nogs

Spot on mate couldn't agree more

It hasn't - what figures are you looking at?

So where do you get this impression that it's 'us v them' in the Everton backroom, Moyes and his players versus the 'power suits', the former struggling endlessly to overcome the obstacles put in their way by their masters? Is that really how you think it is? Hasn't Moyes himself come out and said what a great, supportive chairman Kenwright is, how his relationship with his boss has been one of the major factors in him staying at Everton and in the team's rise up the Premier League? Do you suddenly not trust 'magician' Moyes's point of view on that, or do you just conveniently chose to forget that your idol is one of Kenwright's most vocal supporters at the club, and happens to be the manager? All this 'in spite of Kenwright' stuff is nonsense - give me one concrete example where a decision Kenwright has taken has seriously damaged the progress of the club on the pitch, instead of talking vaguely about murky goings on behind the scenes.

Can't see nothing about it

Christ - most of those responses make me really depressed to be an Everton fan, I couldn't agree less with the majority of them and the sheer pigheaded tone of them makes me genuinely angry. There's lots of talk about Maddock's 'lack of research', but then all sorts of people making totally unsubstantiated claims about levels of debt, club being 'technically insolvent', 'two thirds of prem teams being in a better financial state than us' - one joker even says something along the lines of 'you should read the Everton forums to see the truth of why we're so angry with Kenwright', as if all the overinflated opinion spouted on places like this should be taken as gospel! And yeah, before anyone starts, this is just my opinion, but if i'm really in a minority among blues (which now appears i am) in thinking Kenwright hasn't done a bad job for the club, then bollox to you, i'm gonna shout even louder. I've said I'm against Kirkby and agree with the criticism of Kenwirght for that, BUT if you can't see the connection between the steady, stable, gradual if unspectacular progress the club has made behind the scenes under Kenwright with the undoubted over-achieving it has done on the pitch under Moyes, quite frankly you don't know what you're talking about

No come on - it's a piece of piss to keep knocking things down, a lot harder to build them - what's your blueprint for success?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/jun/03/english-premier-league-debt Summary of EPL clubs' accounts to end of May 2008. I know the situation is a year out of date, but let's look at the facts. We have the eighth biggest turnover in the Premier League, like everyone else, we're trailing the 'Big Four' who dominate trophies and revenues by a mile. But out of those that turned over more than us, Newcastle have been relegated and Pompey, despite winning the FA Cup two seasons ago, now look favourites to follow them this season - I think we're all agreed we'd rather not be those two. Spurs are the fifth biggest earners in the league, but bar the League Cup, haven't done much on the pitch to show for it - they're not in Europe again this season afterall. Same goes for Man City. So in terms of 'success' on the pitch equating with earning potential, it's clearly us, Spurs, Villa and Man City making up the chasing pack behind the big four - pretty much as we knew, then. In terms of debt - we have the fourth lowest debt in the Premier League. So why do people keep talking about our 'dire' financial situation? Chelsea, Fulham and now of course Man City are the only clubs in the league with interest-free loans from big-money investors - what you would call hard cash injection. But look at the losses Chelsea and City are making (City will no doubt turnover more this year with all the interest their new owner brings, but without European football they will still make a substantial loss.) And more to the point, look at the losses, driven by interest repayments, Manure are making. I think Hafnia suggested that relegation would see us go into financial meltdown. What would happen to Man united - and what might happen to Liverpool in the more immediate future (hopefully) if they don't qualify for the Champions League? How long will Abromovich put up with not winning the Champions League before he looks to recoup the £700m he's put into the club? The point I'm trying to make is this - there's a fine balance in achieving success on the field and overstretching yourself to achieve it. Leeds have learnt it to their cost, Liverpool could do if they don't qualify for the CL this season, coz Hicks and Gillet will not be able to finance £280m of debt. Chelsea, Man City, even Man United are playing a dangerous game be running at a financial loss in order to achieve success - you can't do that forever. In purely financial terms, we are a very prudently run club, so to get back to the topic, it is unfair to criticse Kenwright for that. We have had to take drastic action to cut the spiralling debt that had us by the balls in the 90s - tight wage structure, sales of assets, raising transfer funds through sales of players etc. Whatever Hafnia says, we've done this pretty well - bringing players like Arteta, Pienaar, Yakubu, Saha, Jagielka, Cahill, Fellaini, Bilyaletdinov, Baines and Heitinga to the club has made us much stronger than we would ever have been by keeping Rooney and Lescott. I'm not for a moment saying we should be thankful and accept what we've got - I want us to be the best too, I just happen to think we've got a pretty good platform for going forward and i don't see the point of exaggerating to leverage a point by talking about us being relegated or heading for financial turmoil when neither is on the cards. It isn't cash we're crying out for, it's a better business brain, someone who can see a way of increasing turnover steadily so we can clear the last of the debt and start paying more in wages and transfer fees. And let's be honest - as good as some of Moyes's signings have been, he hasn't used all the money at his disposal that wisely - look at Koldrup, Beattie, Johnson etc. We got a real lesson in how to spend money by Benfica - they've had their financial problems, but look at the team Jesus has built on a relative shoe string. If we could just get our head round a stadium plan that would boost reveunue by £20-£30m a year, keeping debt manageable while maintaining success on the pitch so we could attract further investment, loosening the wage structure and freeing ourselves from the sell-to-buy cycle, I can see it being us, Villa and Spurs competing for the title in five years. Sounds dead easy...

