Sleepwalking to Disaster, Part IV — Moshiri's Mire

If he is adamant to see this through to the end and get us back where we belong or for that matter just keeping us stable in the short term, then he has to get rid of Kenwright and Little Miss Dynamite and start showing us he can lead with his brains and not his gut feeling. He's showing no brains at all from what I've seen.

Let's be honest, if it carries on the way it has with a squad full of expensive misfits and an endless managerial shift, then we would be better off without him. If you took the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock out of the equation, then he would have been run out of town long ago.

And now some people want to promote them?

Unlike the managers, the assistants are on more 'normal' wages and have no guarantee of jobs afterwards and get this... maybe wouldn't be in football if they couldn't work at Everton. That's a lot to risk when they go against the highly paid man that has the Board's backing.

I think rather that we see the real Ferguson, Baines, Ebbrell, Kelly when they can follow their philosophies and values without the manager going in a different direction and without the same risk of them losing their jobs.

Let's see at the upcoming games and judge them after that. I'd love to see us succeed (stay in the Premier League) with a Blue at the helm. It's what we've been missing since Royle left.

As for the coaches Bill, they can only do what they are allowed to do by their boss, ie, the manager – the buck surely stops there?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Cortese

I first read his name here on TW.
Thank You.

Cortese is the man.
In every single respect.
Finance
Organisation
Strategy
Football Knowledge

PLEEEEEEASE get The Widow Twankey, Matthew Pocket and Miss Haversham OUT of Our Club.
Then Cortese, find Us an Owner NOT in the mould of teary eyed billy bullshit.

From my ageing perspective, my mates and I (Kopites included) have been talking about the need to renovate Goodison or move for 40 years, let alone 25. Danny aged 4 (I was actually 24) even wrote to Peter Johnson in 1995 to express my opinion. To be fair, he responded; or someone did on his behalf. And it wasn't a token response either; to your point on communication.

Moshiri's reign has, to date, been symptomatic of knee jerk, short term thinking. Fuelled by not having a plan or vision, leading to making the wrong appointments, compounded by insisting on leaving those responsible for running the club for him in place and still taking advice from them. Individuals who are incompetent or incapable of running a successful, trophy winning football club.

I have no issues with the way Moshiri intended to run Everton as a hands off benefactor. But he has failed to do the necessary; build a successful team, which starts at the top. Clear the boardroom. Out with the old and familiar, in with a new, fresh and forward thinking team. Ruthless re-organisation of the club's structure. Recognise and respect the club's history and heritage, but don't live and wallow in it. Leave that to me and other overly emotional fellow Evertonians. Otherwise, just employ me. That's almost a plea!!!

But have a plan. Have a strategy. DoF/Sporting Director; I've said enough on that on these pages, but you capture it here Lyndon. It's needed but it also needs to be empowered to be one in order to stop the short-term, knee-jerk reactions, lessen the impact of changing managers and add more coherence to the transfer policy as well as youth development and footballing philosophy throughout the club.

Also on the transfer outlay, to repeat myself several times over, for a club in Everton's position of the past decades and where we want to get to, initially it's how you spend, not necessarily what you spend. We only need to look close to home to see how an effective strategy in that sense can work towards progressively getting you back to where you want to be. Even if that means selling your best players to reinvest on that journey. When you get there, then you can play with the big guns; but get there first.

We have the blue clad Liver Building. We will have an iconic stadium unrivalled in terms of setting. It's not all bad and it's not lost yet. Go and make history Mr Moshiri so my son and younger brother can talk tales of old like my Grandfather and my Father did, and as I do when they get to my age.

You mention the need to appoint a new DOF Lyndon. I have been banging on about this for a couple of weeks now. In my opinion that appointment is more pressing than the appointment of a new manager. I think Duncan Ferguson is just as likely, if not more so, of getting a tune out of the current squad in the coming weeks than any newcomer.

