There has been no explanation for this decision, in fact the club have almost tried to hide it by not actually mentioning anywhere that a change has been made, when I first looked through the prices and saw 16-20 I thought it was a typo, however upon seeing the same age range written again on a different section it became apparent that it is not. A large number of 21 year olds are likely to be 3rd year University students, these are the people who most need a cheaper season ticket to be able to afford one. These are people who have no regular income and who are spread across the country at different universities and have to pay hefty travel costs to get to Goodison for a home game.

If this has been done to recoup costs from the Under 11s cheap tickets then there is a good chance it will backfire as the club will lose season ticket holders who would have bought one but now can’t because of the new age bracket. There are very few students if any who can afford to pay the full price. Perhaps if they had changed it 16-20 whilst including those in full-time education irrespective of age it might be a bit fairer and see more people renew, since its not unreasonable to assume a 21 year old with a full time job is able to pay the full price.

Quite why the change has been made we don’t know, but it is a low point on what otherwise is a good price structure, despite the slight increase in adult tickets. After a large decrease in sales last season the question is, will you be renewing?

The Blue Union have officially affiliated with the Football Supporters Federation!

Not to be mistaken with the Fortress Sports Fund, the FSF are a national supporters’ organisation for all football fans comprising more than 180,000 individual fans and members of local supporters’ organisations from clubs throughout the football pyramid.

The Federation regularly takes up specific complaints and cases which are raised with it by individual members or affiliated organisations and we encourage the participation of all supporters in this process.

Each individual supporter can join the FSF by clicking the following link and fill out the questionnaire and is free to join.

The FSF plan to hold a Watching Football is not a Crime! night next Thursday 1st March at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester at 7pm. Watching Football Is Not A Crime! is a free Football Supporters’ Federation event open to fans of ALL clubs. The event gives fans the chance to question a panel of experts on football-related policing and stewarding issues.

The Blue Union will be sending a small delegation to the event and hopes to see some fellow Evertonians there.

On a cold wet Wednesday winter evening, Blue Union supporters, concerned by the all too apparent crisis enveloping our great club, packed into a Liverpool city centre venue to take part in a strategy meeting.

The purpose of the strategy meeting was for The Blue Union Officers to listen and gauge the mood of the fans, demonstrate to them that they’re an inclusive part of The Blue Union and allow them to participate in a democratic vote which will direct The Blue Union officers as they develop a strategy for the first few months of 2012.

Blue Union chair, Dave Kelly, after paying a tribute to recently deceased former player Gary Ablett and Spirit of Shankly Vice President, Paul Rice, who were both separately and warmly applauded by all present, delivered a rousing opening speech attacking the club’s policies which have been the breeding grounds for deceit, mismanagement and underachievement which has ultimately, and all too predictably, led to the club’s stagnation.

Following Dave’s rousing opening speech; Simon Magner delivered a brief presentation on the Blue Union’s own “Everton prospectus”. Simon, secretary of The Blue Union, explained that having looked at the attempt the club had made in producing a sale prospectus The Blue Union believed that they could deliver a much more professional version and highlights of this were displayed for the audience.

John Harrison, The Blue Union’s fans liaison officer, also gave a brief presentation on the club’s all too apparent lack of a genuine and cohesive communication policy with the fans, which is a constituent part of UEFA’s licensing platform.

John heavily criticised the cosmetic attempts that have been made by Everton to comply with this regulation; attempts such as the clearly artificial fan’s forum that is, despite numerous suggestions by The Blue Union, largely anonymous, unapproachable and essentially impotent as a medium for addressing the major problems that fans, and ordinary shareholders, are experiencing; namely the increasing unaccountability of the present board which initiated the fight back from The Blue Union who endeavour to expose the truth over the actions of this board that we are having to endure; a board that has decimated the business and whose actions are now being made apparent on the field of play.

The meeting was then thrown open to the fans. Whilst some expressed their frustration at the board many spoke passionately and offered a variety of suggestions for The Blue Union to consider and following a lengthy meeting, the following evening, we have now agreed upon our strategy for the coming weeks.

In deciding this strategy The Blue Union officers need to consider peoples safety and well being. They also need to comply with many rules and regulations and we have a need to consult with Merseyside Police and the City Council, as it is imperative that all our organised activities are peaceful, legal and, importantly, repeatable. Our campaign isn’t spontaneous; it’s well planned, deliberate and is designed to achieve our objectives.

Whilst it was felt by those at the recent meeting that a protest at the Manchester City match on Tuesday 31st January was desirable, it is, after consulting with Merseyside Police, unfortunately impossible due to operational difficulties.

However, The Blue Union have agreed on a plan of action which is designed to bring maximum media attention to our cause and give the supporters the opportunity to vent their frustrations at the intransigence of a board that refuses to listen to an ever growing number of their fans.

