*Shakes head* Everton again.

[Captain Turdseye]

Interesting. 

 

 

https://toffeeweb.com/season/18-19/comment/fanscomment/37708.html

[Bobby Hundreds]

It's a good article/post but still cries it in about Liverpool getting decisions they don't.  Christ we had a handball against us the other day and the ref gave it the other way. Crying bitches there is no conspiracy your shitness is your clubs own making just as ours was.

[Anubis]

Little bit of everything here - skullduggery, intrigue, and some batshit conspiracy theory about us bullying referees.

 

Please note that neither myself or TLW subscribe to the assertions in this piece from Toffeeweb, and it is merely reproduced here for entertainment purposes.

 

Obviously Turdseye has posted the link because he believes every word and is disseminating the link to anyone who’ll read because he believes Barrett-Baxendale is bang at it. He deserves to be sued. But not me, Denise. 

 

https://toffeeweb.com/season/18-19/comment/fanscomment/37708.html

 

Moshiri's Monument to Mediocrity

GERARD MCKEAN 28/01/201997COMMENTS  |  Jump to last 

Not wanting to come across as too negative, I thought I’d wait until the team gains that “momentum” we’ve been waiting for and wins a few games consecutively until I wrote this piece... but I rather wanted to get it into ToffeeWeb this season. 

 

Spoiler Alert: I am going to be critical of the way EFC is run, particularly at the highest level. Now I know this upsets some folk who do not connect nice people like Kenwright and Barrett-Baxendale with the garbage on the pitch but, once again, I would argue passionately that the complacency at the top of the club is a malaise that seeps into its every pore. 

My usual detractors are in 3 camps: those who accuse me of writing “diatribes” because I have an “agenda”; those who claim that I am misogynistic when I criticise Barrett-Baxendale; and those who argue that, because Barrett-Baxendale has been promoted twice since coming to Everton, she must be rather good. 

 

I defend my position thus: I do have an agenda: I want to see Everton great again. If criticising someone because she is a woman is misogynistic then, by the same lazy “logic”, I must be racist if I criticise, say, Oumar Niasse... and finally, the naivety behind the idea that people get promoted only because of competence is touching but, as this article will show, utterly at odds with the dysfunctional way this club is run.

 

Regular poster Don Alexander suffers abuse every time he mentions Kenwright. It is those who scorn him who have got it wrong, not Don. Kenwright is a shrewd thespian. How my heart beats that little faster when I think of him mortgaging his own house to save the club in its hour of need, or I imagine him as a poor boy living in the slums of 1950s L18 (for those not familiar with the city, this comment is meant to be ironic) making his way into the only part of the ground he can afford, the Boys Pen, or of him scouring the planet to find the “right” person to make him even richer. 

 

Well, it seems to me that he found the right person in Moshiri; probably the only person on the planet who’d pay a fortune to buy a majority stake in the club and then agree to keep the former owner on and carry on as though nothing has changed. I need Kenwright to sell my house for me as I have no intention of moving but the money would keep me in beer for a while. 

This actually raises some questions about Moshiri. In our collective yearning for a wealthy benefactor, none of us has ever harboured serious doubts about the man or his motives. It is, however, becoming clearer by the day that he’s wandered just a bit too far outside of his comfort zone. He is a man who made millions by acting on behalf of a man who was making billions, and while he was undoubtedly skilled and adept at putting Usmanov’s money to work, he was not required to generate that fortune himself through ingenuity or entrepreneurialism or sheer ruthlessness as Usmanov was. Usmanov must be one hard man. I couldn’t see him allowing Kenwright a free ticket for the match – let alone remaining as Chairman of the Board. 

 

Planning for a new stadium apart, which is how eventually he will cash in his investment, Moshiri has not changed anything and the lunatics are still running the asylum. 

 

The recent elevation of Marcel Brands to the Board was met with near universal approval at the AGM. I read with great interest and admiration Paul the Esk’s dissection of the club’s finances as revealed to the AGM and I wondered, and I’ll not be alone in this, if Paul and his forensic eye should not be on the Board because nobody on it seems to come near to his level of financial expertise. This thought occurred to me as I pondered that the reason they had to bring Brands onto the Board was because nobody else on the Board had a clue about football! 

I don’t fully know why but I quite like Brands and I hope he does well for Everton. Having said that, here’s why he should NOT be on the Board: stripped to the very barest essential of its raison d’etre, the Board represents the ambition of the club’s fans to have a winning team playing attractive football and ensuring that healthy profits are available should the team need strengthening. If Paul the Esk were a Board member, he would be able to call to a Board meeting and interrogate the club’s highly remunerated sales and marketing staff as to why virtually all the income comes from TV rights negotiated by others outside the club. 

