Elstone: Everton remain committed to new stadium project

The whole of the EPL is flourishing at the minute, but Everton have never gone so long without major honours, ffs.

But don't worry because the determination and creativity of this present board should see us through to the springboard of greater things though!

This fella gets paid a fortune to tell us fuck all, and deliver even less. Save it for the AGM, please, Robert.

Paragraphs of 'waffle-spoffle-poffle' and when you look for actual content, it's like a Dynamo trick - 'Wow, there's nothing there!'

Pictures..

RE: "I'm certainly very happy to entertain this idea, in theory anyway, as it is still, relatively speaking, 'early days'. I am very open to the idea of taking on board something which could, in a tangible way, be thought of as 'exciting and fresh yet traditional.' Something with a simplicity and appeal that has, over the years, been, in a very real way, endorsed by millions. Of course the timing of this offer, like any offer must be right, but it feels to me that the timing of this offer is close to being just about perfect and consequently, I will be giving it serious considerat..."

Mrs E: (sigh) "For fuck's sake Bob, do you want a cup of tea or not!?"

When the council themselves say fuck-all has happened and they'll likely look for another option, it's amazing that he still sticks to the script.

Wish I could be at the AGM.

These pricks went to the Kirkby Public Enquiry unable to show where a penny of the required 㿺 million was coming from.

This latest statement is fucking nonsense. Determination and creativity??? CASH. IT NEEDS FUCKING CASH.

They can't get anything done, and they won't.

Who exactly are 'we' anyway? There has been no vote on moving since the Kirkby vote in 2007 when a relatively narrow 59% - 41% mandate was obtained, since proven to have been built on a web of lies ('effectively free', 'best transport links in Europe', 'Tesco will be paying 㿞m towards it', 'state of the art design' etc, etc) all exposed at a Public Enquiry.

'We' constitutes effectively Kenwright, him (a Yorkshire rugby man), two Spurs fans (Earl and our 'advisor friend' Green) and er....... We don't have any other Board members! Motives? Emotional attachment to the Club and therefore really caring about the fans and its future? Only Bill by the look of it and can you ever really believe a word he says?

Spurs, Man Utd, Villa, Newcastle, all have developed existing sites. There is no need to move. What there is a need to do is get a redevelopment plan together and get on with it. This is what everybody else has done. Even clubs like Barnsley have rebuilt 3 sides of their stadium on a small fraction of our income.

Class post! When CEO next becomes available you can comfortably fill that, Eugene.

Elstone to look at reminds of Frank Spencer - "oh Betty I've had a lot of harassment", and I can just see him saying that after the AGM.

The tricks played before previous AGMs to appease supporters and take the sting out of lack of progress can only work so many times – takeover rumours, imminent ground moves... We've heard it all before. Depending on who else from our board turns up at the AGM, it could be poor Bob that bares the brunt of frustrations

Paul & Denis 6 & 7

Exactly. His words "fighting chance" tell you this is going nowhere, with about a 0-10% chance of happening under the current board.

The only thing I can think is Mr Elstone thinks all Evertonians are idiots.

I think we need to go back to basics, save some money and start to improve Goodison bit by bit, just like the red shite have done and just like Man Utd have done.

Baby steps and small bits of investments, maybe sell stand names off if we have to but, if we don't crack on, we will massively fall behind.

Spurs, West Ham, Southampton, Leicester, Arsenal, Man City, and lots of others have brilliant new stadiums, but if all blues were to be completely honest, none of us expect to be rehoused any time soon.

Same as before then, right?

Excellent. I'm glad we cleared that one up.

What does Elstone actually do for his living?

Now if EFC want to move to a new stadium, that's their business, but don't give us that bollocks about it being good for North Liverpool.

Walton Hall Park is surrounded mainly by a residential area. All they would be doing is bunging a retail right in the middle of a residential district.

Mind you the Council have the right of it. They're disappointed by the lack of any progress from the club. So this waffle from Mr Elstone comes just in time for the AGM, in the vain attempt someone out there will believe that the club have got anything other than a "dream" about one day moving into a nice new home.

As a number have said already, they should have been ready years ago to rebuild Goodison Park; but that would take ambition, funding and planning.

This lot have one idea, someone build them a stadium and then they can flog their shares for lots of lolly.

I hate this twit with his corporate gobbledygook, a politician who is swanking around on his fat salary telling us nothing, as inertia rules. All of these ideas about this park and that park, disregard the local inhabitants, who (shock-horror!) might like to keep their green spaces.

Goodison should be redeveloped, like our chums over the park are doing to our old stadium. Bit by bit, year by year.

Come on, Martin... the floor is yours.

On saying that, the CEO's comments about ongoing talks are fact therefore there must be creedence in the possibility of a move. Let's face it, it has to happen at some time for the club to survive.