Actually my view is the new DOF should nominate the manager he wants - and who knows that might well be Ferguson. The key issue is that the DOF has to be a football man who knows the premier league and gain the immediate respect of everyone in the club.

As a fan base some buy far too readily into the notion that anybody still involved in the game with an affinity for, or past association with, the club are automatically an amateurish ‘Kenwright acolyte', lacking any admirable qualities or the tools to take on the task at hand. Any positives they could bring to the table are usually played down or instantly dismissed by dint of the fact they simply sat their arse down there at some point previously as a player. People go straight to banging out the “because they ‘get' the club” line with wit-free sarcasm, as though there's absolutely no chance anything other than simple-minded sentiment has come into consideration. It is pure hyperopia being posited as hard headed prudence.

“Go outside the club. Go for someone with no connections who can come in and tear it up. We need it and someone with emotional or controversial connections won't do that”, I read on here yesterday.

Fuck me. The last eight permanent managers all came from ‘outside the club' and were ‘connection free'. So, why do people carp on like we're stuck in a constant cycle of handing the reigns to people already within the ranks and the only hope is to employ someone who doesn't give anything approaching a fuck, but can be swayed to give it a shot solely by the wedge on offer ?

It's utter bollocks, fuelled by a belief that one dewy-eyed, hoople-headed, Evertonian blagger equates to anybody who has ever worn the blue shirt and may subsequently be brought to the club in a non-playing capacity while he's still around in the background, being exactly the same sort of soft-arse succubus. Like they're Carnage from his crap Venom.

Unsworth, Ebbrell, Ferguson, Jeffers, Baines et al, have all been painted as being ‘part of the problem' with the input they actually have/had (or are/were permitted to have) on first-team affairs being blown wildly out of proportion. A litany of highly paid chancers come through the door with their best days far behind them like they're doing us a favour, chuck millions away on dross, chat a load of waffle about bringing a ‘winning mentality' and what they've achieved elsewhere, before sitting back to do the absolute bare minimum and serve up boring safety-first shite, week after week, and then wonder why supporters aren't sat there clapping like seals. Yet, the fault doesn't lie with them apparently. The root of all evil is Finch Farm. The fucking Innsmouth of Evertonia, with it's malign secret culture of shadowy ex-player coaches subverting all around them with their hereditary stench of shite…and their habit of sitting on the sidelines scoffing Haribos while playing Hungry Hippo probably..

Look at Duncan Ferguson. Written off by many as some sort of ‘old boys club' charity case, a work-shy galoot only good for grabbing cones, who has got to be ‘part of the problem' simply by virtue of being around at the same time as a series of substandard gaffers. ‘What does he actually do?' they demanded to know. Then he steps in at a time of crisis, leads the club admirably through an extremely tough set of fixtures, gets the ground rocking for the first time in recent memory and finally earns a few begrudging plaudits before gracefully stepping back to let a more experienced ‘winner' work his magic.

Fast forward a couple of years and another couple of failures and he's straight back to being tarred with the same brush: an ex-blue leech too lazy to make it on his own, as culpable as the clueless caudillo making all the decisions and a contender to be placed in permanent charge that only the cretinous could plump for. Why? For doing what was asked of him and getting on with his job quietly and professionally? For not publicly challenging or undermining the bloke who was handed the baton ahead of him?

Does anybody genuinely believe we would be in a worse situation than we are now if Ferguson had been handed the reigns in the summer instead of a ruinously stubborn red-shite relic?

As for Farhad Moshiri, in appointing both Allardyce and Benitez against loud protestation and expecting long-suffering supporters to promptly fall in behind, he's shown himself to be about as skilled at ‘assessing the situation' as Wee Jimmy Krankie when he wandered into Jimmy Savilles dimly lit dressing room and squealed “fandabbydozy” upon finding out ‘Rolf' had rocked up too.

What even are we trying to achieve?

We're not trying to buy success, because we simply don't have the money.

