In a recent interview with Christian Purslow, Bill Kenwright claimed that if we had moved to a new stadium and were a little bit more “in the right place at the right time” then the Abu Dhabi group may have bought us instead of Man City. This is a bullet dodged, partly through our board’s incompetence and inability to move stadium, but we should all be sighing with relief.

Some don’t feel that way. Some think that the ones who bleat on about not wanting one of the world’s richest men in control of the Goodison train set are the morons. The argument is simple: money makes the football world go round. Flood a football club with money, put gold bidets in the stands, and “spend spend spend!” until your chequebook disintegrates and you will be given your choice of trophy forevermore. Do the opposite, and you will never get even a sniff of success.

But it’s not that simple, is it? Nil Satis Nisi Optimum isn’t all about steamrolling your opponents on the pitch, it’s about being the best off it too – and no one can claim that Man City have the moral high ground in either place. They buy foolishly; Roque Santa Cruz for £18m and Joleon Lescott for £24m were far too expensive, and Mario Balotelli, Emmanuel Adebayor, Robinho, and Kolo Toure clearly just came for the money.

Money City, as Kolo Toure calls them, are going to win trophies – lots and lots of them – but do we want to win like that? By bullying in the transfer market, by shelling out tens of millions on players with defective personalities – one of whom couldn’t even be arsed to get off the subs bench recently , by shedding its skin every summer and buying yet more players, by shockingly retaining CEO Garry Cooke – the man with the gaffe prone gob and the morals to match…

But all that glisters isn’t gold. These trophies that Man City will no doubt start winning soon, they were bought. Man City are on steroids. They are Ben Johnson and his bloodshot bovine eyes in football club form. If playing Man City is pointless, and losing to them is pretty much par for the course – as argued beautifully by Andi Thomas - then just imagine what a hollow, soulless experience supporting Man City will become. And more to the point, if you see no problem with being a Verruca Salt, forcing daddy to buy Wonka Bars by the crate-load until you find a golden ticket then supporting our Everton must be hellish too.

Rooney’s always been hard to defend, both for his on pitch skills and his off field antics.

Today, after days of speculation that he would leave, Rooney instead signed with United for five more years. believe it or not this isn’t his most surprising U-Turn. That came in November 2002 at Elland Road, when he did a sudden hand-brake turn around Lucas Radebe. But his days as an Everton player are, sadly, long gone.

The reasons that Rooney wanted to leave cannot be crowbarred into a tiny Tweet, they cannot be reduced from a barrage of grievances into a one-inch punch. He clearly thought Utd were falling backwards, he may have been greedy (I think more greedy for success than money) but I think his main motivation may have been Coleen. As much as Evertonians focused their hatred on Paul Stretford and Rooney’s greed when he left, there were lots of reasons to leave Everton (and the money kept us afloat) – but I think the catalyst for both his move to United and his botched transfer request this week lie with his penchant for prostitutes.

When Granny-gate broke in the press and our Wayne was exposed as a shagger of extra-mature prostitutes it seemed that Coleen pushed for a move out of Goodison. When the same thing happened this summer (prostitutes and press exposes) Wayne again asked for a move. Could it be that Coleen holds all the cards, and it was Mrs Rooney that performed the U-turn last night?

Many people are speculating that it was Wayne, intimidated by the throng of thugs outside his house last night who were demanding loyalty with menaces, that decided to sign for Utd after all. Couldn’t it just as easily be Coleen Rooney, scared for her safety and her baby son’s too, that forced this issue through? Certainly agent Paul Stretford, portrayed as a money grabbing fiend, wouldn’t have advised Wayne to turn his back on a huge payday at Man City. Maybe Mrs Rooney, in a position of power after her husband’s dalliances with prostitutes – was the one who changed her mind.

Here is something I wrote about the press, and their rancid class-obsessed attitude to Mr Rooney a few months back, it still rings very true:

It’s by no means a new phenomenon. Moving from having nothing to having everything generates jealousy and hatred. And it’s by no means a bad thing. After all a chip on the shoulder and a burning competitive edge are the fuel that keeps the Rooney engine purring. But it’s still wrong.

Ollie Kay was right to shine a light in the faces of the internet trolls posting nasty rumours in dark corners, but lots of the things written about another footballer, Wayne Rooney, are plastered over newspapers and no one questions them.

