A crowd of drunken, knobhead Evertonians leaving The Tesco Arena, Kirkby, on one of the fine Merseyrail trains which run to a timetable of four per hour, four carriages per unit.
Less than reliable sources have mooted the imminent possibility of The Everton Football Club Company Limited being bought by a consortium of Indian businessmen, who had initially flown into Merseyside with the intention of buying up huge tracts of land (presumably with some intention of housing some of the overspill from Mumbai's 19,000,000-plus population), but were so taken with the professionalism, honesty and charm of the directors of The Everton Football Club Company Limited (a club which they had no previous knowledge of) that they immediately tabled a deal to purchase a controlling interest of the shareholding, with the apparent blessing of the chairman, Mr. William Kenwright CBE.
One of Mr. William Kenwright CBE's more endearing traits is his unerring ability to pull rabbits out of the hat, in the form of investors, whenever there is some disquiet among supporter's bodies (or even amongst his co-directors). Bizarrely, these "investors" have never manifested themselves at any other time during his "tireless 24/7 search" for investment; they only seem to appear when the waters around The Good Ship Everton become frighteningly choppy.
The timing of this story, coming as it does just days after the well-attended second meeting of The Blue Union coalition of supporters groups, is eerily reminiscent of many other occasions over the past ten years when salvation from the club's perilous financial meanderings have miraculously manifested themselves in the magical world of Mr. Kenwright, CBE.
So, in a "When Skies Are Grey" kind of way, I present "The Top Five Saviours of The Everton Football Club Company Limited", in no particular order.
2004; Mr. Paul Gregg, co-purchaser of the shares of Mr. Peter Johnson in The Everton Football Club Limited via the "True Blue Holdings" "investment vehicle", challenges his partner, Mr. William Kenwright CBE to find investment, fearing that his partner is rather amateurish in his approach. Mr. William Kenwright proves his partner wrong by unearthing the young Russian "zillionaire", Mr. Anton Zingarevich, as a willing investor in The Everton Football Club Company Limited.
"Anton is terrific", said Mr. William Kenwright CBE, "He has an encyclopedic knowledge of football and a real passion for the game". That may well have been the case; sadly, what young Mr. Zingarevich lacked was any actual money to make the "£20,000,000 shares deal" which Mr. Kenwright CBE announced in August, 2004. It is true that Anton's father, Mr. Boris Zingarevich, was absolutely stinking rich; however, it seemed that a little gentle probing on the part of Mr. Gregg found that young Anton was, in fact, using The Everton Football Club Company Limited "takeover" as some sort of "practical" exercise his Business Studies course.
The departure of Mr. Anton Zingarevich left The Everton Football Club Company Limited's plans for a move to a sensational new stadium on the iconic Liverpool waterfront, at King's Dock, in something if a mess. Mr. William Kenwright CBE had faithfully promised that the £30m required by the club to secure the site was "ringfenced". His partner in True Blue Holdings, Mr. Paul Gregg, knew otherwise, and feared that Mr. Kenwright, having promised the loyal supporters of The Everton Football Club Company Limited untold riches, was about to deliver nothing but ashes. In order to salvage the scheme from the jaw of imminent collapse, Mr. Gregg proposed a "reverse mortgage" scheme, in which the club would effectively be tenants of the new stadium but would have the opportunity to buy back their 50% equity stake at a later date.
However, this would have spelled the end of Mr. William Kenwright CBE on the board of The Everton Football Club Company Limited; and, obviously, the ghost of his Uncle Cyril, upon whose handlebars Mr. Kenwright used to sit on his way from Gateacre to the boys' pen, had to be appeased. So, Mr. Kenwright conjured up a whole cavalcade of fantasy investors with fantastic names, such as "Robert Steelhammer", "Guy de la Tour du Pin", and "Emily Willi", and introduced them as "The Fortress Sports Fund" to an incredulous fanbase. This band of marvellously generously-spirited individuals were going to invest, in three tranches, a total of £29.9m into the club (NB; £100K less than the "ringfenced" £30m), and the projected move to Kings Dock was seemingly in the bag, or as Mr. Kenwright put it; "an absolute possibility".