We're not trying to develop success because there's no development strategy.

We're not investing in our own youth - because the academy still seems much the same as it has been for years albeit benefitting greatly from the Brands restructuring.

We're not creating a particular club and / or footballing identity. Is it school of science, dogs of war or whatever we can muster from a strange jumble of players?

Commercially we have put ourselves at a huge competitive disadvantage against the Rich 6. We're now being overtaken by a host of innovative upstarts and, before too long, mega rich Newcastle.

This is why we're now languishing outside of the top 10. We are a badly run club and it has a huge detrimental impact on the on the field results.

In my opinion, the manager position is not the problem.

As for the rest, I care not whether they are Everton, ex-Everton or not Everton. I want competent people who can run a football club top-to-bottom and back.

The problem is, the club is giving itself the perception to what you are trying to counter. And that is not just coming from Evertonia or Evertonians now.

Forget who they are. Are they the right people? Are they achieving success? And that doesn't just mean on the pitch; that's the end product. As Robert says, we are a badly run club, which reflects on the pitch. The only positive I see is that we are starting to see the shoots of the seed Brands laid at Finch Farm. But he got forced out.

Why is our academy Director also the U23 coach and stands in the dugout? Be the Director or be the coach.

As always you have been very thorough in pointing out the catalogue of mistakes this club have made since Moshiri became the majority shareholder.
Many posters quite rightly lay the blame for what has happened at Kenwright at DBB and Moshiri, but very rarely does anybody ever question the real owner of EFC which is Alisher Usmanov.

Moshiri is just his front man and for me has little or no influence in the big decisions that are made. Moshiri was gifted his Arsenal shares by Usmanov in an attempt to overthrow Kronke, and when that failed Moshiri who has little interest in football sells those shares and buys Everton. Seems to much of a coincidence that within a short period of Kronke closing the door on any chance of him selling his shares to Usmanov that out of nowhere Moshiri invests the money he got for his shares to buy Everton.

I know that many companies pour hundreds of millions into football clubs, which usually translates into shirt advertising, and is used as an advertising ploy to get the company even greater exposure. And those who regularly compete in the Champions league attract the really big sponsorship deals, as the advertising on the shirts would be seen to the bigger audience. Now in Usmanov he has invested heavily in Finch Farm which would hardly attract much advertisement so you have to wonder just as an advertising ploy that would hardly get your company greater exposure. He has also paid £30 million to be 1st in the queue when it comes to the naming rights of the new stadium, really £30 million just to be the front of the queue why waste it when I doubt any major investors will be clamouring for the naming rights for a club that struggles to get into the top half of the league.

Finally when did a club allow a sponsor to have preliminary talks with prospective new managers, which Usmanov did with at least 2 we know of, he had reportedly 2 hours with Ancelotti before he signed and spent a number of days talking to Benitez on his yacht off the coast of Sardinia before he signed. Yet he is very rarely mentioned when we talk about changes that need making at the club.

THANKS for your support.

Carters name adorns the Park End Stand, yet he epitomises arrogant and abject failure at Everton.
He sold the greatest club side in Europe and allowed our most successful Manager ever disappear to a meaningless third rate Spanish outfit.

Bullshit billy has made this the acceptable standard to such a point that even criticising Everton nowadays is considered insurrection and shouted down.

Get billy, denise and the mish-mash-mosh OUT.
Then, and ONLY then let's talk about success.

Perhaps having Usmanov in the background is itelf the problem, because it has made the board lazy due to them believing there is an unlimited supply of cash on tap, thereby, whatever daft decisions they may make, they will be bailed out at some future point?

Or does it indicate that the real owner of Everton FC in all but name is Usmanov himself, and that has caused the owner and board to appear as if they don't know what they are doing, because they are always awaiting instructions and approval from the guy with the wallet?

