Everton Football Club is long on history but short on cash. Chief executive Keith Wyness tells Neil Tague about the club's plans at home and abroad
Is this "stick or twist" time for Everton FC? Under the guidance of David Moyes, the team has performed well for most of the last five years and will again compete in Europe this season. The club has huge support and rich traditions. But it hasn't looked like winning a trophy in years.Few pundits expect clubs from outside the ruling hegemony of Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool to challenge for honours. And with major investment washing into Aston Villa, Newcastle United and Manchester City, even keeping its position among the best of the rest could be a challenge for Everton.
"The Premiership is a very, very different place to what it was even a year ago," says Everton chief executive Keith Wyness, whose arrival in 2004 ushered in a period of stability following a period beset by boardroom squabbles.
"We've got a stable club," he says. "We've just invested £314m in training facilities that will tie the Academy to the senior training ground.
We've finished an average of seventh in the toughest league in the world over the last few years and have the most valuable squad in the club's history. We're an attractive investment.
"There have been talks but nothing has materialised. Bill Kenwright (Everton's chairman) has always said he'll step aside, but it has to be the right deal for the club. The game is changing and Everton can't compete without additional funding from some source."
It may not have grabbed the headlines like the super-charged, highly leveraged deals that took Manchester United and Liverpool into American hands, but the sale in 2006 of Paul Gregg's 23 per cent stake in Everton FC to Robert Earl's BCR Sports just might herald big things overseas for the Toffees.
"Robert's contact list and influence is fantastic. We have serious long-term strategies to market Everton in the US and he can help us achieve that," says Wyness.
"Clubs have never been able to capitalise on the international market," says Wyness. "Even Man United and Chelsea are unable to produce meaningful revenue streams. They can sell shirts, but you can't build a future on shirts. What are Everton's strengths? Developing young talent is a key area and that's at the heart of this."
A coaching guide - The Everton Way - has been filmed at its academy during the last two years aimed at developing players from six-years-old through to 16. "It's the path that Wayne Rooney followed," says Wyness, and has now been made available to coaches and young players via the internet. "Effectively, we're giving away the crown jewels, in terms of sharing knowledge and information," he says. "It's had a massive response in the US and Canada, where we're launching an X-Factor style project called Soccer Dreams. We're taking it to China. It offers a day-to-day meaningful contact with Everton for players or coaches.
Not long ago Everton's marketing and merchandising was regarded as a joke.
It sounds ridiculous to hear that they can better United, past masters of merchandising, overseas. Things have changed, says Wyness.
"We've changed the whole commercial team in the last three years.
Now I'd put us up there with anyone," he says. "But the international investment is about explaining what Everton stands for: fair play, humour, giving something back to the game. We have a brand identity. I believe that no other Premiership club gives people overseas a reason to support them. "People can follow Man United or Chelsea because they win trophies but supporting Everton says something about you. If you like, it's a corporate social responsibility issue for a long-term benefit."
At Everton, you have to know your history. The club has won more League titles than any other bar Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal.
And Goodison Park, the club's home since 1892, is steeped in history.
It still has the gables designed by Archibald Leitch, the doyen of football stadium architecture. It has a church. And once upon a time, Goodison was the first English ground to be two-tiered all the way round. It hosted a semi-final in the 1966 World Cup.
But it has only 11 hospitality boxes. Birmingham City, a club that regards Premiership survival as a victory, has more boxes than Everton and Liverpool put together.
"We need to add to our revenue streams, everybody can see that - it's not about handing over the ground to the prawn sandwich brigade," says Wyness. "The Premiership's getting tougher by the year and if you want to stay at the top end you have to address these things."
And so to the thorny issue of stadium relocation. Attempts by previous Everton regimes to move the club usually resulted in embarrassment all round. But none of them involved the all-powerful Tesco, which wants to lead a retail-led stadium development in Kirkby town centre. Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council is unsurprisingly desperate to attract a Premiership club.
There is some resistance from supporters, who believe that Everton should not play outside the city in the sort of insipid, soulless bowl now inhabited by Bolton Wanderers, Middlesbrough, Derby County et al.
Wyness says: "It will be a new stadium with a nod to the past. Atmosphere and a sense of place are key to Goodison and we want to take that with us.
There will be four separate areas rather than a bowl-type stadium." The club has engaged Scottish stadium specialist Barr and architecture firm KCC.
Everton will own the new stadium and Wyness claims the club will have an additional £310m for transfers each year. "The essence of the scheme is that it is a retail-led redevelopment of Kirkby town centre. Of the increase in property values, or planning gain, a large portion will come to Everton. The concept of planning gain is the only way we can afford a new stadium project," he says.
Redeveloping Goodison is pretty much a non-starter: even if Liverpool City Council would allow a bigger ground, the club simply doesn't have the cash. "We've worked with Liverpool City Council for 18 months and have been unable to come up with anything that comes close to the Kirkby proposals," he says. "We cannot find a way to deliver redevelopment without knocking down streets and we can't afford to do that."
The club launched a ballot of supporters in July 2007 on the plans - with over 30,000 season ticket holders and members consulted. "We'll look at what it tells us," Wyness says before adding: "ultimately it's a board decision".
Does he think the fans are being won round? "I think there is a vocal minority that is opposed to moving and I understand their feelings.
It's always difficult to move from your spiritual home. But I've got to deal with the reality of our situation and that reality says that in ten years' time Goodison may not get a safety certificate.
This magazine has often chided football business as operating on the economics of the madhouse. No matter how much you spend, there can still only be one League champion, after all.
Wyness errs on the side of caution, although he reckons that the current primacy of English football is secure: "Maybe too much is being paid for clubs - there will be winners and losers. It reminds me of the dawn of internet advertising in the uncertainty of values. But the Premiership will keep its appeal. It's past the tipping point and I think it will remain more popular than (Italian and Spanish equivalents) Serie A and La Liga." He also argues convincingly - if unsurprisingly - in favour of a more generous distribution of the TV money, although some have argued that the big clubs will try to break away to negotiate their own deals, as the likes of Barcelona do.
"I believe collective bargaining will stay, and I feel it has to," he says. "We've argued consistently that there is a case for doing away with merit payments, where clubs earn more each time they're televised. When the rule first came in, nobody foresaw the impact of Champions League money for top clubs and now it's just helping to increase the gap.
"Maintaining the uncertainty of outcome is crucial to the future success of the Premiership and the bigger clubs have a duty to do their bit - for their own good as much as anybody else's."
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