Gary_Lineker.85/86x4 (stephenneedley@googlemail.co
Player Valuation: £8m
With just over four days of the transfer window remaining, Everton manager David Moyes looks set to emerge the other side with a weakened squad. Nothing new there, then.
However, while Steven Pienaar, Yakubu and James Vaughan have left the Toffees – albeit the latter two on loan – there has been an unusual dearth of ‘near misses’ at Goodison Park this January. No failed medicals, no rejected work permit applications, not even an embarrassing putdown from a continental player claiming not to have heard of Everton before.
It’s almost as if the fire in David Moyes’ belly has been extinguished by the drip, drip, drip of rainwater through Goodison’s inadequate roofing. Indeed - if one was to take chief executive Robert ‘Suntan Bobby’ Elstone at his word while he was trying to convince Evertonians that moving to a concrete burial ground outside of city limits was the only way forwards – the grand old lady could at any moment be reduced to rubble by the hop, skip and jump of a canary.
On the drip
Drip, drip, drip goes the rainwater as it leaks through Goodison’s bandaged crown and drip, drip, drip go the staggered payments of signings past. In the ‘never never’ land of Everton’s transfer policy, debts never grow old and Bill Kenwright’s infamous assertion that “you don’t need £5m to buy a £5m player” begins to look less like a modus operandi and more like an admission of defeat.
Let’s get one thing straight: the only reason that Kenwright has not been rode out of town, gagged and bound and tied to the back of a mule, is David Moyes. Even our fair media have fallen repeatedly into the trap of lauding Kenwright’s stabilising influence on Everton’s revival – which, taking the last twenty years as a microcosm, it has been – when all along it has been the Scot’s clever management of the scant resources available to him that has prevented the club from going into meltdown.
Indeed, were Kenwright to sell up tomorrow, his list of achievements would simply read: “Not sacking David Moyes at times when other chairmen might have, although we probably couldn’t have afforded to anyway.” Even crediting him for his appointment in the first place is tenuous if you place any stock in the notion generally held by Evertonians that Kenwright wished to appoint Gary Megson as Walter Smith’s successor, only for the current Rangers boss to insist upon the suitability of a certain bulgy-eyed redhead working wonders at Preston North End.
Winter of discontent
For all of this season’s disappointment, Moyes is significantly in credit at Goodison. During his tenure, Everton have finished 7th, 17th, 4th, 11th, 6th, 5th, 5th and 8th in the Premier League while operating on a similar budget to that which had under Smith and Howard Kendall (the third coming of) made even a top half finish look like a pipe dream. Sadly, a lack of investment will eventually catch up with any business and approximately three seasons’ worth of being told he must sell to buy – and even then only what remains after servicing debts – looks like it has finally done for Moyes’ Everton.
It was always going to be the case that Moyes and his players would only be able to huff and puff so far before the lack of squad refreshment caught up with them. Now that they once more find themselves struggling in the bottom half of the table – arguably their rightful place, based solely on finance – supporter unrest, mutterings of discontent and various other ominous clichés have begun to circle.
Given that all-out transparency is a frowned upon commodity in modern Premier League boardrooms, no-one can truly tell what Kenwright’s motives are. His contention that the club is for sale looks more questionable with each year that passes without a taker, with some convinced that he merely wishes to cling onto control of his train set for the rest of his days. Others simply point to the fact that the costly need for either stadium development or relocation is enough to put off any would be buyer, especially when factoring in what is unlikely to be a moderate asking price on Kenwright’s part.
Gambling man
However, there is also the theory that the cloud-haired theatre impresario is simply holding on until the new Uefa regulations take place in 2012; that is, those dictating that clubs will not be allowed to spend above and beyond their revenues, effectively preventing all those oligarchs and moguls from ploughing billions into a club in order to achieve world domination before tiring of it all and tossing them aside like a rag doll torn a new “back of it” (…and there’s the obligatory Richard Keys reference).
Everton may well emerge from these changes in a position of strength given their by-no-means-disastrous levels of debt, regular supply line of saleable assets (think Wayne Rooney and *gulp* Jack Rodwell), relatively sensible wage structure and the fact that they are by now well used to working within their means, barring the odd intervention from monied pals of Kenwright such as Phillip Green, whom one imagines wouldn’t mind his money back, now that you mention it.
What would rankle in this scenario is the gamble that Kenwright would have taken in getting there, a gamble which more or less boils down to the performance and ability of one man; namely David Moyes. Under a less competent manager, Everton may well have sunk already, with only a productive youth system to give any hope of not becoming the next Sheffield Wednesday. Indeed, there are no guarantees that the Toffees will survive next season or, as unlikely as it may seem, this. Suddenly, what would have been prescient forward-thinking had it worked becomes the unforgivable final suffocation of a once-great institution.
Cancelled flights
No-one could blame Moyes if he walked tomorrow as he would leave having done all that could possibly have been asked of him, bequeathing as he would a relatively young squad full of players - like Rodwell, Marouane Fellaini and Leighton Baines – with significant sell-on value. Part of a manager’s responsibility is not to make life bloody difficult for his successor; witness, for example, the aging mess of a squad that a feted Sam Allardyce left when he triumphantly bowed out at Bolton Wanderers. Under Moyes, there are no such concerns.
What is of major concern, however, is how much of Kenwright’s apparent plans are pinned to Moyes continuing to build, in a financial context, over-performing sides. Having repeatedly dragged Everton to the brink of takeoff only for lack of investment to cancel the flight, Moyes should not be demonised for the disappointing performance of his admittedly talented side this season. Fortunately, barring a few perspective-free loons on internet message boards, the majority of Evertonians recognise Moyes as the club’s greatest asset of the last decade.
If he is to be its greatest asset of the next decade as well, something has got to give in the Everton boardroom. A few more disappointing results and things could turn ugly.
I read that earlier here mate , http://www.sport.co.uk/news/Football/49689/Is_Bill_Kenwright_suffocating_Everton.aspx Lets all wait till the end of the transfer window and see where we stand..
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