Following on from my ridiculously early 2010/11 Premier League preview of three weeks ago (which incidentally I see no reason to change, as very little has happened in the way of significant transfers) I thought I would share with you the latest cock up perpetrated by the commercial management of my beloved Everton FC.
Away from matters on the pitch, there is a long history of perceived complacency and/or managerial ineptitude at Everton going back to the sale of the club by John Moores to the Philip Carter regime in the late 70s, but that's another story.
The current board is headed by Blue Bill Kenwright, who to outsiders appears to be the model owner in an age of American chancers and dubious billionaires of all nationalities. After all, here is a man who actually grew up near to and has always supported the club he now owns. A traditional supporter made good who buys the club he supported as a boy. I can see why a lot of Man Utd & Liverpool fans in particular may well wish for their owners to be cut from the same cloth. Indeed, much as us impoverished Bluenoses would love to be able to throw around the cash of a Man City or a Chelsea, we are well aware that in this day and age you have to be very careful what you wish for, and a lot of us are coming to accept that the way our club is owned may well be preferable in the long run.
So, what's my beef you may well ask? It has become increasingly apparent over the last few years that Blue Bill employs people to play with smoke and mirrors while leaving his image untarnished, or so he would hope. First there was the Kings Dock fiasco, where, if the will had been there, we would now be playing in the best stadium in the North West - not the biggest, but the best. Who knows where that may have lead? More recently there was the Tescodrome scheme, which thankfully came to nothing. The fans were originally hoodwinked into thinking we were getting a stadium for "next to nothing" as part of "the deal of the century" with Tesco. It turns out it would have cost us a shedload of money - nobody outside of the board is privy to the figures, but guesstimates go up to £150 million, three times what was needed to kick start the unfulfilled giant missed opportunity that was Kings Dock.
The latest strange goings on, although peanuts in comparison with the above two examples, is the Dan Gosling saga. Here is a promising squad player, already famed amongst the faithful for his winner against L****pool in the cup in 2009, who the club apparently "forgot" to give a written contract offer to by a well known deadline, thereby allowing him to become a free agent. He became a Newcastle player a couple of weeks ago. Numerous rumours have been flying around, the most plausible being that as the player was only half way through a recovery program from a serious knee injury, the contract was deliberately not offered, as it could be that the club had been advised that he may never properly recuperate. However, Newcastle are allegedly paying him £25000 per week when he is not expected to be able to kick a ball until January - surely not even Newcastle would be that stupid to pay a player around £600000 knowing that he may never play again? Mind you, this is Newcastle we're talking about, so who knows!
Yesterday Gosling's agent David Hodgson was all over the media claiming amongst other things that the injury was indeed the reason behind the non-appearance of a new contract, and today the club have issued a statement:
In the article, Mr David Hodgson suggested that not only did this Club not wish to extend Mr Gosling's stay at Goodison Park but that it had been deliberately tardy with regard to the formal offer of a new contract, presuming that an injury sustained by the player during the course of last season was of such a serious nature it would prevent him from signing for another club.
Both claims are ludicrous, totally without substance and grossly misleading
There follows a lengthy discourse on how a verbal offer or offers were made, stuff about a gentleman's agreement, how the player did not indicate he wanted to leave, etc etc, and the impression is given that the agent engineered the whole situation.
If the allegation that the injury was the reason no written contract was offered is "ludicrous" and the player did not ask to leave, nor did the club want to sell him, then by implication the club are saying that they did indeed forget to offer a written contract in time, what other reson could there have been? Had a proper contract been offered by the deadline a minimal fee set by a tribunal could have been obtained if the player or club wanted out - surely better than nothing given the continually parlous state of Everton's finances? Could the club really have forgotten to offer a written contract in time, something that must be a routine day to day matter in the running of a football club? I'm afraid that as this is Everton, there's a 50/50 chance they probably could!
The truth lies probably somewhere between the points of view of the agent (incidentally a former L****pool player) and the club, and the club appear to be trying to spin their way out of it, but by so doing are shooting themselves in the foot. Although a fairly minor incident in the grand scheme of things this is sadly symptomatic of the smoke and mirrors approach to public relations employed by our lovable chairman and his cronies.
In spite of all the above, I would still rather have Blue Bill as owner/chairman than some anonymous oil sheik who could lose interst at any time and leave us well and truly shafted, or the Waldorf & Statler/the Glazers model where someone with enough clout can seemingly buy a multi-million pound business without actually risking any of their own money thus heaping vast debt on their respective new toys. I just wish my club was run a bit more efficiently and with a good deal more transparency.
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Apparently Spurs are interested in occupying the Olympic stadium after the 2012 games. I'll bet Spurs fans are not exactly over-keen on the idea of going to the East End (where they are loved to bits I've no doubt) to watch home games! I thought they were building a new ground in the shadow of WHL anyway? Money to burn these fancy Cockernee types....
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