Even today, it appears that the chairman has his own idea of the direction of travel for the football club, i.e. hire a manager who has an understanding of what the fans would like to see and it was he who called for unitiy from the footballing staff. Meanwhile, Moshiri and or Usmanov are holding out for a 'big-name' manager who they can boast about to their rich friends and associates, but may prove to be just as useless as all the other 'big-name' hires of the past few years.

It might be quite some time before the ordinary fans get to know the truth of the matter, but the club cannot carry on in the same manner for too much longer, something has to give, and someone has to declare ownership of the club and act like an owner should, by putting in place a coherent plan and sticking to it, come what may.

Except it's people repeatedly calling out any ex-Evertonian who is brought to, or linked to, the club in any capacity (whether that be managing, coaching, working with the kids, scouting etc) as being part of the problem, or synonymous with the problem, without any proof or insight other than proximity and a presumption of pure sentiment, who suggest someone without such links must automatically be possessed of a more desirous skill-set, not the reverse.

I don't see many people, if any at all, positing that someone who is not an Evertonian would not be able to do a decent job purely on that basis. It would be nonsensical.

Yet anybody who has previously played for the club are promptly dismissed as some sort of talentless, drive-free eunuch, who could only be selected for a role if raw sentiment was the sole consideration?

You say “I care not whether they are Everton, ex-Everton or not Everton. I want competent people”. Yet the quote I used….”Go outside the club. Go for someone with no connections who can come in and tear it up. We need it and someone with emotional or controversial connections won't do that”…came from your very own lips (well, ok, finger-tips..whatever) in reference to the managerial position you now claim not to be a problem.

If you're not arsed about anything other than competence or ability then why stress the need for ‘an outsider' and claim a lack of past association with the club is absolutely paramount? Why ignore all recent evidence to the contrary and claim anyone with ‘a connection' to the club would automatically be far less likely than someone connection-free to put a jolt through the corpse of this club, when the only demonstrable precedent you have to go off indicates the polar opposite?

I wouldn't and don't claim the manager position to not be a problem. I should probably articulate myself a bit better. I don't think it is the problem. We are focussing on the wrong problem – and there are many at our club.

My rantings about going outside the club don't mean I am averse to having ex-players or associates in key positions. Most clubs do have that. I suppose I use that as a counter to the "we've only ever won with Evertonians in charge".

Sorry that is a dated argument and plays to Kenwright's tune.

Liverpool binned the bootroom. Man City and Chelsea do not have it.

That's all I'm getting at. If they're good enough and they are successful, who cares where they come from or who they used to play for?

You suggest that, if Moshiri was not mid-stride in delivering us a magnificent new stadium, "he would have been run out of town long ago".

Ignoring the fact that the Monaco magnate is hardly ever in town, I take it you meant that he would have been run out of the club? I'm curious how you think that might have happened?

In simple terms, he's the majority shareholder. That means he has more shares than anybody else. As with the Johnson regime that preceded this one, the only way it ends is when someone offers enough money for those shares and Moshiri agreees to sell up and go.

Now you could argue that Johnson was effectively "run out of town" when threats were made to him and his family. It was reportedly the final straw that convinced him to sell his controlling interest in Everton Football Club. Is that what you're suggesting would have already happened with Moshiri?

I don't think that's something you can force to happen. Even the #27Years campaign have had the sense to acknowledge that it's a non-starter, saying that it wants a closer relationship with shareholders, fans and partners.

That's not saying Moshiri won't sell up at some point. But the fact that he survived the ridiculous appointments of Allardyce and then Benitez without in any way being "run out of town" suggests you are mistaken.

In terms of managers, he has "over-appointed". He has picked huge names with stellar reputations without thinking how they fit in with a middle-ranking club.

Koeman came purely for the money, everything he did suggested that he thought the job was beneath him. He expected the Arsenal job, but Wenger hung on and he was greedy for the Everton salary, but didn't really think Everton were worthy of his name and talents.