I have to say I find all of this really, really depressing - football fans reduced to talking about 'success' as selling their club to the highest bidder, because that's what most of the people on here wanting Kenwright out are doing, when it boils down to it. You can talk about it being the realities of the modern game all you want, but it's bollox. I can name one football club in England who can currently claim any kind of 'success' on the back of a mega-money buy-out - Chelsea. The Glazers' take over at Manure hardly counts, they were already the most successful club in the country having gradually built an enormous global brand over 30 or 40 years. Man City may go on to enjoy huge success, but who knows - they've thrown money all over the place before, and ended up in the third tier. Out of all the others - Liverpool, Newcastle, Portsmouth, QPR, West Ham, Fulham, they've achieved eff all (When Gillett & Hicks took over the shite, btw, their debts were valued at £250m - how high are ours?). Even Aston Villa, one of the only teams I can think of who can be really pleased with the guy who has taken them over, are not achieved any more than us. And who knows what will happen to Chelski when the Russian takes his ball home. It makes me laugh that you're all slagging off a journalist for standing up for Kenwright when most of you are just blindly following the line the media peddles day in, day out - in football, money = success. Where's the evidence? In the Premier League era, the title has only been won three times by teams who aren't Manure or Arsenal, and yes, both Blackburn and Chelsea pretty much bought the title following sudden, rapid investment. But 3 out of 17 titles is hardly a fabulous ratio. On the other hand, Manure, and to a lesser extent Arsenal, have followed a different model - I'm not disputing money has played a part, but there's been no sugar daddy's, no headline-grabbing takeovers, no putting backroom matters before football. And that's the secret - both clubs have put football first, picked managers with a vision, backed them to deliver on their promises, and managed to turn on-field success into off-field commercial success which generates enough cash from the footballing brand to make success self-perpetuating. That is the model that works in English football, end of. What infuriates me is how few people give Kenwright credit for trying to follow this model. Clearly he hasn't been as successful at it as, say Martin Edwards or David Dein. He'd probably hold his hand up and admit he's not the businessman those two are, and yes he has made some expensive mistakes. But he has taken us from relegation fodder to a team people, maybe with a hint of surprise in their voice, now recognise as a force in English football again. It took Man Utd nearly 20 years from their lowest point in the 70s to winning a title again. We've had less than a decade since we were on everyone's favourite for the drop list year in, year out. The first part of the mission has been accomplished - we're back somewhere in the vicinity of where a club which is one of the 25 richest in the world should be. I'm not necessarily saying Kenwright is the right man to lead us through the next phase of our journey back to the top. Given that he isn't, by his own admission, the smoothest of operators in the commercial world, and therefore hasn't done enough to guild Everton FC back up into a brand which will attract investment, probably not. But some of you sound dangerously close to calling on him to sell up to the first shiek or oligarch who rolls up with enough gold, and if that's how you are thinking, I'd politely ask you to remove your heads from your backsides and have a good look at how football really works. Kenwright has said he'll only sell to the right man - and 99% of rich men who want to invest in a football club are not the right man for Everton FC. Why? Because they want their club to be a plaything, they want it to help boost their own profile, inflate their own ego - in other words, its not the club that bothers them, its how it reflects on them. What we want is someone who is absolutely committed, heart and soul, to making Everton FC the best club in the world - talk about what Nil satis nisi optimum means, then that's it, we want the best. That is a long, hard, even selfless project, and not one we want some super-rich ego anywhere near. It will take a special kind of person to take the club to the next stage, the stage we as fans expect, and they're not going to come along very often. In the meantime, I say be patient. Kenwright might not be the saviour but he has given us steady progress over the last decade, so i don't really see what everyone's moaning about.

