sport news THE CULT OF BILL: Kenwright cannot cut ties with Everton and still wields huge ... trends now
When Mike Ashley was considering a bid for Newcastle United in 2007, he had dinner with Everton chairman Bill Kenwright.
Kenwright, one of the country's leading theatre producers, was Everton's biggest stakeholder and told Ashley: 'You buy a football club and you get terrible sh** thrown at you.' Sixteen years on and Ashley has been and gone at Newcastle. But for Kenwright and Everton the muck is still flying.
In Premier League circles, Everton are known as one of its most dysfunctional clubs and at the centre of it all, aged 77 and in less than perfect health, is Kenwright.
Bill Kenwright is at the centre of one of the most dysfunctional clubs in the Premier League
He owns only 1.3 per cent of the club these days. Everton is - theoretically at least - under the control of the British-Iranian businessman Farhad Moshiri whose company Blue Heaven Holdings owns 94.1 per cent.
But Kenwright remains front and central, for better and for worse. He is still chairman and a lightning rod for criticism. He is regularly abused at matches. He has had wreaths sent to the office of his theatre company in London's Little Venice. He has, at times, had good reason to fear for his safety as the football club he has supported since the 1950s has lurched from one bad managerial appointment and one dismal season to another.
All of which begs the question: 'Why, Bill?' It is something he is often asked by friends and people in football who are fond of him. Given the stress and the heartache, why is he still putting himself through it for the sake of what is essentially someone else's football club?
'I asked him this at a game not long ago,' one senior executive at another big club tells Sportsmail.
'Usually, he just laughs and ducks it.
Fans have called for Kenwright to leave the club on a regular basis over the years
'But this time I pressed him and he just said it was impossible for him not to still care.' The truth is more complicated. Kenwright sold to Moshiri in 2016 on the understanding he could remain at the club. There is a suspicion held amongst Kenwright-sceptics on Merseyside that he turned other potential investors away because they refused to guarantee him this. That is unproven.
Whatever the case, seven years after the sale and with the club once-again managerless following the sacking of Frank Lampard, Kenwright, according to those who know him, continues to believe that Everton would simply sink on Moshiri's solo watch.
'Bill has a belief perhaps bordering on arrogance that he can still save the club from itself', said one long-term ally.
'Farhad likes big gestures. He can be impetuous. Bill thinks he needs to be there to temper them and gets frustrated that fans can't see this. Some think Bill feels guilty, that he feels he sold to the wrong person. I haven't heard him say that.
'He does have an insane love for the club but also for the limelight, even when that focus is bad.
'He loves the glory of being in the middle of a grand old football club, even one as broken and divided as this one. It's like a drug to him but it's one he needs to kick for his own sake.
'I don't see how he would recover if Everton went down on his watch. I think it would break him physically and mentally and that would be horrific.'
As Moshiri left West Ham after a rare visit to watch Everton play last weekend, he was asked by a Sky reporter whether Lampard would be sacked.
'It's not my decision,' replied Moshiri.
It was a disingenuous comment. The reality was that when Lampard lost his job 48 hours later, Moshiri was at the centre of the call.
Nevertheless, it was an exchange that cut right to the heart of modern Everton. Who really runs the club? Within the game nobody ever really seems to know and the experience of one football figure recently is telling.
Approached by an intermediary on Moshiri's behalf, he was offered and accepted a senior football role only to then be invited to what turned out to be an interview by chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale and former Everton centre forward Graeme Sharp. Baffled, he walked away from the talks.
Farhad Moshiri claimed it was not his decision when asked if Frank Lampard would be sacked
Barrett-Baxendale and Sharp are members of a four-man Everton board along with Kenwright and financial director Grant Ingles. Moshiri is not on it, nor anybody close to him. His associate Sasha Ryazantsev did sit as chief finance and commercial officer from 2016 but left in 2021, said to be disillusioned.
'Bill has his acolytes on the board,' explains a former Everton insider.
'Barrett-Baxendale and Sharpe are his people. They are not going to say no to him. This gives Bill a significant degree of operating control.' Another source is more forthright.
'Kenwright and Barrett-Baxendale speak about ten times a day,' he says, with exaggeration.
'He sings her praises and she sings them back. They are in their own bubble.
Kenwright has a very close relationship with Everton CEO Denise-Barrett-Baxendale (above)
'Why Moshiri hasn't put his own people in is baffling. The truth is that factions have been allowed to develop at Everton and it's eating the club up from the inside.' Nowhere has Everton's peculiar and confusing internal structure been more damaging than in the crucial area of managerial appointment and player recruitment.
Everton have burned through six managers and had three football directors in the past six and a half years. Lampard was essentially Kenwright's appointment a year ago after Moshiri's pick Vitor Pereira was scared off by supporter protests before he had even signed a contract. Prior to that former Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez had been in place, a Moshiri appointment that neither Kenwright or the football director of the time Marcel Brands wanted.
'Benitez was not even on Brands' list of top five yet we appointed him anyway,' reveals a source high up at Everton at the time.
'When it came to the introductory press conference, Brands was asked to sit alongside Benitez and said he would rather not. Before long, Brands left the club.' Brands' predecessor in that role was Steve Walsh, credited with much of Leicester's shrewd transfer deals ahead of their 2016 title win. Walsh left Everton after two years.
Rafael Benitez was a surprise appointment at Everton, and director of football Marcel Brands left shortly after the Spanish coach arrived
'Bill finds it hard to put complete faith in his football directors and gets really frustrated if he doesn't know exactly what they are doing,' adds a football source.
'It is because that was a part of the business that, back in the day, he used to be heavily involved in. He was good at it, too. A hard, shrewd negotiator. Look at some
