn into” just outbid us for a £150k GK. without the ability to strengthen the squad, even Moyes will struggle to keep our heads above the water.
Having failed to find a lousy £150,000 for a reserve keeper just about sums up were our club currently stands under this gobshite Kenwright. How anyone could still defend him is beyond me.
We don’t even have £150,000 for a keeper? Our club is dying a very slow and very painful death right before our eyes.