Walton Hall Park would be excellent; yes, there will always be protesters and I am sure they will have valid points against a stadium being built and its impact, especially on match days. However, the council will be fully aware of this, and if these problems were unsurmountable, we would not have this thread now.

And please let's not have this nonsense about redeveloping Goodison Park, the reasons have been mentioned so many times. A change is gonna come, its just a matter of sooner or later

EFC: (after cutting through the BS) we'd love WHP as a site for our new ground, but we've not found anyone to pay for it yet.

Same old shite...EFC will keep up the positive approach until after the AGM and by the new year we'll all know it's not happening when the Council approve someone else's development on the site...

Whilst Goodison Park continues in limbo.

Brand New Stadium Brainstorming Session 6026:

1) Enrol Bobby Elstone on a beginners course in that new-fangled 3D Printing, just in case 'Brother' or somebody one day gets round to making an absolutely massive bastard.

Consensus: Cracking idea, showing tremendous foresight and a finger on the pulse of current technology, only falling down on the fact Bobby flat out refuses to ever enter a classroom again after suffering flashbacks of his schoolmates all shouting 'NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRD' and spitting wet bog roll at him through a straw.

2) Bill Kenwright himself – Everton decanter wrapped in two towels and safely stashed in his duffle bag – could hire a hot air balloon, an Inuit guide and a couple of huskies and head for the North Pole... to find out if there's any basis in reality for that bit in Superman: The Movie where Clark Kent chucks a crystal in some snow and the Fortress Of Solitude springs forth from the ice.

Consensus: Again, really great stuff guys and Bill was definitely all for it... until he got the wrong end of the stick and thought we said he should take along an idiot guide and a couple of hussies. He was incredibly insulted, not to mention hurt, by the perceived slur on his snow traversing abilities ("I'm good friends with Michael Crawford, son. Who do you think taught him how to ski off a fucking roof, land and carry on down a busy road going '"Ooooooh Betty!" for 'Some Mothers Do Have 'Em'?"), and even more so by the suggestion he couldn't go a couple of weeks without getting his hole ("I'm good friends with Cliff Richards, son. Double-teaming a couple of lasses on our Summer Holiday's just means giving the girls a game of fucking Table Tennis to me.").

3) Commission a master craftsman to create a miniature model of a state of the art stadium, complete with real little grass pitch and goalposts, and then get a scientist to build us a shrink ray, stick it above the (normal sized) entrance and just Ronnie Corbett every cunt as they come through the turnstile.

Consensus: Ingenious but probably impractical, as real world science isn't as advanced as our limitless imagination just yet. There's no way they could get grass seeds to grow on a pitch that small.

4) Redevelop Goodison. Alright, who's taking the piss? There's always one joker in the group. Giving it the "I know. I'll cum up wi de mos far fetched idea possible just to show 'em I don't tekk de process seriously at all and wanna get bacccck to more urgent matters like whether we should sell King Size Twix or normal Twix at half time." Well smart arse, you're just spoiling it for the rest of us who want to take the club forward and present our fantastic fans with a feasible plan we could actually bring to fruition.

Lets face it the fans are already paying through the nose for seats and ever changing merchandise designs so our capacity is not likely to increase beyond the fifty thousand mark unless they are guaranteed regular success in all competitions, and on current and recent events and results this is unlikely to happen in the near future.

The other main problem will be to maintain our ability to hang on to our best and brightest, again until Billy Boy and his cohorts get real and stop crying poverty and continuously refuse to find a buyer real progress will be a non starter.

During the King's Dock proposals they came up with TWO possible redevelopment schemes.

A move to a new ground seems unrealistic as we can never come up with our part of the funds (even for subsidised stadiums). So, that basically means that the only option we have is to redevelop Goodison Park. I think the club should accept that reality and start planning from there.

I'm sure that there are many (redevelopment) options, ranging from just doing the ground to including the area nearby (along with the community and council). The positives are that it retains our spiritual home; the fans would be onboard and it can be done gradually.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Care to tell us what these reasons are?

To my knowledge, the board has said (many times) that GP development is a 'non-starter' but have never given any details as to exactly why.

At least building a new stadium may dangle a carrot to would-be funders but re-developing Goodison would not interest outside funding and therefore, in the current situation, it is a non-starter. Sad, because leaving Goodison will be such a big wrench for the supporters and I just hope that, if we do move to WHP or elsewhere, it is not to a cheap and cheerful, soulless stadium.

The club can't be "committed" to a new stadium because they have no finance even if they have a location identified. A new stadium is their preferred option but without an enabling partner (somebody to pay for it), it can go no further.