In order to prove that this was not just another serving of "pie in the sky", Mr. Kenwright introduced the public face of The Fortress Sports Fund, a Mr. Christopher Samuelson, at the club's Annual General Meeting. At first, things went well, as the "life-long blue" answered the gentle probing on financial matters of various interlocutors, until somebody threw the curveball; "Who scored the winning goal in the '66 FA Cup Final"?
Nervous laughter... a pregnant pause... finally broken by the "life-long Blue's" answer: "Erm... I was a student in Munich in '66". Cue uproar.
By this time Mr. Gregg had had enough of the amateurism, and sold his shares in True Blue Holdings; which, in what was no doubt a total coincidence, was just what Mr. William Kenwright CBE wanted, a fact later confirmed by the Head of Public Relations of The Everton Football Club Company Limited, Mr. Ian Ross. The "three tranches of investment" promised by Mr. William Kenwright CBE were never delivered; and he stated, apropos the "investment", that "only an idiot would read that as what I said", despite it being, erm, exactly what he said.
The King's Dock is now the home of the "Echo Arena".
Mr. Christopher Samuelson is still unaware as to who Mr. Derek Temple is.
The purchaser of Mr. Paul Gregg's shares was, apparently, a Mr. Robert Earl, the founder of the "Planet Hollywood" chain of restaurants. I use the word "apparently" as there appears to be a little mystique surrounding his ability to raise the capital to purchase the shareholding; there are all kinds of conspiracy theories about so-called "phantom investors" providing Mr. Earl with the capital; however, I am sure that this is mere tittle-tattle, as that should violate the rules surrounding the ownership of English Premier League football clubs.
Other than persuading a rather bewildered-looking Mr. Sylvester Stallone to parade onto the pitch at Goodison Park before enduring a piss-poor 1-1 draw versus The Reading Football Club, Mr. Earl does not appear to have provided a great deal in the way of investment in The Everton Football Club Company Limited. However, after Mr. William Kenwright CBE crying that he could not raise any credit for The Everton Football Club Company Limited in 2011, a company called Vibrac, based in the British Virgin Islands, then gave the club a £14m loan at an eye-watering 10% interest rate. Oddly enough the address for the offices of Vibrac is the same as that of BCR Sports, Mr. Robert Earl's investment vehicle, which owns a 23% stake in the shares of The Everton Football Club Company Limited. Again, a remarkable coincidence.
However, Mr. Earl did have something of a hand in the next timely salvation of The Everton Football Club Company Limited...
4. Destination Kirkby: Batman Lights, and everything. What's not to like?
December, 2006; The Everton Football Club Company Limited announces that the club had signed "an exclusive deal" to move to a new, 50,000-seater super-stadium, in Kirkby,a town of 40,000 inhabitants, outside the boundary of the City of Liverpool (or, as Mr. William Kenwright CBE put it, "the spiritual home of Z-Cars").
I cannot possibly begin to do credit to the shameful tactics which The Everton Football Club Company Limited, in league with Tesco plc, Knowsley Borough Council, a Member of Parliament or two, and The Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, resorted to in order to railroad this idiotic and completely unviable proposition past the objections of supporters, retailers and local residents alike.
Thank goodness that these gentlemen could, and did, seek to intervene; otherwise there should now be no Everton Football Club Company Limited. Take a leisurely stroll around this site, and marvel at the state of governance of a Premier League football club in the 21st century.
Keeping Everton In Our City
Gentlemen; you have my eternal gratitude.
5. Sir Philip Green
Erm... move along please, nothing here to see... move along... I SAID MOVE ALONG...
Do others marvel at the multiple salvation of The Everton Football Club Company Limited?
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