After the Black Death, when society was tossed upside-down, privileged paymasters bemoaned the fact that upstart men of lower class were wearing squirrel skin coats. Even Dick Whittington, living the American Dream when it was firmly an English one, had to be given a mythical cat so that the upper classes could somehow explain the commoner’s rise to riches.

Fast forward a few hundred years and you have Wayne Rooney, England’s great white freckled hope, and prime fodder for press inches. Sadly, to a slice of society, his looks, his accent, and even his class, matter more than his abilities. The worn old adage that form is temporary and class is permanent holds true in another sense for Rooney. No matter how well he does on the pitch, he’s always reminded of where he came from.

Wayne came into our world feet first, but his indelible talent has always had to compete with snide comments.  Press attention began early for him, on his first proper holiday abroad his family were pictured staggering out of the sea, portrayed as a trio of Scouse Swamp Things under the headline “See The Rooney Walk!”
 
Thankfully lots of football fans don’t think that way. I still remember when he turned Lucas Radebe with such aplomb that it was like watching Fred Astaire. We hadn’t won at Elland Road for half a century. His goal against Arsenal looped over Seaman and shattered their unbeaten record like a vandal’s brick – and he scored again at their place.

The sturm and drang of early Rooney is fading, he still has the fire in his belly, but his discipline is growing. Since swapping blue for red he’s gone on to greatness at Old Trafford and with England – opposing teams fear him, but others outside the eye of the storm snigger.

Some in the press tell us that Rooney’s son Kai has inherited his father’s looks, and then they tell us that it is a shame. These critiques have to stop; there’s something wrong with a society that attacks its greatest child prodigy. How many people storm to the peak of their profession at 16 – and are still taunted mercilessly? When Wayne and Coleen moved to their new house, the headline that greeted the news was withering: “Coleen and Wayne move into Chav Towers“.

Rooney’s isn’t well educated in the typical sense, he spent his salad days pummelling the pavement with footballs, like a boxer’s fists to a punch bag. All that time in the street playing has produced erudite, educated feet. He honed his craft there; the streets of Croxteth were his dojo, just as Dixie Dean’s was his local church roof, where he perfected his legendary heading.

People make the ill-advised mental shortcut of drawing a parallel between Wayne from the north west, and Paul from the North East – somehow funneling all the frustrations about Gazza’s ultimately disappointing career into Rooney. Abroad he is “a mix of bison and a viper,” here he is a chav, a cultural clodhopper, and the missing link between Waynetta Slob and Shrek.

English Football is lashed to the mast of “class” like no other country in Europe. Forget about the fact that the Premier League has attracted a sea of middle class fans, we take players from only one strata – and then we taunt them for what they are. “Rooney” is somehow a byword for being vulgar and yobbish – when in reality that’s just what we are.

What we have here are two ideological opposites. The difference between Royal Blue and Sky Blue are fluorecently obvious. We’re a team that has been organically built whereas they were assembled with a procession of lusty glances and feverish chequebook signatures. Just as Arsenal and Stoke will never get along, so Everton and Man City represent entirely different approaches to the game. Arsenal hate the way that their delicate and aesthetic football is nullified by hoofball, flying studs, and freakishly long throw-ins (as well as the little matter of young Rambo’s broken leg). We hate City because whereas Moyes has to check down the back of the sofa to buy players – Man City can splash cash with gay abandon. There’s also the fact that they took Lescott from us, not through their manager’s silver tongue, not by winning trophies, but by wafting money under Lescott’s nose until the temptation was unbearable. Moyes was tenderly placing one of the last pieces in his beloved Everton jigsaw puzzle when Mark Hughes kicked it to pieces. Jagielka was already injured, and without Lescott too we were left with a gaping hole in our defence.

We can take some positives from the Lescott affair though. We got a huge amount of money for him – money that financed the signings of Distin and Bilyaletdinov – and most of all Johnny Heitinga. The Dutchman wields his legs like lead pipes – was born to be bouncer for our nightclub crooners like Arteta and Pienaar – and also has a footballing brain. As Lescott sits out the next few weeks and counts the nearly half a million pounds that Man City will be paying him during this period – Moyes can grant himself a smug grin. Half a million pounds is a quarter of what the Scot paid to bring Mikel Arteta to Goodison…

The Independent’s Paul Walker writes:

Moyes, preparing his side for tomorrow’s season opener at home to Arsenal, launched a bitter attack on Hughes and City.