 

"So what are you people actually doing?" he would ask.. Who on the Board interrogates the club’s transfer policy? It seems now it must be the man responsible for it? This is a structural flaw. You cannot have the questions being put by the same person who must answer them. The solution is to have people on the Board who have clear and prescient knowledge of football and football as a business, and this is the single biggest factor that separates the top six from the rest. 

Everton’s fans, especially those who travel all over to support the team, deserve better than the amateur, dare I say thespian, approach to running a club that characterises this Board. With the exception of its newest member, the Everton Board is a football knowledge-free zone. 

 

Imagine for one moment that Daniel Levy (Spurs) was our CEO or Ferran Soriano (Man City) or Guy Laurence (Chelsea) or Peter Moore (Liverpool); they are all either steeped in football/sports business or they are highly successful business people who work for owners who are steeped in sports business specifically. Most of them are both. Typically, of course, Everton has neither. 

 

Imagine any one of them asking questions about Everton’s transfer dealings over the last year or two: so £45m for Gylfi and offload Ross Barkley by refusing his wish for financial parity with Schneiderlin, so how’s that working out, Marcel? Now, okay, Brands is not responsible for the mess he and Silva inherited, but you’ll get the drift. It is the CEO who must be asking the tough questions of Brands, not the DoF asking questions of him because that is the same person! 

 

Imagine, the Chairman invites Brands to speak. “Well Marcel, we’ve invested a lot of money so far in securing the services of Andre Gomes on loan with a view to making the move permanent, is that still your preferred option and how much do you recommend to the Board what our limit should be?” 

 

“Thanks for asking, Marcel, I’ll get back to you on that if I may.” 

 

That is why I have no faith in Moshiri or Kenwright; Moshiri has given free rein to Kenwright who then appointed, actually more anointed, a CEO with zero knowledge of football and with no appreciable business know-how beyond the relatively gentle worlds of charity and schools, and now all 3 of them have had to bring Brands onto a Board to which he should be accountable, not part of. 

For those who doubt that my assertion that Barrett-Baxendale is a business lightweight and a football business nonentity, maybe try asking the club’s Human Resources department to release a precis of her CV. Here’s the thing: it is highly unlikely that any such document resides within Everton FC. This is because Everton’s due diligence procedure on her appointment to head up EitC makes Failing Grayling’s checks into a ferry company with no ships before awarding it a £14m government contract look positively thorough. 

 

We tend to cut more slack to charities than most organisations and, while there are many, many decent people working for charities, events over the last few years have reminded us that there are a few charlatans, too. Following an indiscretion at EitC [More specific references to this incident have been removed post-publication by ToffeeWeb], a meeting of the EitC board took the advice of one of its members, let’s call him “Ken” (all names in this article are fictitious, as they say on telly, and no likeness to any etc etc), that he knew someone who runs a charity and he could ask her if she fancied running EitC? The club CEO jumped at the chance to sweep an indiscretion at EitC under the carpet and fill a vacancy all in one go. 

Now the small charity that Barrett-Baxendale was running before EitC was called The Fiveways Trust; it had been the brainchild of two mates of mine, headteachers of local schools. There was nothing illegal about this but The Fiveways Trust was set up primarily to access funds that were either only available to charities or were more likely to be given to you if you were a charity. 

 

Whether or not it conformed to one’s conventional notion of a “charity”, I have no doubt that, after paying staff very decent salaries, all money raised was put to good use in the schools. When the two headteachers looked around for someone to be put in charge of their charity, they did not need to look far. 

 

At the time, there was a close-knit group of headteachers in South Liverpool; to call it a cabal would be extremely unkind, and two other heads in that little group – as it happens both close friends of Barrett-Baxendale – were happy to allow her, as the person running their inter-school technology programme, to become “Chief Executive” of The Fiveways Trust. I won’t bore you with the detail, and anyway I’d need to write a book, but both these two latter heads, neither remotely a Blue, by the way, and one with a visceral hatred of EFC, crop up again prominently at Everton in the Barrett-Baxendale EitC era. 

You really could not make this up! But, before we get that far, she gets the Fiveways gig and, remarkably, by the time “Ken” recommends her for the EitC job, one of the two heads whose schools are effectively The Fiveways Trust has actually withdrawn his school out of the charity. Interestingly, he was “allegedly” not at all happy with his Chief Executive, Barrett-

Baxendale.

