Fans Comment
Sam Morrison

Sting Him Up and Burn Him!
29 September 2004

I write again in reference to the continuing insistence by contributors and ToffeeWeb staff that everything Kenwright does is wrong.  I was tipped over the edge this morning by the narcissistic gloating over Rooney’s hat-trick last night.  Now Wayne should have been sold for £50M it seems.  Was Bill supposed to factor these goals into the transfer negotiations then?  That would have been an interesting conversation:  How many goals will he score this season?  If he scores more than nine should we have asked for £60M? What about if he wins an award of some description?  £75M?  By the same logic if he gets injured in his second game, falls out of his Ferrari and gives it all up to become a monk, will Bill suddenly have pulled off a spectacular coup?  Well, of course not.  That would be ever so silly.

First he shouldn’t have gone.  It was Bill’s fault that he did.  Then the team did ok so, now, well, maybe it’s ok he went, but we should have got double the price.  So it’s Bill’s fault.  The fact is Rooney was always likely to score more once he had Ronaldo, van Nistelrooy and company on his side.  So he got a hat-trick.  I didn’t relish it either, but it won’t be the last.  Try to tear off van Nistelrooy’s rubber mask to reveal Kenwright’s flabby chops underneath, cackling with glee at his assists, all you’ll get is a squawk of pain.  It really is horse-face in there, not a demonic old ham.

The anti-Bill sector (majority?) are locked in a battle of what sceptics call an either/or fallacy: you’re not right, so I must be.  In this case it’s “Bill’s not right, so I am”.  Rarely is anything this cut and dried.  Credit to ToffeeWeb for continuing to publish open criticism, but if one reads the pieces in Bill’s ‘defence’, they generally reflect his mistakes, ruminate on the future, ruefully acknowledge his big mouth, and suggest that, considering what he has done for the club (Moyes, Wyness, and, as I and, it seems about four others believe, the Rooney transfer) possibly he isn’t as bad as all that.  Hardly a tub-thumping claim of Bill being the top man for the job.

In response, we get the charge of being luvvies and approving of Bill “because he’s a blue”.  Well, Bill’s ‘blueness’ does crop up, time and time again, and it is used in his defence (by me and others).  No argument there.  But I don’t think anyone ‘defending’ Bill has really presented that as the defining factor.  No-one’s saying “God love ‘im, he’s one of us, lovely Uncle Bill, look at his royal blue nose” so quit simplifying.  All we are saying is hang on, just loosen the rope around his neck for a minute and let’s see what happens. 

We had a very good piece recently about David Moyes’ honesty.  No-one would put Bill in the same bracket as Moyes, but, at the risk of boring you, he was at least big enough to admit his mistakes at the EGM.  That is something.  He took questions (and abuse) and tried to answer it.  He wasn’t always clear.  He did little to assuage the anger of some present, but he’s trying.  He is trying... (I anticipate ‘trying’ gag in riposte…)

Recently we had a “what if” comment from a contributor, the what if in question being if you’d been in a job four years and continually cocked it up — you’d be fired, wouldn’t you?  And you would.  It’s a good point, but I’d like to add a caveat to that.  What if the job in question was not just a job, but a debt.  And landing this debt and this job required you to raise colossal funds; invest a lot of your own money; commit to an extremely busy life and a steep learning curve to take on a role for which you have no training but must learn as you go — and learn with the national and local press analysing your every move — not to mention thousands upon thousands of customers becoming swiftly disillusioned with you as you made mistakes and bumbled and stumbled along, before you got to the point where you had a finger-hold on what was going on?

If there was someone else to do it, you probably would be fired.  But would you deserve to go out in a flurry of finger-pointing and name-calling, with everything bad under the sun pinned on you?  Give him a little dignity, for pete’s sake.

Sam Morrison