He said: “There is no dialogue between us and Manchester City as far as I know.

“Maybe City are having dialogue with somebody else, but it is not between me and City.

“He (Hughes) said they were talking to people who make the decisions here. Well he knows who makes the decisions at Everton and it is me.

“He has never once picked up the phone and given me a call, so he is not going to get the answer. I am the one who makes the decisions here, not like other clubs.

“It has disrupted us. They have been talking about it and we have not been talking about the start of the season, that has been disruptive. So maybe that is what the overall plan was.”

Moyes added: “I look back and see how Real Madrid did their business with Manchester United (over Ronaldo). It was done at the tail end of the season, and it was done quickly to allow United to buy if they wanted to do so.

“We cannot be getting offers a week or two to go before the end of the deadline. And the offers they made shows that we value Joleon Lescott far higher than they do.

“Joleon is a massive player for us, we think so much of him and do not want to lose him.

“The players here think so much of him, and as a (coaching) staff we do.

“His head has been twisted and I cannot say the way things have been done is right, it is not how we do things at this club.

“But maybe their football club is different, I control things here, maybe it is not quite the same there.”

How many times does Moyes have to tell Hughes that Lescott isn’t for sale? Should he carve it onto Hughes’ forehead with a Victorinox? And isn’t it brilliant that are next game after Arsenal is Man City away?

And it continues…Lescott wants to leave, Moyes doesn’t want to sell, and Hughes is still returning with bids for the player. The harder Moyes rejects the bids the more the Welshman boomerangs back. Hughes’ bids amount to Chinese Water Torture; an incessant drip – intriguing Lescott and annoying Moyes in equal measure. All this is surrounded by hordes of blithering idiots, who munch unquestioningly over the daily tabloids. It’s impossible to know what is happening at the centre of the storm, but here are three views…

I. Mark Hughes is a pillock.

A dangerous pillock who won’t take no for an answer in the worst way, a transfer rapist. His mumbled admiration for Lescott, and his clumsy public bluff (claiming that he’ll move on to other transfer targets if something isn’t settled soon) are brazen brushstrokes on a backdrop of Moyes’ blanket rejection.
Behind the quiet steely front, the iron curtain that is the Welshman’s atrophied face, complete with brillo pad hair and a crack of a mouth permanently on the verge of succumbing to lockjaw, lies a scared man out of his depth and bereft of imagination. A man who, somehow, despite having an oily ocean of millions to spend, cannot look beyond Everton’s second best defender as a transfer target.
Moyes is jealously annoyed with Hughes for several reasons. Hughes has a bulging war chest, Moyes has a pittance. City were midtable but got bought by very rich men, Everton have been camped in fifth place for two seasons but cannot find a buyer. The day after Moyes claimed that none of his players were for sale, Hughes thrust a cheeky £15 million Lescott bid under the Scot’s nose. Moyes was already having a barrel-scrapingly bad summer in terms of transfers, most notably being gazumped by Tottenham over Kyle Naughton, and now this?? He had promised players like Jagielka and Arteta – signed to long term contracts – that Everton weren’t a selling club. Moyes had to deal with no strikers last year, does he really want to risk playing with no defenders this time around?
Moyes views Lescott – a polyglot defender who can play centrally or on the left – as essential to the team, and is backed up by a fanbase who are prepared to sing for their stopper, even if his head is being turned. Lescott is meek,and its a world cup year so if Moyes keeps him, he won’t be able to let his form dip if he wants to make the squad.

Despite all this Hughes continues his lusty groping and refusing to take no for an answer.

II. David Moyes is a pillock.

Moyes knows that Lescott wants to leave, and has known for some time. He could sign a cheap player who could fill in for Jagielka until his return from injury, and then act as cover for Jagielka and Yobo at the back. The money from Lescott could have gone towards upwardly mobile youths (Elm, Delph, Naughton) , big names we’ve been known to want (Moutinho, Sessegnon, Defour), or even to secure Jo on a permanent deal. Moyes is the unwanted side in a love triangle, acting like a shunned boyfriend; refusing to accept that the relationship is over.
Moyes is swiftly becoming a rusty haired anachronism – you cannot tell players no these days, we are the generation whose fans give their souls but not their bodies, and whose players give their bodies but not their souls. Lescott is a professional who has been told he cannot move to new employers who are willing to double his wages. Only in football would this be seen as acceptable. Simon Kuper recently wrote that managers should “be as eager to sell good players as to buy them.” Moyes should listen.