 

Precisely at this moment of discomfort, Barrett-Baxendale must have regarded “Ken” as her knight in shining armour and she was whisked off to the safety of Fortress Goodison. Shortly thereafter, and with more than a hint of surprise in my voice, I asked the one head who had remained with The Fiveways Trust what he thought about all this and what kind of reference he’d written for his erstwhile Chief Executive. “I knew nothing about it,” he replied, “the first thing I knew was after the event, I was not asked for a reference by anyone at Everton.” The look on his face spoke volumes. EitC was all Barrett-Baxendale’s Christmases come together, the gift that never stopped giving.

 

I do think that EitC has credibility as a charity and, up to a few years ago, I was a regular donor but, when the tail began to wag the dog, my alarm bells were ringing loud and clear. Under Barrett-Baxendale, EitC went from a low-profile charity with its tail between its legs at the time of her appointment, to a high-profile slick operation whose tail made a lot of wagging noise in contrast to the silent prayers of all Evertonians that we might get a team back one day.

 

Oh, and it was so easy to achieve that transition. Start from the bottom and there’s only one way anyway, but get someone in charge who can see its potential to fuel her personal ambition and advancement, and you have lift-off. 

At first, it was all such good fun: EitC have won another award... and another, and another. At last, Everton fans had something to shout about, or did we really? It’s a charity, it’s not Everton FC. But Barrett-Baxendale was utterly determined to make hay while the sun shone; if there was an award for a football-related charity whose name did not contain the letter Z, EitC would be entered. And win. And there would be publicity. Photos, fine words, more photos. 

 

The awards stacked up and, whether or not these awards were obscure in the extreme, the publicity never abated. The tail was well and truly wagging the dog. Too many of us were suckered for too long into believing that good work in the community compensated for ongoing mediocrity everywhere else in the club. And today we are left to wonder where the leaders are, be it on the pitch and in the Boardroom. 

 

EitC gave Barrett-Baxendale a platform. It was not long before she removed herself from the EitC office, tucked into the corner of Gwladys Street and Goodison Road, and installed herself in a small office at the Park End. It was a small office but this was no act of modesty befitting someone leading a charity but rather a calculated move into the office not only immediately next to but with an adjoining internal door into Robert Elstone’s office. Everyone could see what was happening here. Except Robert. 

 

People who would probably have laughed out loud at the power grab, someone like say, Ian Ross, who had mysteriously disappeared after an unfortunate “accidental” email leak, were gone and there was no-one else left who dared say anything. 

 

Things happened fast after that. Robert suddenly began to wonder how he’d ever managed to get along without a Chief Operating Officer. No need to advertise the post nationally, internationally – the right person was right in front of him. No, I mean right in front... because, by this time, Robert had also begun to wonder why he needed such a big office, and a new dividing wall had been erected that simultaneously reduced his office space and provided Barrett-Baxendale with something a tad grander. 

 

If Robert was a pushover for an operator like Barrett-Baxendale, then Kenwright was even easier. I remember a conversation a few years ago between her and the then Secretary of State for Education, Mr Gove, where both tried to outdo the other in gushing admiration for each other. 

 

I was reminded of those small kids at school who have worked out that, in the absence of more obvious attributes, sucking up to people, flattering them, is their route to becoming popular. It was a technique she used to great effect with the thesp and indeed with anyone above her in the foodchain, including at that time Philip Carter and his wife, and “Roberto” and his wife. The wives and partners were important to have onside and Barrett-Baxendale always spoke in almost reverential tones about “Lady Rita”. With friends like these and others in high places, the MBE was not long in coming... 

I’d like to think that, in the most unlikely event of me being offered a knighthood, I would have had the courage to turn it down on principle, but maybe I wouldn’t have. However, I do feel pretty confident that, if I were a head of a charity and combining that income with that of a Chief Operating Officer of a Premier League football club, I might well have decided that was ample reward without being given a gong for services to what I’m actually being very well paid to do. 

 

I’d love to carry on and tell you more about how the Everton Free School came about and the people still freeloading off it, the for me far too cosy relationship between EitC and Liverpool Hope, the little scams that were going on in plain sight, the grace-and-favour appointments to join the gravy train, the culture of complacency, the downright nasty treatment of faces that did not fit, the Finch Farm rest home for former bad boys... but I think by now you will have got the drift and I do dread being accused of authoring a “diatribe”. 

 

Anyway, as I’ve said before, I’d have to write a book. Or maybe I should borrow a John McFarlane Snr technique and write a “Part 2” to this article. Suffice to say, for now, that, once Robert left, Barrett-Baxendale was a shoo-in for CEO, warmly endorsed by the club Chairman and ratified by the majority owner, which brings me neatly back to Mr Moshiri again. 

