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Fans Comment
Jez Clein


The Missing Money
1/1/06

I'm afraid I can't agree with the answer given to the question regarding the missing £10M.

It was stated that the reason we have no longer got the £10M+ is because Bill and Keith were banking on Owen/Kuyt scoring the goals that would take us through to the lucrative stages of the Champions League, ie: speculate to accumulate.

However looking through the archives David Moyes was quoted as saying on the eve of the 2nd leg of the Villarreal game that he would still like to bring Owen to Everton. Therefore :-

  1. There was no way that Owen would be able to score the goals v Villareal as we hadn't even spoken to him by then
  2. By the morning of the 2nd leg, I'd guess that it was realistic to think that it was unlikely that we were going to qualify for the group stages (the bookies gave us about a 1 in 8 chance).
Therefore please tell me where Bill would have got the money from if Owen had said yes - remember he only signed for Newcastle on the 30th August? Maybe Buster would have just opened another shop!

Yet again the Board are taking the piss but yet again the spotlight is being taken off them because of poor position we are currently in.

If that doesn't make sense then let me explain - if our current position and performances were happening 12 months ago then Kenwright's position would have been untenable. However, because fans actually believe that Kenwright has given Moyes money to spend (rather than it just being the Rooney money) then Moyes is being cast as the villain because we are 16th. If we were 9th or 10th then fans would be on at the Board to spend that £10M.

Jez  Clein


Responses: I suppose it all depends what you want to believe. The first news of Everton's interest in Owen came in The People on 14 August, the Sunday following the Villarreal 1st Leg on 9 August. No indication of when Everton first spoke to Owen but it is likely to have been some time earlier than it first made the papers. Look at the case of Kuyt and when the offer was made for him (1 August) and when we heard about it from David Moyes (23 August) — something you conveniently omitted from your "eve of the 2nd leg" reference.

Continued interest in Owen in late August for the Uefa Cup games fits the scenario as well, given that Moyes and Kenwright were clearly desperate (as we all were) to sign a decent striker at that point. The expected income from Uefa Cup success would have been less, I agree, but it may still have been sufficient to fund Owen's move, albeit based on a substantial gamble. Considering Everton went on to "spend" getting on for £7M during August (after the initial bids were made) to bring in Neville, Ferrari and Van der Meyde (not to mention any loan fee for Valente), that could well account for at least some of the funding being used up, especially when you figure in players' wages — which Wyness had warned were always part of the overall spending budget.

Without very good inside knowledge (which you may have), we are not going to know the full intricacies of all this: I just find it amazing how quick people were to see the Kuyt and Owen 'bids' as fabrications, and then to use our current lack of money as proof of their assertions, to the maximum detriment of the Board ("taking the piss"??? and therefore of EFC. Why? And to argue that a low league position takes the pressure off the Board is ridiculous considering the amount of clamour against them we are hearing now, compared with the "happy days" of 4th place last season, when there was barely a murmur of discontent.

Any logic in your final explanation completely evades me. Ignoring the hypothetical scenario, which is pointless to argue for obvious reasons, surely most fans know that a lot of the money "given" to Moyes was the Rooney money? We did have increased income as well last season — TV and 4th place monies — and £10.4M of the Rooney money was already spoken for (in September 2004) so it is not unreasonable to infer that the Board provided funding to Moyes in addition to the Rooney money. Remember, Rooney has yielded at most £20M, not £27M or £30M.

And the only people casting Moyes as the villain are us fans — certainly not the Board. Remember, we are "stupid" for even daring to think sacking Moyes might be on the cards. "If we were 9th or 10th then fans would be on at the Board to spend that £10M." Uh??? Surely more reason to clamour for the money when we are 16th rather than when we are 9th or 10th??? — Michael

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