View from the Blue
Columnist: Lyndon Lloyd

Bill Kenwright: Deafening silence from Mr Soundbyte himself

So, a week on since the not-so-deadline and we have no better idea of where Everton Football Club is heading.  Friday 30th July was supposed to be D-Day — the day when Bill Kenwright either announced that he had managed to cobble together an investment package to rival or trump that proposed by fellow director Paul Gregg or that he was dissolving True Blue Holdings and stepping down as Chairman.

Instead of progress, however, we have been stuck with the continuing impasse which has benefited no one and only served to further impact David Moyes's preparations for the new season.  It has also provided the perfect conditions for Paul Stretford to continue his strategy of keeping Wayne Rooney and a pen as far away as possible from the five-year contract offered him by the club.

In the interim, Gregg has maintained the pressure on Kenwright by keeping the issue in the media spotlight, managing to mostly recover from a near-catastrophic blunder on Friday afternoon where he revealed his primary financial backer as Lord Grantchester, only for the Labour peer to reject the assertion in a statement on Monday.

Fortunately for Gregg, Grantchester then clarified his position with a second announcement which confirmed his support for wider investment in Everton as proposed by Gregg but steered clear of suggesting that he was funding Gregg's takeover bid.  The Lord's involvement depends solely on the dissolution of True Blue — the company comprising Kenwright, Gregg, Jon Woods and former director, Arthur Abercromby — that controls the club with a 72% stake.

Kenwright, in a situation that represents a direct role-reversal between himself an Gregg, has maintained deathly silence ever since a statement of his own last Friday evening which, while restating his insistence that until he sees written proof of the existence of Gregg's investors and their plans he will refuse to agree to the dissolution of True Blue, also contained an enormous PR gaffe of his own.  The theatre impresario claimed that the Friday deadline was "fictitious," made up by Gregg to stage a "media event," but he had either forgotten or not seen the press release posted on the Official Everton website outlining 30th July as the day when the club's future would be decided.  Presumably, as Chairman, he would have sanctioned the statement; if not, he had five days in which to deny it.  Instead, he tried to dodge the Friday deadline and painted himself as, at best, a fool and, at worst, a liar.

At this stage, it is all about perception.  While Gregg will continue to battle the supporters' distrust of his motives — at least until he has the opportunity to prove he has Everton's best interests at heart — he is the only one who appears to have a solid plan and who truly grasps the immediacy of the danger of relegation and the financial catastrophe that would entail.

Kenwright, meanwhile, is being undermined by his complicity in a decade of decline at Goodison, the inability to find a fresh and consistent stream of investment over the past five years, and his dogged refusal to consider dissolving True Blue Holdings, presumably because of the dilution of his stock that that would entail.  His tendency to retreat from the media when the chips are down was revealed during the darkest days of the Kings Dock fiasco and his absence from the spotlight this week can only mean that he is against the ropes again in the face of Gregg's PR strategy.

He insisted last week that he was continuing his duties as Chairman: namely, finding a new CEO, helping David Moyes's search for squad reinforcements and finding potential investors of his own, but so far he has absolutely nothing to show on all counts.  That is not to say that he hasn't made progress in any of those areas but it is patently obvious that he cannot achieve aims one and two without aim three... and he has had five years to find someone — anyone — willing to plough significant investment into Everton FC without wanting representation on the Board.

Two questions have to be asked, one of the Board and one of the supporters.  Firstly, if the supporters hadn't vented their anger at the Manchester City game on the last day of the season and hadn't pressed Kenwright and the Board with their 10 questions, would we have seen such clear attempts to solve the club's problems as we have seen so far this summer (e.g. Dunford sacked, Carter and Tamlin moved aside, Birch appointed as Chief Executive, etc)?

If it is true that Gregg's frustration with Kenwright's inability or unwillingness to address the problems of attracting investment boiled over 18 months ago then, yes, we might have seen the issue come to a head as it has done.  Gregg has clearly grown impatient with the fact that the current constitution of True Blue is preventing outside money from flowing into the club — after all, would you pump millions of your own money into an organisation without being able to have a say in how that organisation was to be run?  It is also clear, however, that Gregg's momentum has been greatly increased by anger and frustration among the fanbase who, motivated by the belief that without significant investment in the team, Everton are in very real danger of being relegated this coming season and the fear of losing David Moyes, have left the Board in no doubt that things have to change and quickly.

