Manager in a million deserves so much more
Patrick Hart feels action by the fans is now essential

3 August 2003

Whatever the transfer activity at Goodison Park between now and 16 August, there is no escaping the fact that this has been an unhappy pre-season for Everton Football Club.

If the club missed a trick by cancelling a planned spring tour of China — only to see Liverpool then make a successful visit to that part of the world after the SARS fears abated — there is also no doubt that they have failed to give manager David Moyes the support he deserves these past few months.

Moyes, after all, is the man who saved the club from relegation in his first weeks in office.  He is the man who gave Evertonians their pride back last season.  And he is the man who made Everton a completely different club from the one he inherited from Walter Smith in March 2002.

Unfortunately for Moyes, however, he is still dealing with more or less the same players who had accompanied Smith on what would almost certainly have been a journey into the Nationwide League, had not the Everton Board of Directors belatedly replaced one Scot with another.

The Moyes effect was immediate.  He not only lifted the team up the table in 2001-02; he also raised confidence levels throughout the club going into last season, Everton’s 100th in the top flight.

Last summer the mood around the club was a positive one thanks to Moyes’s presence, and that carried irresistibly into a memorable campaign that had many special moments.  Because of Moyes, the atmosphere at Goodison on a matchday was unrecognisable from the all-pervading gloom of the Smith era.  Because Moyes believed, Evertonians also believed that every match was winnable.

And, despite the understandable dip in form that cost the Blues their European place in May, the successful season offered the club the perfect platform to build on.  It was a position of strength that the combination of David Moyes and Wayne Rooney — and what a happy coincidence that the emergence of the best young player in the country should follow so swiftly the arrival at Goodison of Britain’s best young manager — served only to enhance.

However, it has taken only the three months since Everton’s last-day defeat by Manchester United for the feelgood factor to dissipate.  The hope among supporters had been that Moyes would be able to sign three or four quality young players, and so inject the pace and creativity that the team had lacked; and that the Rooney factor would make this task easier.

But, by the start of August, there have been no arrivals.  Yes, Yopbo has beennnn signed permanently and Alex Nyarko returned from exile as a "new midfielder" only to become a painful reminder of the Smith years.  Instead of showing ambition and rewarding Moyes’s achievements, the club’s Board appear to have done one of two things.  They have either decided to wait until August before signing players in order to save on wages.  Or they have utterly let down the man who is arguably Everton’s only chance of returning to the big time.

If the former is true, and they have tried to save money, then it has been at a cost of confidence.  Because, unwittingly, this has made Moyes look ultra-cautious in the transfer market — which is no way to treat the champion of the so-called People’s Club.  Consequently, the pre-season has been one of increasing frustration among fans, rather than of expectation.  Evertonians know that the club has to keep moving forward if it is to match the ambitions of Moyes and Rooney, yet the evidence so far has been to the contrary.

Even if there are signings over the next fortnight, the damage has been done to morale at least.  Despite the record season-ticket sales, supporters are bracing themselves for the worst-case scenario and another year of the likes of Gemmill, Pembridge, Alexandersson and Ferguson — players well past their sell-by dates.

And if new signings do not prove forthcoming, then they should also prepare to say goodbye, sooner or later, to the manager and player who have threatened to bring the good times back to Goodison.

So who is to blame?  Everton’s theatre-impresario owner Bill Kenwright is the obvious target along with chief executive Michael Dunford.  But Kenwright, who appears to have Moyes’s trust, is believed to be the only Board member to pay for transfers from his own pocket.  One man to have had significantly less input, but larger pockets, is Kenwright’s silent partner, the multimillionaire Paul Gregg, but he and other directors seem unwilling to invest further in the club.  Which begs the question: what are they doing on the Board?

The harsh truth is that money talks in football, and it is precisely because Everton have had no serious investment since the late 1980s that they have latterly endured arguably the worst decade in their proud history.  Since Sir John’s dotage and subsequent death, the Moores family have been interested only in Liverpool.  Sky and other media companies chose to ignore English football’s fourth most successful club, though ploughing money into a number of others, while Peter Johnson brought only broken promises.

Basically, Everton desperately need new funds if they are to continue their renaissance under Moyes and pursue their dreams.  As well as getting the proposed academy in Halewood built, they will also have to replace several out-of-contract players next summer, and maybe look to redevelop Goodison also.  (And that’s before they can contemplate winning a tenth league championship.)

Of course, the stadium is another thorny issue, and Evertonians could be forgiven for wondering whether the city council might have done more to help get the King’s Dock off the ground.

But then, after the disappointments of the last decade, we should have learnt not to expect favours from anyone.  Maybe it is time for us supporters to help ourselves.  There must be Evertonians out there wanting to invest in the club and, in the continued absence of a sugardaddy (or an about-face by Paul McCartney), that is the club’s best way of generating finances.

It is not inconceivable that there are 1,000 Evertonians willing to contribute £1,000 apiece towards a transfer budget for David Moyes.  It is also possible that wealthy Evertonians have come forward in the recent past offering substantial sums of cash in return for a place on the board.

Surely this is a time for solidarity.  If Evertonians can’t get together now and rally behind the club when Moyes and Rooney are on board, then they never will.  Moyes and Rooney are a once-in-a-generation chance for Everton to reclaim their place among the English elite.

So why not do something about it?  Why not help break the mould and show David Moyes that we too mean business?  It might not be enough to stop him joining a richer club somewhere down the line, but it would certainly give him something to think about — and perhaps also bring proper new investors out of the woodwork.  Face it, Everton need the money and we have to do something about it.

If you would like to pledge money towards a transfer appeal for the best young manager in the country, and our best hope of enjoying more good times like last season, then please contact me at: patrick1942@hotmail.com.

Patrick Hart

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