Revolt is in the air at Goodison Park as players continue to be sold to repay debts with no sign of major investment
A house divided against itself cannot stand, to quote Abraham Lincoln, but that destabilising position is where Everton find themselves.
At 2pm on Saturday, supporters angered at the club's failure to attract new investment will march on Goodison Park. Others may protest against the protesters. Inside the stadium, an owner looking to sell will hear calls for his head while his manager prepares for the third game of an already trying season with one fit forward available, a man who has never appeared in the Premier League and was recently deemed unsuitable by Leicester City. It is a volatile mix.
The protest march has been organised by the Blue Union, a coalition of Everton supporters' groups that has gained rapid momentum since its creation last month and whose first public meeting attracted hundreds to the Casa last Saturday. Many more were locked outside.
"The general feeling is that the club is stagnating, not progressing," says Dave Kelly, the chair of the Blue Union. "We are opposed to the stagnation of the club and we want to campaign on issues, not personalities."
A third year without a net spend on new players has proved the tipping point for many, with David Moyes raising �21m through sales in 2011 yet bringing in only Royston Drenthe and Denis Stracqualursi, the aforementioned striker, on loan. The deadline day departure of Mikel Arteta to Arsenal for �10m exacerbated frustration around a club with a turnover of �79m in 2010, yet one that has been repaying debt all year and has had its overdraft capped at �25m by Barclays.
"Let's be clear about Mikel," Moyes says. "I make the decisions here, so it was my decision that the player went. It wasn't the chairman telling me I have to sell the player or anything like that. Mikel wanted to go and we had turned down a chance to sell him last year.
"I didn't sell him last year and said to him that I would get him a team that would challenge for the Champions League. We didn't do that and I owed it to him to give him the opportunity to play in the Champions League."
Moyes went golfing in Scotland after selling Arteta, Jermaine Beckford and Yakubu Ayegbeni on deadline day. "It was difficult for a couple of days afterwards because reality hits home," he admits. "I cleared my head and then came back to work." The Everton manager rebuts the suggestion he was escaping a stagnant club, however.
"I don't know whether stagnation is the word," he says. "In the 10 years I have been here we have finished in the top 10 seven times. Now if people actually think Everton should be doing much better than that, they need to look at things. Those positions at the minute for Everton are terrific. If you put it into perspective, what we have had over the last 10 years has not been outrageously bad.
"Of course we want to be top of the league and winning cups, but at our club, we have got a level of finances, wages we can pay and stuff that we can do. We try and then get the best team and the best performances we can out of the players we have got. The word I always use is progress. We have made progress over the years."
The Blue Union has no argument with Moyes; indeed it insists there is a "total misconception" about the organisation's motives, mainly that it exists purely to remove Bill Kenwright from the club where he has been the majority shareholder since 1999.
"The Blue Union's aims and objectives are the same as the owner: we want the club to attract new investment," Kelly explains. "We don't want it sold to anybody. We are well aware there have been a lot of unmitigated disasters and that you should be careful what you wish for. We all wish for that billionaire Evertonian but he is not out there and we need another strategy. We have no longer got the option of doing nothing."
Kelly has called on Kenwright to appoint an independent body to search for the investment he has been unable to deliver. "If you were selling your house you would use the expertise of an estate agent and pay the professional a fee on completion," he says.
"Liverpool Football Club, in conjunction with the banks, appointed Martin Broughton with the sole remit of finding a buyer and he achieved that. I think that is a viable alternative to sitting here waiting for Bill to sell up."
But unlike Liverpool under Tom Hicks and George Gillett, Everton are not being taken to the high court by the banks, nor does it have the global attraction of their local rival.
"Most Premier League clubs have been taken over or attracted new investment in the last 10 to 12 years. Everton are clearly doing something wrong," says the Blue Union chairman.
"Everton may not be a global brand but they must have a big presence in Asia or Chang [the Thai brewers] would not see the benefits of sponsoring us. The Premier League is a global brand. Manchester City were not a global brand a few years ago but they are now. It is about marketing the club in a positive fashion. That is the crux of the matter."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/sep/09/everton-fans-new-owner
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