The honeymoon is over. Questions are now getting louder. What was Koeman all about and by how much did his golf handicap improve during his lucrative sojourn? Unsworth, really? And was the despicable Allardyce just to show us who’s calling the shots? And if we thought the previous two were bad, wait until you see this beaut? 

 

Was your public lambasting of Silva at the AGM such a clever thing to do? Or did you figure this is now the Everton Way: get the fans onside with teary sentimentality (Chairman) or meaningless slogans (CEO) or tough talk (You)? Talk about undermining the authority of a manager over his players!

 

Is this a preamble to a sacking because “Silva had lost the dressing room”? You went all out to get this guy and, while I had no faith in your judgement after Allardyce, I was persuaded by the posts of TW posters, who know far more about Portuguese football than I do and whose opinions I respect, to give the bloke a chance. 

 

And I still think he needs more time. Mind you, if I’d known Bielsa or Hasenhuttl were interested in a move to England…. Come to think of it though, why didn’t you know about Bielsa or Hasenhuttl, Mr Moshiri? Could it be because you don’t know football and the CEO you appointed knows even less? 

 

It is said that Christopher Wren used to walk amongst the labourers and artisans who were working on the building of St Paul's Cathederal some 300 years ago and he stopped to ask one man what his job was, what he was doing? The worker took off his hat to reply to the great architect, “Sir, I am just laying bricks.” Wren told the man that he was not just laying bricks, he was building a cathedral – and one day he would bring his grandchildren to see the magnificent cathedral he had built. 

 

Nobody is building a cathedral at Everton, namely a team that wins trophies and aspires to live up to our proud motto; it is more of a monument to mediocrity. And the mediocrity in the boardroom, the lack of passion and intellect, manifests itself in coaching staff being given tenure for who they are rather than what they are, extraordinary long-term contracts being handed out to some rather ordinary players, sloppy loan contracts that surrender control to the player rather than the club, and panic reactions when owners and chairmen and CEOs suddenly realise that actually, no we have no-one on the Board who knows anything about football. 

Several TW posters have complained of there being something fundamentally wrong at the club, and until Moshiri finally understands that, he will not get the return down the line that he is planning on if he continues to let Bill fiddle while the flames dance all around his out-of-her-depth CEO and her appointees, nothing off or on the pitch is going to change.

 

I am astonished that Moshiri does not see the need to protect his asset by root and branch reform and a complete change in its culture. The connection between Boardroom and pitch and everything in between is symbiotic. Every aspect of a modern high-achieving football club has to be exceptional, you cannot settle for anything less than the best; the virtuous circle is that a club cannot have a successful team without enjoying commercial success and commercial success depends on there being a successful team. That formulation is not grasped at Everton, there is no holistic approach, no coherent plan. 

 

The populist rhetoric of the CEO at the AGM will remain just empty words and clichés unless Moshiri actively chops off the deadwood and replaces it with highly qualified professionals who are passionate about Everton Football Club and making it great again. It’s his investment at stake if he doesn’t. Our investment as Evertonians is far more important than just money; it seems this club has forgotten that we are the stakeholders who matter most. 

 

Short Postscript after the Millwall game... 

The case for radical change in how this club is run is now irrefutable. Despite the unrelenting hostility and nastiness they knew would be waiting for them, my son and my nephew were there at Millwall to support their team. I just wish the team had gone into the game with the passion and belief in Everton shown by our brilliant away support. But they didn’t and we were bullied all over the pitch. 

 

Whatever level you have played the game, and mine was the lower echelons of the Liverpool Sunday League in the 1970s, if you let the opposition intimidate you, if you don’t win your individual battles all over the pitch you know you have lost before you start. You can also know you have won before you start if you’re walking onto the pitch with players of the likes of Peter Reid and Kevin Ratcliffe. 

 

I said in my main article that I would give Silva patience but after this result and more the manner of it, abject surrender, I’m afraid he’s started to resemble a dead man walking. Players don’t play for managers about to be sacked. Great AGM speech, Fahrad! 

 

Marco Silva’s insistence on talking about VAR and so on sounded like an attempt to deflect attention away from the dire performance of his team, but actually on this point he is correct and it was just that it was said at totally the wrong moment. It did not need VAR; the pathetic Oliver and his officials should have seen and given the handball. 

 

So here’s a question: would that goal have stood against the likes of Man City, Chelsea, Spurs or, especially, Liverpool? I think we all know the answer.