We can just about finance our current position in the EPL with no non-player expenditure and this would be in doubt even if a lower cost GP redevelopment option was available.

So, looks like it has to be the money tree or are you seriously suggesting that the EFC board should finance it from their own pockets?

At some time, you just have to accept that you support a club that just doesn't have the money to meet your lofty ambitions.

Nice to hear from you anyway.

Then, to raise some money, I would issue 650,000 new shares at £200 a share. This would give the club £130M. This could be spilt by using £30M to pay off the net debt, £70M towards a new stadium, and the final £30M for new players.

Add this to the money from selling some of the older players and we should have £45M to play with: Banega on a free, £20M for a Number 10, £15M for striker and £10M for a goalkeeper.

Well that's my fantasy football done for the night...

Our previous owner did in building the Park End stand, and the RS owners are financing their redevelopment from their own pocket.

So it can be done if there is any real interest in the boardroom to take the Club forward. But as you rightly point out, our lot are only Interested in someone else paying for it.

So we will not get a new ground or an improved GP.

The council is fed up once again with Everton as they obviously have no intention of moving to WHP, strung them along again, keep the wolves (sorry fans) off their backs and buy a little time.

Is it no coincidence that the perennial search for investor / buyer occurs with the same timely interest?

Or is it that Bill is ill and wants to divest his shareholding as soon as possible... more likely.

Elstone is gilding the lily, the smoke-and-mirrors game no longer cuts any ice... seen for what it is.

As for funding and the club cannot afford a new stadium, sorry but the next season will see the biggest TV revenue earner in the history of EPL; if we cannot leverage off that without the need to bring in partners, to redevelop Goodison or commit to a new build, then commercially there is no desire to do so at board level.

Frankly, I believe the club will be sold shortly and Goodison redeveloped within the next two years, amazingly easily. It just needs the will to do so, good financial planning and someone with vision. It's also the reason none of the above will ever happen with the current board.

Peter Johnson certainly did not pay for the Park End stand from his own pocket. Do you just make this stuff up?

It was funded from a share issue and a Football Trust grant.

I think the point is PJ had to give a personal guarantee as to the funds and is the last EFC director to show any personal commitment and ambition.

Bill and Cronies have shown no ambition nor interest except if they are to profit significantly from it, such as the cowshed in Kirkby.

No in both cases; he purchased shares which he retained and sold in 1998. To describe it as 'from his own pocket' is misleading in the extreme.

He did not just purchase existing shares from existing shareholders with no benefit to the Club, like the current owners.

He spent money from his own pocket to provide investment to build the new stand in the first instance, and to purchase players in the second.

But he retained his investment in shares which he later sold. You make it sound like he paid for the development himself out of 'his own pocket'.

Despite already owning the majority of shares and in an effort to build on the success of a 1995 FA Cup Final victory the much maligned Mr Johnson implemented a 'six for one’ rights issue in July 1996. This involved the creation of 30,000 new 𧺬 shares in the company which would raise an additional 㾻m for the club. This rights issue was fully subscribed with Mr Johnson acquiring 20,805 of the new shares at a cost of 㾶.4m. Subsequently Mr Johnson had increased his shareholding to 23,725 shares which equated to 68% of the 35,000 in the company.

"I just hope that, if we do move to WHP or elsewhere, it is not to a cheap and cheerful, soulless stadium."

Under this board I think we all know the answer to that. It's irrelevant anyway. Zero will happen without fresh blood and money into the club.

"Having narrowly escaped relegation last season, Everton welcomed the offer of a 㾶 million cash injection from Peter Johnson, chairman of Park Foods, the publicly quoted Christmas hamper company.

The form of the cash injection was largely dictated by the needs of the club. Johnson obviously wanted a substantial shareholding but the main priority was to get money in to the club to enable it to purchase new players and fund ground improvements.

The route chosen to achieve this aim was a rights issue underwritten by Johnson's family trust.

Prior to the rights issue Everton had 2,500 shares in issue. These are rarely traded but, when they are, change hands for around ٠,600. The one-for-one rights issue was priced at ٢,000 per share. The price discouraged shareholders from taking up their rights. The general aim of the transaction (that new shares should go to Johnson as underwriter) was also facilitated by making them non-renounceable. Johnson could in principle have bought shares from the Moores family (who owned 43.52 per cent of the club prior to the rights issue). But the money would obviously not have gone to the club"

So it is clear that the sole reason for the initial rights issue was to provide money for ground improvement, and that money came from Johnson's own pocket.

The point is that Johnson invested his own money, "from his own pocket" to the benefit of the Club rather than just purchasing shares from existing shareholders with no benefit to the Club.

Compare that to the current chairman who has not only NOT invested money to benefit the Club, but has also NOT used money "from his own pocket" to purchase his shares!

