EVERTON owner Bill Kenwright yesterday moved to calm worries over the club’s summer of discontent – but admitted the Merseysiders do not have the money to break into the top four.
Kenwright’s club have been rocked by a variety of problems since they achieved fifth place in the Barclays Premier League last term, and they intensified yesterday when the government announced the Kirkby stadium plan would be called in for a public inquiry.
Everton have lost their chief executive Keith Wyness, suffered speculation that manager David Moyes may quit while there has been growing doubts over Kenwright’s continued involvement at Goodison Park.
Couple all that to a continued failure to pull off any transfer deals during the summer, and Kenwright felt the need to calm troubled waters.
Kenwright said: “The situation (over ownership) has not changed since day one. Certainly not for the last five years, I have been saying it at every annual general meeting since.
“We are looking for investment, we always have been and we always will be and that continues.
“I do look at the clubs that have the Champions League status that brings in millions and have the multi, multi, multi-millionaires and the billionaires in them. And I think that is probably what it takes now to get a hugely successful football club.
“There is a part of me that hopes that is not true, of course there is and there always will be that feeling inside me.
“But if you look at that top four and the consistency of the top four, there is a lot of money floating around them and we at Everton do not have that money.”
The inevitable delay in the building of a new stadium will not shake the chairman’s belief that Everton have to leave Goodison Park.
Kenwright said: “A ground move is certainly crucial to the economic future of Everton, I have said it a million times that I love Goodison Park but we have to move for economic and financial reasons.
“We have to get more income into the club to begin to compete with those clubs I have been talking about.
“That is the reason we have been contemplating it and the truth is we have had enormous support from Knowsley (Council), from Tesco, and we have not had that from Liverpool (Council). That is the bottom line of it.”
He also dismissed talk of Moyes’s departure, with the manager still expecting to sign a new contract before the season starts.
But Kenwright claims he is more concerned about the stagnant transfer market where Everton are concerned.
Kenwright said: “All that talk last week about David Moyes, betting suspended on him going and quitting. I’m amazed.
“I am on the phone to him all the time and you wonder where all this comes from.
“It all seemed to come from the fact that we lost a game in America last week, that’s all. Of course no-one is a good loser at Everton, we never want to lose.
“The real problem this close season is that apart from Steven Pienaar we actually have not signed any new players.
“I just want to pull off one deal, just one of the transfers we have been chasing for the last six weeks. That would be a start, and then the next one, and next one.
“But there are four, five or even six deals out there at the moment that we are hourly trying to catch.”