Silva tried and failed, a fair appointment, while Allardyce was fire-fighting with a green goddess rather than a proper red engine.

Ancelotti was a huge name; he had a way of playing and working that really suited European giants, not mid-table aspirants. He couldn't transfer his ideas to middle-ranking players and he didn't seem to be the greatest of motivators.

Benitez had a reputation, forged really a decade or more ago. His history, his defensive mindset, and his vindictive style of man-management meant he was separated from his players and his so-called team of backroom men. The fans were either totally against him or grudgingly pragmatic about him, but there was no affection or warmth for his appointment.

So we have had a series of managers who on paper looked the real deal, but who in reality never fitted the reality of the current Everton.

Will the next appointment be the right one? It needs to be. It needs to be someone who has the ability to motivate and communicate. To bring on some youngsters and to enthuse older professionals; it's a massive long-term task.

Whoever comes must know the parameters within which he has to work and must have not just objectives, but the methods to succeed. He cannot be another old man with a way of playing that disappeared before Guardiola and Bielsa changed the landscape.

It could be Potter, I don't know enough to be certain, but whoever it is, he has a formidable task on hand.

I'll admit he's made many mistakes but putting his money where his mouth is isn't one of them. Would anybody like to go back to scrimping and scraping for money?

Yes, people could say we're in a far worse position than when we had no money but I think you'd see it differently if we went back to having none.

He's got the biggest part of what we needed right, the new stadium, but unfortunately his inexperience in footballing matters has cost us dearly and so has his trust (I'm guessing of course) in Kenwright.

I wonder whether Kenwright was clever enough to include a clause in his agreement to sell his shares to Moshiri that prevented him from being removed as chairman? It wouldn't surprise me at all if he'd managed that.

I do think the players would have tried harder for Duncan though, and also hope he does that well he becomes our next manager.

My own view is that the poison that exists within the club makes it an impossible job for an outsider.

“One in, one out, Mr Styles… sounds like Finch Farm to me!

But the situation is that he has been here for too long for any good he has done. In the name of God, go, with our thanks, but go quickly.

Just to reply to you and it's really hypothetical now anyway but, if it was not for the stadium being built, then Moshiri probably would have received so much shit for appointing Benitez that I think he would have given up and put the club for sale.

The fact that he then gave Benitez the job, gave him full control, and then we supporters watched as he proved to us all how wrong his appointment was, then you have to realize the owner is clearly out of his depth at running a football club and making good decisions.

He has been given a massive amount of leeway because of the stadium and the money he has put into the club. Money is not a problem for them as they will get that back for sure.

If the rumours of Martinez were true, then it's clear his decision-making is not improving. It could be, of course, that he is allowing Bill too much say in decision-making but that in itself is scary.

Let's hope Duncan can turn our fortunes around and save them from another poor decision.

I was in town last night with mates I've known all my life, some, unfortunately are of the other lot. We've always taken the piss out of each other especially over footy.

Last night someone brought up Everton, the chat stopped and my RS mates changed the subject! Now I really know we're a joke!

Have to agree with both posts. This constant painting of all things wrong with the club stemming from Finch Farm and ex-players draining money from the club and stealing a living seems a bit simplistic.

Ferguson has now survived 8 managers; he must have something to offer for all managers to keep him on. Unless of course within the first week he gets them in a darkened room with a sharp knife and a bag of lemons and some salt. We arent talking Tequila either...

Liverpool binned the bootroom. Man City and Chelsea do not have it.

May be a coincidence but the RS getting rid of the bootroom may (just may, not definitely) have contributed to them going from regular league winners to a 30-year gap and a real shame it wasn't longer.

The other two aren't real comparisons as both have spent at least treble what we have under Moshiri. Both have well and truly bought success and given them a platform to now employ the best managers and players.

Chelsea change their manager so often that the bootroom would be an airport arrivals lounge.