Secondly, do we as fans want a saviour?  Or salvation for Everton Football Club? — and there is a difference.  The romantic group that we are, we get caught up in the notion of a Lord Grantchester riding in on a white horse to cure all the club's ills with the stroke of a pen but the reality is that Grantchester isn't interested in fulfilling such a conspicuous role.  What Everton really needs is a business brain to implement a solid plan to right the ship because the Blue blood passion route just isn't working.

Seeing through our understandable cynicism, brought on by the all-too recent Peter Johnson experience, Gregg is saying all the right things about the need for restructuring the club from top to bottom.  Critics of Gregg fear he will become Johnson Mk II, but all his rhetoric so far suggests that he doesn't want to control the club single-handedly in a Chairman-type role, nor does he expect to be at the club for the long haul.  [It's also worth noting that True Blue under Kenwright have replicated the errors of Red Peter's regime: they have presided over a catalogue of PR and commercial cock-ups, driven the overdraft up to its limit and spent money on players that simply wasn't there.]

Without saying as much in yesterday's various fans' group meetings, Gregg's intention is to reduce the debt, put the club back on a level footing, increase revenue and thereby increase Everton's value.  At that point, new buyers can invest in the club and allow Gregg to either get back his initial £7M stake or improve upon it — indeed, he even hinted yesterday that he would be prepared to invest further in Everton if he knew it was moving in the right direction.  Under any other scenario he loses a substantial amount of money, so in order to make money it is in his interests to make Everton successful.

Arguments among the fans keep coming back to Kenwright's Evertonian credentials but his credibility is being eroded by his record at the helm, both officially — albeit briefly — as Chairman and unofficially as Deputy under Sir Philip Carter.  As laudable an act as mortgaging his last assets in order to buy the club he loves was, it has left him completely unable to invest in Everton further.  That, together with his his insistence on retaining True Blue's hegemony and a catalogue of ill-advised interjections on the playing side (Campbell's contract, the returns of Ferguson and Jeffers) leave him in a shaky position that is only made worse by the bluster and evasive silence of the past week or so.

So, again given our deeply-held suspicions of anyone not blessed with Blue blood, while choosing sides and backing one personality over the other would seem to be risky, the current situation doesn't leave us with much choice.  Of paramount importance appears to be the immediate abolition of True Blue Holdings and Gregg is leading the campaign to bring that about.  And it's hard to see what malicious intentions he can have with that ambition — after all, he can hardly take his money and run because his shareholding would be worth so little at current valuations.

Until Kenwright is able to put forth a counter-proposal, Gregg continues to hold the upper hand, particularly while he is willing to stand up and admit the mistakes of the past, recommend a complete structural overhaul of the club and provide a blueprint for a company that can be solvent in two years' time.  Most importantly, however, his proposals would put money in the pocket of the manager before it is too late — something that Kenwright's stonewalling is making less and less likely.

Lyndon Lloyd

Reader Responses:

Lyndon is totally correct in his appraisal of the situation: the issue is not about Bill Kenwright's or Paul Gregg's Everton credentials,in the best of all possible worlds our rich Directors would be Everton fans first and foremost, but in the real world we want Directors with sound business acumen and the ability to invest sufficient investment to run a Premiership outfit that can compete,first and foremost with the likes of Charlton, Birmingham and Southampton. Then to provide an infra-structure that will allow us to move on in terms of the team and the ground.
Our "brand" is superb and with sound financial management we can move forward. — Rick Tarleton

In a general sense I agree with your points. But I can't bring myself to trust Paul Gregg, who strikes me as a sinister individual. If his aims now are what's best for Everton, why has he waited until this point to act? If Everton's primary problem is investment, why does he not buy the many outstanding shares himself, or produce some financial stability by eliminating the overdraft with a loan from his own poclet, repayable at a lower rate of interest? This would show good intentions. I believe he originally got into this thinking he could profit from a successful King's Dock project and now he is either maneuvering to get his money out of True Blue or setting up some self-interested deal more arcane than I can imagine. But I don't trust him.
Peter Fearon

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