Bill Kenwright

Certainly someone that cares a lot about everton...that has made great calls such as appointing moyes as well as some key transfers but also terrible decisions such as not going with the city owners when they were looking at buying a club or missing out on the echo arena...I guess nobody is perfect and has tried his best and sometime you need a bit of luck along the way, something we have been missing for many years now. I don't mind him and obviously he is very knowledgeable in dealing with other clubs in relation to transfers...we certainly can have a better chairman but also very easy to get a worst one...

Not sure City ownership were ever really interested to be honest mate.

People look at Kings dock with misty eyes as well and forget the detail of the deal, I remember it well, if we moved there it was a mixed ownership arrangement, the club would only have owned 49% of the development and been a minority shareholder in the development and revenue on the stadium would have been shared with other key stakeholders of the development who controlled 51%. Ultimately it would have been a cracking stadium but probably a bad deal for the club, it would have been owned by a management company of which we would have had just a minority 49% stake.

The whole narrative around king dock has got so narrow over the years and much detail of the deal omitted or younger fans just don’t remember it and think we just didn’t get this brilliant stadium we would own outright for next to nothing, that would have made us really wealthy, when really that wasn’t the case at all. The deal was completely different.

Thats before you look at the reverse mortgage thing, which we rightly swerved, that ultimately scuppered the whole thing.

It was far more complex then is often portrayed.
 
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I'll never slag Kenwright off. I remember one night in Autumn 1995 when I was working in Stockport, and I went along to the small Garrick Theatre near where I was working to check out a rock musical about the whole Arthurian legend thing - which sounds cheesy, but was alright in its own way. Anyhow, Kenwright was there, checking it out in case it was worth looking at a West End treatment (it wasn't!), and I got talking to him about the recent cup final etc. I liked him, and when I took my seat it turned out by sheer coincidence that he was sat next to me, so I ended up taking to him quite a bit.

No matter whatever else you could say about him, the impression I took away was of a genuine man who absolutely loved all things EFC. I was in no doubt that had he not been on the board he would have been in the ground anyway.

I don't care about winning things with a bunch of hired hands and mercenaries, I'll leave that to the shower across the park. I want us to win things, of course - but I will never, ever criticise someone, in these days of the soulless and eviscerated game we see so much, who has his heart and soul invested in the club and who wants that success as much as the fans do.

Everton, that. And I'm proud to stand by that belief.
 
Not sure City ownership were ever really interested to be honest mate.

People look at Kings dock with misty eyes as well and forget the detail of the deal, I remember it well, if we moved there it was a mixed ownership arrangement, the club would only have owned 49% of the development and been a minority shareholder in the development and revenue on the stadium would have been shared with other key stakeholders of the development who controlled 51%. Ultimately it would have been a cracking stadium but probably a bad deal for the club, it would have been owned by a management company of which we would have had just a minority 49% stake.

The whole narrative around king dock has got so narrow over the years and much detail of the deal omitted or younger fans just don’t remember it and think we just didn’t get this brilliant stadium we would own outright for next to nothing, that would have made us really wealthy, when really that wasn’t the case at all. The deal was completely different.

Thats before you look at the reverse mortgage thing, which we rightly swerved, that ultimately scuppered the whole thing.

It was far more complex then is often portrayed.

Highly revisionist...... I also remember it very well as I've been a shareholder throughout that period. When Kenwright was questioned about this at the AGMs, none of this was mentioned, and for good reason. The fact that the club was unable to generate the minimal sums involved points to the parlous state of the club and dire performance of the chairman and his board at that time. By now, we would've had almost 20yrs of 55k attendances under our belt in probably the greatest location and best stadium of any in the UK. With the possibility of full ownership by now. The loan would've been with one of our own directors.... and for an absolutely tiny sum compared to the outlay we're currently embarking on. In the time since, we've had the grotesquely il-conceived Kirkby debacle, ending of AGMs (after the fallout generated from those events) and the club sold off everything just to stay afloat, when all others were building new stands galore. We fell down the pecking order by every metric (except for Moyes miracle working on a zero net spend budget for a decade) and needed Moshiri's Millions just to lift the massive debt accrued. We sold 2 training grounds and had to rent the new one from the council, yet somehow you're agrieved by the notion of the shared ownership of what would've comfortably the most advanced stadium in the UK? The man has been an absolute disaster.
 
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We could have signed mbappe haaland and anyone else this summer he still needs to go.

It's mosh putting the money in and only because mosh has let thelwell and Frank crack on with the signings and not get involved it's deemed successful so far ( don't know anything until the signings play )
 

Highly revisionist...... I also remember it very well as I've been a shareholder throughout that period. When Kenwright was questioned about this at the AGMs, none of this was mentioned, and for good reason. The fact that the club was unable to generate the minimal sums involved points to the parlous state of the club and dire performance of the chairman and his board at that time. By now, we would've had almost 20yrs of 55k attendances under our belt in probably the greatest location and best stadium of any in the UK. With the possibility of full ownership by now. The loan would've been with one of our own directors.... and for an absolutely tiny sum compared to the outlay we're currently embarking on. In the time since, we've had the grotesquely il-conceived Kirkby debacle, ending of AGMs (after the fallout generated from those events) and the club sold off everything just to stay afloat, when all others were building new stands galore. We fell down the pecking order by every metric (except for Moyes miracle working on a zero net spend budget for a decade) and needed Moshiri's Millions just to lift the massive debt accrued. We sold 2 training grounds and had to rent the new one from the council, yet somehow you're agrieved by the notion of the shared ownership of what would've comfortably the most advanced stadium in the UK? The man has been an absolute disaster.

Wouldn't agree with that interpretation at all mate. We hold very different memories, analysis and i would suggest opinions on those events.

Each to their own on the opinion of the deal, i think it was a poor one that wouldn't have benefited the club for the facts and reasons i outlined in my post, in terms of ownership, minority stake in the holding company and revenue distribution.

That's not to say Bill would have gone for it, if events had of transpired differently he probably would have, it has however turned into a bit of unicorn and the fact of the process seem to have gotten lost. It wasn't a great deal at all, the stadium was cracking though, but Everton would have been a minority shareholder in terms of ownership and revenue generation.

Additionally and personally i was and would have been wholly against Greggs reverse mortgage proposal - we know how they go.
 

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