Presuming you are the same Alexander Murphy who posted @ 64 in this historic thread from March 2018 in which I trumpeted Nicola Cortese's history and qualities, it appears I have a lot to answer for!

Elstone to Leave Everton?

As I shared in my posts on that thread, Cortese was actually punting for a return to English football in an interview with none other than Jim White at the time when then CEO Robert Elstone was rumoured to be leaving the club. Denise Barrett-Baxendale got the gig instead a couple of months later.

Nearly 4 years on, Cortese would still be a good appointment for Everton.

I can't be in their company more than 2 minutes so good luck with that. Maybe they changed the subject and had fear in their eyes because of the blue Dunc inspired uprising on the way. Just saying.

Kenwright Out!

Chelsea were building and improving throughout the late 90s prior to their title win in 2004. Man City also, years before their triumph in 2012.

Not comparable, but they put the structures and organisation in place to gradually improve the standard of players and managers they could attract.

The bootroom; Liverpool tried it, with the last rolls of the dice being Souness and a couple of Dalglish revisits. When they finally chinned it off and went for the best man for the job (that's what it's about), they gradually got back to where they wanted to be and picked up a few trophies on the way.

Material, transportation and construction costs are rising, interest rates are expected to rise, the £500M stadium may soon need £600M to build.

I'm still not convinced the stadium will be completed.

Both Chelsea and Man City bought a lot of dross before they hit a successful formula.

You echo the incredulity that many - Blues and non-Blues - express about the running of Good Ship Everton under Captain Moshiri.

BMD is a HUGE uptick on what he has brought to the club. The whole process has been exemplary. The search for a viable plot. The securing of it. The design. The canvassing and public consulting. The exceedingly detailed planning application that helped ensure it would be approved, even with opposition from the UNESCO and Historic England. The engineering involved in the build to date mesmerises me.

Even a red-supporting city councillor on the planning committee was fulsome in his praise, saying developers submitting planning applications would do well to follow Everton's example.

But the rest? It's a dog's dinner a stray dog would turn its nose up to.

WHAT. IS. THE. PLAN? Football-wise?

On reflection it seems there was a belief 'throw a lot of money on buying new players, job done. We'll reach the promised land.'

Only we paid over the odds for middling to poor players and hamstrung ourselves by paying them exhorbitant wages on long contracts. All compounded by our stick-a-tail-on-a-donkey manager recruitment without any commonality or continuity between them.

Unless and until we get our club administration and management in order, we will continue to exasperate.

This last two months have badly defined Everton. It's not the Everton that BK claimed last year that someone at another club told him 'when making decisions, we ask 'what would Everton do?'

Rather, Everton is a club that has self-sabotaged.

Director of Football. Heads of recruitment, scouting and medical. All gone and everything on the football side invested in one man, a manager who showed himself to be incapable. Backed over Brands. Backed in the stand-off with Digne. Backed in the transfer market this month. A defeat to Norwich and he and his auxiliary staff are also gone.

We are a completely shelled out club in a precarious position in the league. And the only people remaining to appoint the replacements for so many vacancies are the very same people who allowed this all to unfold.

Why am I not brimming with confidence that they can get it right now..?

Moshiri HAS to take a big breathe, pause, reflect, and make big decisions on the entire governance and management structure at Everton if he genuinely wants to succeed in our raison d'etre. Football.

Because as of right now we are not even a dusty museum he once alluded to, but rather a gruesome horror show.

The owner of Everton can hire or fire anyone he feels is not fulfilling the position he was hired for. To become owner of Everton, you have to be a majority shareholder, and as he bought shares from Robert Earl and Jon Woods, these shares alone would have made him majority shareholder and defacto owner.

As he even bought shares from Arthur Abercromby and the bulk of Lord Granchester's, and Bill Kenwright's holding out, the sale of his shares would not have made any difference.

Moshiri was the owner with the authority to hire or fire anyone at the club, so I don't think because Kenwright wanted to stay as Chairman had anything to do with him selling all but 5% of his shares to Moshiri.