Despite all this Moyes continues to cling to Lescott, refusing to give yes for an answer.

III. Joleon Lescott is a pillock.

Under Moyes’ protective wing he has improved immeasurably, cemented a spot in the fifth best team in the land, and fought his way to deserved international recognition. Lescott’s desire to go to Man City (or “Money City” as Kolo Toure accidentally called them) begins and ends with the promise of a fat paycheque. Take money out of the equation and Lescott would turn his nose up at a move to Eastlands. No one can predict how the Man City experiment will turn out this season, and he could be plunging head first into a sea of chaos. Joleon is mistaking ambition for greed, and I would love to see the wording of his transfer request.
Lescott’s timing is also atrocious with days remaining until the start of the season and he should be vilified for handing in a written transfer request whilst away on international duty. Lescott is risking a career with the best young manager in the British Isles and a more stable club for a crazed menagerie of blustering egos; its tantamount to a small kid’s desire to run away and join the circus.

Despite all this Lescott continues to cling to his transfer demands, refusing to take no for an answer.

Ed Bottomley

Whilst summer rolls into action many Blue websites have been indulging in Evertonians’ favourite warm-weather pastime: Kenwright kvetching. Some anticipate a summer of scraping around for money, missing out on signings, and seeing our Chairman fail – once more – to sell the club. I’m actually glad Kenwright has failed to flog our beloved Toffees, and because of that, in my eyes he is the perfect Chairman…

If Kenwright is unqualified to run our club, then why is a rich Sheik more acceptable? Would a moneybags owner shed blue tears when we lost to Chelsea? Would he be able to wax lyrical about Mikel Arteta, comparing him to Alex Young like Kenwright did? The sad truth is a Chairman’s success is totally dependent on his money, and his ability to attract investment if he has no money himself. I see it a different way though. Yes, Kenwright’s theatrical tendencies make for ridiculous sound bites: “watch this space”, “I’m working 24/7 to sell this club.” are both embarrassing public belches – but the fact that Kenwright hasn’t been able to find a buyer is a bonus.

I do not want a billionaire at Everton. For all those people moaning about a move to Kirkby, selling to a Sheik would be the ultimate sell out – he would own our soul. The last few years have seen several filthy rich oil-igarchs waddle over the horizon, and the problem is their ridiculous appetite and their crazed shotgun approach to transfers, spraying bids everywhere. It’s strange to think that we may look upon our fifth placed finishes as “the good old days”. Days where we fielded a team of honest, well drilled pros, players who we love and who love us, rather than multi-millionaire drones. When we ask for our billionaire saviour – do we really want to enter that world, of Glazers, Gillettes, and Kenyons? A world of shelling out and selling out, of many rubles, no scruples, and gluttonous gloating. I would rather watch a snuff movie starring my parents.

If a white knight with wads of cash did come to Goodison, Moyes would undoubtedly face a different climate – no more late night pillow talk with Kenwright and – ironically – just as many stipulations and restrictions on spending. We are potless, but if we became Mersey Millionaires again, would Moyes have full control over signings? …And the funniest thing? We might not even finish fifth! Worth selling our souls for that? Some quarters of Goodison fight so hard against Kirkby, and demand we stay at Goodison. And yet they have no problem praying at night for a billionaire who will suck away the essence of our club, even though we’d have a roulette wheel of playing staff, unnatural pressures on Moyes, and a team as nebulous, unbalanced, and unwieldy as a pet shop run by Dr Moreau.

To me, Mark Hughes has always been likeable, and Man City always harmless enough. That was until the money started flowing like wine at a Roman Orgy. Mark Hughes, the “centurion with salt and pepper hair”, is going to find it hard not to turn into a debauched Nero. When you can have almost any player you want, when you can make Eto’o and Kaka think twice, you are bound to go a little crazed. But City’s team are still Ersatz Galacticos, they haven’t earned their Top 4 stripes yet…

Some Blues are bemused by Lescott going to City, calling this a step down. But City’s bank balance is monumentally huge, meaning that – in a league where everyone is loyal to the lucre above all else – they are bigger than us. Let’s not prattle on about history making a big club, the Premier League is like 1980’s Wall Street. Money is everything. Gordon Gekko said it best: “The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”

If Lescott can double his wages by moving to Man City -a team that will soon be dining from English football’s top table – why are some fans asking for him to loyally kneel at the Goodison trough? Was he loyal to Wolves? No, he moved to us, a club with more potential. Again, he is doing the same if he leaves us for City. As much as I want the Peoples’ Club to be poster boys for potless Premier League success – we all have to admit that Man City’s bank balance makes them far more upwardly mobile than us.