"Under the offer Parish, who owns a 25% stake in Palace along with the three other members of the CPFC 2010 consortium – Stephen Browett, Jeremy Hosking and Martin Long – having bought the club out of administration five years ago, would continue to run the day-to-day operations at Selhurst Park.

Although the equal stakes held by the four owners would be diluted with Harris buying into the club, no one would have a bigger stake than Parish in shareholding terms with all parties signing up to a reinvestment programme aimed at stadium development."

This is the type of deal that we have been crying out for since Luvvie boy took the reins at the club.

Incredibly, Trevor Birch said we are looking for investment without any dilution of shareholding or to even give any potential investors a place on the board. Basically, the cocks want donations. They want someone else to build a stadium, and they want to run the club on a charity basis, with somebody else's hard-earned cash.

They are a laughing stock amongst Liverpool City Council, yet you will still hear lone voices defending their record. That is the part I find extremely difficult to comprehend. Unless you set the bar at just existing in the Premier League, they have failed on every single level.

Unless we can find new owners, who are prepared to act on these ground issues, we will soon find ourselves behind the likes of Stoke and West Ham. A damning indictment of the current board.

The math is simple, he put £20m into the club he took £20m out. He made a zero net investment from 'his own pocket'.

Johnson was a speculator hoping to make a return on his investment. Nothing wrong with that by the way but he didn't in the end see a return.

To portray him as some benevolent supporter of the club is incorrect.

But still, he put up his own money to benefit the Club. Wouldn't it be nice to have owners like that now eh?

The Park End was initially supposed to be a double-decker wraparound to the Bullens Road stand but was scaled back. The inadequate single tier was mainly paid for by a £1.3M grant from the Football Trust; it was the previous board's doing. They scaled back the original plans, outlined by Jim Greenwood in the matchday programme – I remember reading it in the Main Stand as a teenager; we went with the single-decker because we were skint.

Clifford Finch: "When it was clear that Peter Johnson's bid for Everton had been successful, the first thing we tried to do is stop the building of the Park End, but it had progressed too far. Everything was in place."

"There were also advanced plans for a stadium switch, which Finch believes only the sudden end of Johnson's tenure saw shelved.

"Yes, we had plans to move," he added. "A ground poll indicated that 83 per cent of supporters wanted to move, from 39,000 votes cast.

"The position was that the plans were for a stadium four miles from Goodison Park and they only needed to be rubber-stamped. A considerable amount of money was then spent on a feasibility study into Kings Dock when it was quite clear at the time that it was not feasible.

"But then, of course, everything came crashing down."

"He sold the club for virtually the same price that he paid for it, therefore not only not making any profit, but actually coming out with a substantial bottom line loss."

I'm not sure that this board has helped get us into our current broke state as the decline has been going on for far longer than this board's been at the helm. What is correct though is that they haven't been able to turn it round and have no chance of doing so without a lot of additional finance which they don't have and can't raise. My belief is that they have been net positive but have only scratched the surface of the deep structural problems.

I'm not sure that there is a solution that can make Everton a big club by today's standards given that long term we must be able to operate sustainably within our income and that will need increased spending on players, a new ground and a new business model. Is this type of investment available in football now? I seriously doubt it. Can this board provide it? No, only various degrees of survival.

They are not even trying; see what happens at the AGM. I could have gone as a proxy voter but it is on a Monday night, I still follow the "Mad Monday's" system, having a good drink with my mates, got to get my priorities right.

A few bevvies is more beneficial than listening to a load of nonsense from the CEO, and another poor acting performance from Billy Boy, if he is there.

So we agree that Peter Johnson didn't pay for the Park End? In any way shape or form. You made that up. Why, I have no idea.

In relation to your last quotes, have also conveniently ignored that Johnson kept the club in limbo for over a year as he held out for the best offer. He held out for as long as he could before accepting the offer he did.

Duncan Ferguson was sold in around November 1998. The club was sold in early 2000!!! Peter Johnson was originally looking for approx 㿞-60 million for the club.

It has already been shown you're totally bullshitting about the Park End and you're now putting a VERY generous spin on Johnson's exit. Quite why you're spinning (I'm being generous) this nonsense only you know.

"Johnson obviously wanted a substantial shareholding but the main priority was to get money in to the club to enable it to purchase new players and fund ground improvements"

Money Johnson invested paid for the Park End, the grant was not sufficient to pay the full cost of the development.

I'm not putting spin on anything, just providing quotes from a source you yourself introduced into the discussion

I will say though that Johnson keeping the Club in limbo for a year holding out for the best offer seems a lot better than keeping the Club in limbo for 12 years and counting.

What a cunt!! We should consider ourselves fortunate that the current owners have never done something like that, eh?