Bill Kenwright is chairman of Everton FC because Moshiri wanted him there.

I always thought Moshiri would buy the Bramley-Moore Dock site, irrespective of planning approval being granted for a stadium. They seem to be cracking on with construction now but, if the stadium project had gone tits-up, he could have built hotels and apartments on the same site.

The book ending of BMD at one end and the club's occupancy of the Liver Building at the other establishes their presence on prime real estate, with a lot of front and back fill in between.

Paul the Esk 'pooh-poohs' the notion, but he is looking at it strictly from an Everton point of view IMO.

Moshiri's (and Usmanov's..?) possible real estate and development interest in the city is NOT intended to benefit Everton per se, but rather, their own pockets.

Their involvement in Everton towards that aim is almost incidental.

Some very smart, well-monied people are going to make a LOT of money in the coming years in the development of Liverpool Docks. Moshiri (and Usmanov..?) have put themselves in prime position to be among the benefactors of that windfall.

I wouldn't have said dross in comparison to where Chelsea were in the late 80s after bouncing between divisions and when then were finishing about 12th or 14th in the top flight in the early 90s. Similarly it wasn't dross in comparison to where City were around 2000 in comparison to about 5 or 6 years later.

Gradual upping of the quality combined with trial and error.

But there was a strategy. That's what we have lacked. We had the money but were shooting from the hip with no target. They were aiming for something and had a gradual path to get there.

Everton's strategy, particularly in hiring managers, has been akin to playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded revolver.

Hypotheticals are always hard to argue, which is why I was asking more about the mechanism by which you think Moshiri could be run out of town.

You changed the narrative, though, to him wanting to sell up. He's shown no sign of that either. Yes, he makes bad decisions. Some really bad ones. Nothing new there, I'm afraid. But it hasn't got him run out of town.

You're now saying he's been given a massive amount of leeway... But the guy owns 92.16% of the shares in Everton FC. There is no-one giving him leeway. He just does what he wants... doesn't he? He's the owner.

Or is this "massive leeway" because there was no massive revolt when Benitez was appointed?

As is so often the case with the largely passive Everton fanbase when it comes to protests, it was just a small minority who were vehemently against his appointment as manager. But all they could muster was a nasty bedsheet on the wrong house in Caldy and some graffiti on the hallowed walls of Goodison Park, while the majority I think felt they had little option but to see how it panned out.

And you're convinced the massive cabal of rabid fans with their bedsheets at the ready, all said... "I never wanted Benitez but, you know what – I'm prepared to go along with it because this lad is building us a nice stadium"?

I think that's probably what qualifies as a non-sequitur.

Given where we are, re-establishing the club in the top half of the league is in itself a mammoth task made all the more challenging by the focus required to deliver the Bramley-Moore project. There are no quick fixes; we have tried those with a succession of managerial appointments and off the shelf player recruitment which has made things worse.

We need a long term plan. At Manchester City in 2012 they already had a decent squad with Kompany, Aguero, Touré and Silva, star players recruited when Brian Marwood was in charge of City transfers. With the aim of building sustained success the club recruited from Barcelona Ferran Soriano as chief executive and Txiki Begiristain as director of football. Their brief was to build City into a new Barcelona with player recruitment geared in readiness for Guardiola's arrival in 2016.

As we know even Guardiola struggled in his first season but many of the key players of the team which now dominates the league were in place; John Stones, Jesus, De Bruyne and and Sterling. Yes they had a financial advantage well beyond the reach of most clubs but they had a strategy and the personnel behind the scenes to make the best use of it.

We start from a much lower base but we will not progress without a long term plan and competent people to deliver it. It will take several years, at least.

He was head of Leicester's scouting department - I don't think he discovered any of those players himself. We just hired the boss - a bit like promoting a General because one of his soldiers has won the Victoria Cross.