Can we pack up for the season now? Jesus, that's Arteta, Jags and Anichebe all suffering complications, what the hell is going on for us? I'd be surprised if we any of them are back by the time Yak, Yobo and Pienaar disappear for the African Nations (assuming Pienaar is fit). We're screwed. On the other hand, if we beat West Ham tomorrow, amazingly we'll be only six points of fifth having played a game less than Villa... hope springs etenal and all that

I think we should thank Benfica coz they have shown in the coldest light possible where we are simply not good enough to be considering ourselves a top team - we can't pass and the end product when we get into the final third is dreadful. There were other deficiencies last night - I thought Rodwell had a decent game but at 18 he is never going to protect the back four like Carsley and Neville, its unfair to expect it (any coincidence we've started the ast two seasons dreadfully having sold/lost to injury those two, by the way?). Yobo and Distin as a centre back pairing is not in the same league as Jags and Lescott but there's not much we can do about that now, especially with Heitinga and Neill not eligible in Europe. We're low on confidence and jittery in defence, it was blatantly obvious in the second half they were going to score. But, lack of form defensively aside, if we could have kept possession and delivered balls into the box half as well as them, we'd have got something out of the game. In my opinion, there's no point saying we're struggling right now coz we're leaking goals - I've always had a problem with the play-for-clean-sheets, squeeze-a-narrow-victory approach Moyes takes, because football is ultimately about scoring goals, and to do that you need to be able to keep possession and create chances with good passing. When you come up against a proper football side like Benfica - or, for that matter, Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea - you can try keeping it tight all you like, but they will pass and move and probe for openings until something drops in their favour, and if you can't match them in terms of passing and making space and creating chances, you're not gonna win. Which is why our record is so shit against the top teams. Maybe our players just aren't as good as theirs, maybe a fit Arteta, Pienaar, Yak and Saha in the team and we'd have players with the technical ability to match the best. But watching us hoof the ball around, misplace simple passes, and constantly hit the first defender with crosses all last night wound me up so effing much coz that is the whole point of football for christ's sake - if you can't pass, why are you a professional footballer?! I look at players like Baines and Bily, who we all know have ability in their left feet - why were their crosses so dismal last night then? Where's the left foot Bily had when he created six goals in his first three games, or whatever it was? Why can Fellaini kill a ball dead with seemingly any part of his body, turn, use his feet to get out of tight situations, but then not make a 20 yard pass accurately? And the same goes for Rodwell, whose passing seems to be deteriorating. What are these young players being taught in training? Do we ever practice one-touch, pass-and-move, five-a-side style football? Or is it all just the big hoof, fight for the scraps, get some part of you body on it and hope? Do we ever practice delivery into the box with moving and dead balls? Because at the moment it really doesn't look like we do. We've got quite a young squad and I think our trouble is they're not being taught to play football the right way. Teams like Benfica will always teach us a lesson until someone wakes up and realises we've gotta learn how to pass as well.