Moyes has made it clear that he doesn’t want Lescott to leave, apparently not even for 20 million (could he really turn that down though), and Lescott’s few words on the matter sound like an “I’ll do as I’m told, gub’nah.” The press though, have been sitting and watching, breathing heavily like a parking lot dogger – and are squirming with glee ; claiming that Lescott just has to “agitate” to get his dream move. And who can blame them, transfer tripe sells papers.

Thanks to the press frotteurs, rubbing their words against Lescott, almost daring him to ask for a move, this is a matter beyond Moyes. Lescott may not be loyal to the Man City lucre, but our board may be….And the money, whatever portion of it that Moyes sees, could help us get a right back (“the Scouse Cafu” is more Clark Kent than Superman) and an upgrade on our doe-eyed Smyke, Leon Osman.

To twist and mangle a famous quote: “In the next week or two this house, the nation and the Rt Hon Lescott himself will learn of what metal he is made’

Let’s continue the fight without a sugar daddy. We are Sensible Soccer – they are FIFA ’09…We are a local independent record store – they are a faceless music franchise… And with any luck we’ll be Godzilla and they’ll be Tokyo

The Sheikhs may have bowled into Man City’s lives turning them into the richest club in the universe, but this could be good for all the nearly men too. Although Man City’s declared desire is to gatecrash the Big Four this season, not even a Trillionaire can change the transfer window, which slammed shut before they could really get stuck into any orgies of spending.

The ensuing worried gulp from the Big Four is to be expected, but I’m not sure if the groans from the cheap seats are warranted. If Manchester city do upset the applecart, the thinking is that one of the big four will tumble down from the Champions League top table into 5th place thus shunting teams like Everton even further down the pecking order.

I’m not sure this is necessarily going to be the case, the gluttonous Big Four are designed – in every way – to suck in the refined air at the Premier League’s summit, once one of these teams falls into the congested smog of the PL’s second tier, they may find themselves unused and unprepared for the pugnacious elbows and clenched fists of their new roommates.

If they stay there for more than one season, deprived of their umbilical Champions League cash point, then they could be in real trouble. Propelling invaders is very different from actually being one. Why is the assumption that one of the fallen big four idols would instantly set up home in fifth place? A team on the up is likely to slowly drag itself higher – but controlling one’s descent is a much harder thing to do.

Arsene Wenger is sticking more and more to his principles than ever before (perhaps assisted by the fact that his transfer wings have been clipped) and Benitez and his Americans are in a state of flux too, even Man Utd have borrowed themselves well into the next century, if any of these three slip out of the filthy rich elite total chaos could ensue.

Much has been written about the fact that managers these days cannot be trusted with huge amounts of cash, but can the owners be trusted with making footballing decisions? The buck now stops with the Sheikhs at the Eastlands, and they will need a pliant yes man in the managerial role — will Mark Hughes be able to handle this?

People think that there is a glass ceiling for non-big four clubs, but Everton breached that before under Moyes, with a very thin squad, and could do again. Amidst the chaos of a Big Four reshuffle and Man City’s entrance, who’s to say other teams couldn’t scurry into contention?

Man City were taken over so close to the end the summer’s transfer window that no proper planning has been made. This means that they will have to hobble on with their middle class visage and rich man’s wallet until January, but even if a carousel of glimmering signings do waddle in come the new year, their presence – in the short term at least – is likely to cause more issues than they solve. A horde of Galacticos at the Eastlands chewing over their wages with bovine indifference might be hard to motivate, and when (because with that much money it is a certainty) they do supplant one of the big sides, it could spell the end of this cartel sitting atop the Premier League.

Everton are the Premier League’s Everyman, a side that has endured relegation scares and Champions League qualification, who has had Wayne Rooney and Brett Angell on their Premier League books – who better to spoil this filthy rich love-in?