 

What some might not realise is that the CEOs mentioned earlier at these clubs have the same mentality as I suggested our players need in the previous paragraph. They know how much success on the pitch influences further commercial success and they are going all out to win psychologically beforehand, like the Reids and Ratcliffes, except that their job is in the world of influence and if they need to impress upon Riley, or whoever is currently Head of Professional Referees, every time they see him or phone him, that they will not tolerate bad decisions that could cost their clubs millions, they will not hesitate to do so. 

 

Sadly, it probably came as a surprise to the Everton CEO that you’re not allowed to score goals with your arm. Silva, and anyone who succeeds him, is being hung out to dry by the complete absence of professional support and street smart know-how in the present set-up at Everton Football Club.

 

[TheHowieLama]

KIN BOOOOOO!

[Barrington Womble]

I couldn't read all of that, it was just too badly written and too many taps on the nose "I know something you don't but I'm not going to tell you the whole story either". Honestly, dunno if he's right or wrong, but he just sounds like the bird who's found out her fella is fucking someone else.

 

Having said all that, it seems pretty clear they're a badly run club. 

[SlugTrail]

20 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

 

 

Hahaha he's from Norway.

[SlugTrail]

12 hours ago, dylstar said:

An Everton fan from Norway ........how ironic

Damn you, you beat me too it.

[Captain Turdseye]

Come at me, Denise, bro. 

[Dr Nowt]

Can’t believe even Tomkins is at the Steve-o style wind-ups.

[Leyton388]

They can't wait for city to beat them. They're really looking forward to the thrashing the absolute helmets.

[Mudface]

4 minutes ago, Dr Nowt said:

Can’t believe even Tomkins is at the Steve-o style wind-ups.

Not enough brackets for Tomkins...

[Einch]

Are they on the same slippery slope as they were before the Moyesiah joined?

[Harry Squatter]

The Usmanov thread is funny. They are shitting themselves because he's been heavily linked with buying AC Milan. Good old SteveO comes along telling everyone that he isn't going anywhere because he sponsors the training ground and has a stake in the Angry Birds company.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

Quote

If criticising someone because she is a woman is misogynistic then, by the same lazy “logic”, I must be racist if I criticise, say, Oumar Niasse...

Genius. "Because she is a woman..."

[Angie81]

1 hour ago, Leyton388 said:

They can't wait for city to beat them. They're really looking forward to the thrashing the absolute helmets.

I live right next to goodison, and when city dry bummed them last year when many of the fans walked at half time, we saw some Everton fans outside waiting for the city players to come out and they were shouting them as well and all that, taking photos. I remember as well it was about 40 minutes after the game finished, it was freezing cold and they'd just been taught a footballing lesson and yet here were the fans waiting outside for the oppo team to basically cheer them on. Madness.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

I always suspected that those meerkats were dodgy little fuckers! 

 

 

[General Dryness]

"And, especially, Liverpool".

 

Yeah, we've got the FA and The Premier League in our back pocket, us. Obvious from the way they've handed us the league title year after year with dodgy refereeing decisions and the like.

[Wezza]

Imagine not being able to celebrate your own team winning because City lost!

[Leyton388]

Fume!!!!!!

[Anubis]

sageyefc

Player Valuation: £70m

24 minutes ago

New #1,615

Bald ferret

 

 

sageyefc

Player Valuation: £70m

11 minutes ago

New #1,616

Hope that turtle neck sweater chokes him the fraud

 

 

 

Acelisc008

Player Valuation: £950k

9 minutes ago

New #1,617

Absolute bottlers, thanks Pep.

 

 

 

 

 

City are bottlers? You support Everton, you whelk. You don’t get to call any other side bottlers.

[Anubis]

Ok, which one of you is this?

 

 

Big Fat Sam

Formerly butters

2 minutes ago

New #15,558

My kids are in floods of tears here, inconsolable.

[Captain Turdseye]

Big Fat Sam

Formerly butters

1 minute ago

New #15,558

My kids are in floods of tears here, inconsolable.

[liverpoolsno9]

The bitterness is only gonna get worse if the unthinkable happens. If we did win it the hatred from them is gonna be turned up a few notches. 

 

mellowblue

Player Valuation: £60m

 

Forum Supporter

38 minutes ago

#13,932

Have they apologized for Heysel yet ? No..

 

Like

[Leyton388]

Everton dad's tonight

 

[Leyton388]

Blueshite hardman right here.

Frank1981

Player Valuation: Free Transfer

2 minutes ago

New #13,970

 Inappropriate Language

I shouted at the top of my voice in a fit of phelgm ridden rage when I saw it was 2-1, so loud the matey from the flat next door knocked on my door, he asked if everything was OK, I told him to [Poor language removed] off and slammed the door in his face.

I really need to sort my [Poor language removed] out starting with and apology to matey, then laying off the footy for a bit