I dunno what to make of this one, on the one hand they showed at their place how much quality they've got going forward, especially from their Argentine contingent. On the other, in the first half we looked like two very evenly matched teams, and the second half disaster could be explained away by having two very inexperienced full-backs being given a real roasting by two quality up-and-coming south american wingers (actually Coleman didn't do too bad against Ramires, but i think poor Dan Gosling will probably have nightmares about Angel Di Maria for the rest of his career). I have a feeling if we really get about them early on they won't fancy it much. I don't care if Hibbo never makes it past the half way line all night, just stand on Di Maria's toes and frighten hell out of him every time ball goes near him. Baines has just gotta be careful he doesn't stray forward and give Ramires space to run into. I hope Yobo and Distin should be good enough to handle Saviola and Cardozo - Cardozo is simply a poacher, mark him carefully enough and you should cut out his threat, Saviola is much classier but again I don't think he'll fancy it much in the cold if we put the boot in a couple of times. Bit concerned about whether Rodwell is experienced enough up against Aimar - we could definitely use Neville in there for that job, it'll be a test for Jack. Saying all that about defending, i wanna see us go 4-4-2, hopefully with Louis fit to partner the Yak up front, play at a high tempo from the off and give plenty of the ball to the front two. As much as we need the back four to be on top form, I think this will be won in midfield - we need Felli to really step up and turn some promising recent form into a MOM display playing box to box,getting back and defending and also keeping up with play to support the front two. I think we'll have to play Cahill out of position on the right again, which will give us little outlet wide up there, so we're gonna need Bily on top form to give us some width on the left. Not gonna be easy, but I reckon Howard, Hibbo, Distin, Yobo, Baines, Cahill, Rodwell, Felli, Billy, Yak, Saha/Jo, 2-1 us, Yak and Bily

Spot on - the Arsenal game excepted, we should have been licking our lips at the last eight fixtures, it's about as easy a run of games you're ever likely to get in the Premiership. Even with our injury list, we should be a minimum six points better off than we are now, we'd be sat nicely on the shoulders of the top teams, ready to make a charge once we start to get bodies back. Not to put to fine a point on it, we've fucked up big time. We're now gonna have to get results in a lot of very difficult games if we wanna get anywhere near the top six, and like Bill I don't reckon we look capable at the moment.

When did I mention Steve Round? Mick rathbone himself said that if you keep getting similar injuries in a squad over a sustained period of time, there comes a point when you've got to start wondering if its more than bad luck. Some of us are simply raising the question of whether that point has now been reached, so you can shove your smarmy 'thinking mans forum' b@llox where the sun don't shine!

They're mostly knee injuries, aren't they? Arteta, Jags, Neville, Vaughan, Pienaar, Anichebe - that's half of all the current injuries are pretty similar. Ok, I know most of them happened in matches, a couple as the result of pretty horrible challenges, but can this really just be bad luck? Is there something in our training that is making the players' knee joints weaker than they should be? If the muscles immediately above and below aren't strong enough, it can easily cause the knee joint to 'wobble', which is where you get your ligament and cartilage injuries coming in. I dunno, I'm no doctor but I hope it's something the club are looking into coz its ruining us at the moment.

To a certain extent I sympathise with Moyes's frustrations - I think every Everton fan shares them - but do we really want the manager coming out time and time again moaning about injuries/lack of cash? Probably more than any manager in the league bar Ferguson, Moyes seems to set the tone for how we play - when his head isn't right, when his head drops and he only seems to talk about the negative things (like start of last season with his contract saga), we play shite. When he's up for the fight and gets the bit between the teeth, we look a different side and capable of upsetting any kind of odds. I know our injury situation is terrible at the moment, but I'm sick of Moyes bleating on about it to be honest. His pre-match press conferences seem to just be him constantly seeting out his stall of excuses in preparation for a poor result - it sends totally the wrong message out to the team, no wonder we look 'soft-centred' when our supposedly inspirational manager is writing us off all the time! Come on Davey lad, get your head up and start fighting again, we're Everton ffs, the last couple of weeks we look like a team that has given up already! As for the injuries... I read somewhere a couple of weeks ago Mick Rathbone saying if this was a re-current problem we'd have to start looking at whether our training methods were contributing at all, but in hi opinion it was just bad luck. Well how many times does it have to recur before you start to think it's a problem?! I remember years ago talking to a red who said there was a widely-held belief at Anfield during Souness's time in charge that his training methods were overly physical and players kept dropping like flies as a result. I think the Everton backroom staff have to start looking seriously whether this is a possible cause of our problems and try changing something quick, coz we can't keep going like this.

That's what I'm so angry about, we've played two real top quality teams so far this season and we've been embarrassed in both games. The last time I felt so sick watching us was when we self-destructed in Bucharest, and I'm afraid to say this season just feels like that all over again. Our heads just dropped second half, no spirit, no guts, and no ability whatsoever. And for the record I don't think I've ever seen a player have a worse game in an Everton shirt than Fellaini tonight - I usually defend him but he can fuck off, if i see his stupid useless afro again i might be forced to shove it right up his useless arse, still attached to his fucking head. Couldn't make his passing any worse. On a more measured note, I just don't get it. 6, 8, 10 months ago the odds were stacked right against us injury wise, yet it galvanised us, we were holding our own against and beating the best in the Premiership, we looked a proper team. Now we look like a bunch of strangers - where's the spirit gone? Yeah I know it was a scratch defence, but jesus, Benfica must have thought Christmas had come early the way we gifted them their goals second half, EVERY one was down to basic errors from us? Why? What's going wrong, why has the mentality of the whole team changed all of a sudden? And where's the leadership from senior players? (although I guess you could only call Yak, Cahill, Howard and Hibbo 'senior' tonight...) Moyes has got a massive, massive job on his hands - by the time Benfica come to ours, we could easily be out the Carling Cup and a further 4 or 6 places adrift in the Premiership, and we'll be all but playing for our season. I hope he goes mental and scares the crap out of them so they never dream of playing like that again, but he looked like he couldn't be arsed. In summary, angry and worried.

Who knows what he thinks sometimes. He and the team has lost the plot at the moment - not a single one of them can pass a ball to a blue shirt, and that's nothing to do with injuries. Worried what Bolton are gonna do to us now, there's no fight there

Anyone - he's looked totally out of his depth, at least Hibbert would kick Di Maria about a bit. Stick Fellaine centre half, gotta be better than the shower of shite he's looked in centre mid Jeez... going three up front? 6-0 at least

Fuck this... I don't mind losing, but conceding three in six minutes in unforgivable, makeshift defence or not. Gosling has been torn to shreds all game, i don't care how, but Moyes had to see that and change it

Scrap that... defence is all over the place, but what do you ex[ect with what we've got to chose from? Dismal

Come on blue boys, there's something in this for us despite all the injuries. Wanna see Bily showing for the ball more, he's our creative spark but he's drifting in and out, and need Saha on for Jo, who i think was garbage first half. Just worried about the make-shift defence, their forwards are class, but don't rate them at the back. We'd do these no problem with a full team out

Commentators pissing me off - one thinks Arteta signed for us 'in the last year or so', Mustoe saying he can't see anyone investing in us so there's nowhere else we can go! EFC off!

Oh my lord just realised Baines is out - Coleman on debut up against Ramires? What have we done to deserve this?! Oh and then there's Di Maria v Gosling...

I was gonna say Iraqgoals is knackered, anyone else got any links, but i dont think i wanna bother now

I hate to be negative (it is a rarity for me) but i have a horrible feeling we're screwed tonight. We're travelling with one recognised centre back, and if Moyes wants to stick to 4-5-1, he'll either have to start Wallace (surely not an option) or play Jo, Saha, Yakubu or Agard out of position out wide. I know we were short at BATE, but Benfica is a very different proposition. I hope I'm wrong, but at this stage I'd be delighted with a draw