In addition to the Blue Union’s ongoing behind the scenes activities, we plan to conduct a mass leaflet campaign at the Chelsea match on February 11th and demonstrate outside Radio City on the same day as we are vehemently opposed to their policy of refusing to allow Graeme Sharp to accept calls from fans wishing to discuss The Blue Union.

Our main focus will be on delivering a spectacular “Day of Protest” in and around Goodison Park at the Spurs game on 10th March 2012. The day’s activities will include an aerial protest before the game, a mass demonstration outside the ground, leafleting matchgoing Evertonians and picketing strategic points before and after the game. The day’s activities will be filmed and transmitted live over the Internet and the whole event will be preceded by a conventional media and an Internet social media campaign to highlight the reasons behind the day’s events and bring attention to the individual director’s performances whilst running OUR club.

Organising events such as this take time and effort and we are grateful for all those who have offered to help the campaign following our recent meeting; we need more. These activities take time to arrange and are expensive; so in order to cover the cost we shall be organising a fundraising event and details will be passed to all our supporters. We need your help and together we can make a difference.

We are determined to be the vehicle for our supporter’s frustrations, but in doing so we will always endeavour to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of all Everton supporters and as ever we will only advocate peaceful activities with the prerequisite that they are at all times within the law.

The Blue Union

FollowEverton.com today announce our affiliation with the Everton fans group “The Blue Union”. As a group of fans we have become disillusioned with our club and cannot sit by and watch it slowly die in the way it is at the moment. We believe Bill Kenwright and the current board have made significant failures in the running of the club, we believe the fans have been lied to on more than one occasion and that if things continue it won’t be long before we’re watching 20 second highlights of our team on the BBC’s “The Football League Show”. We believe the reason we have not been sold is an unreasonably high asking price and that it should be lowered to give us a fighting chance.

Failures of Kenwright and the board:

The King’s Dock: The King’s Dock would have been a fantastic stadium for Everton Football Club, a state-of-the-art 55,000 capacity stadium on the Albert Dock waterfront. Bill Kenwright called it the “best in the world”. He claimed the £30m required for the deal was “ringfenced”. It fell through.

Fortress Sports Fund: In 2004 we were told that an investment grouped called The Fortress Sports Fund were to invest £30m into Everton. We were told the money would be in the bank by Monday. It never arrived.

The Dan Gosling affair: In 2010 the young Everton player was out of contract, the club agreed a new deal with the player but forgot to put in writing, Gosling changed his mind and walked out for free meaning the club lost out on compensation which should have been due because of the player’s age.

Everton place: In 2010 the club proudly announced their plans for a new development to be built at the Park End. It was meant to host a new club shop, a cafe, offices, a museum and hospitality. It was due for completion in 2011 but nothing has happened and it has been shelved. Former Director of Communications Ian Ross blamed “IT issues”, CEO Robert Elstone blamed “insurance problems”. Its turns out Everton didn’t own the land in the first place.

NTL: Under Walter Smith Kenwright thought he’d got a deal with media company NTL worth £27m. Walter Smith was allowed to spend some of the money under the pretence that this would happen. It fell through.

Rooney: Bill Kenwright claimed he’d only sell Wayne Rooney for £50m, he sold him for £27m.

Kirkby: Much money and effort was spent in trying to move Everton Football Club out of the city of Liverpool to Kirkby. We were promised a world class stadium with fantastic public transport, what we would have got was not what we were promised. We were promised an effectively free stadium funded by Tesco, the public enquiry found this to not be true, with the actual cost to Everton being over £70million. Like all of the above, the plan ultimately failed.

AGMs: Everton have now banned AGMs where fans get a chance to ask questions to the board. The club now claim they speak to fans through their “Fans Forum”. Yet the people on this forum are chosen by the club and have discussed hard pressing matters such as whether to play Z Cars before the second half or not.

The finances: This is the real issue. Until Darren Gibson signed for £500,000 (the sort of fee a League One club would expect to pay for a big signing), Everton had not purchased a senior player in 2 and a half years. This is despite the sales of: Mikel Arteta, Jermaine Beckford, Yakubu, James Vaughan, Steven Pienaar , John Ruddy and Lukas Jutkiewicz. Not to mention countless outgoing loans which carry fees, including two season long loans for Joseph Yobo, a few James Vaughan loan moves, a Yakubu loan move and various other youngsters heading to Football League clubs. Add into the equation the fact that we sold Bellefield for £9m. This is quite frankly not acceptable.

Assets: Everton Football Club has few assets. The club’s superb Finch Farm training ground was sold to raise cash and is being leased back at a high rate which will cost the club a lot of money in the long run, a quite frankly idiotic business plan. The only assets the club have left are the 120 year old stadium and an ageing squad of players.

Debt: Despite selling all these players and not paying for new players, our debt has remained stable. Robert Elstone highlights the stability of this debt in his blogs as a good thing. Does this mean we have to keep selling our best players without replacing them to keep the debt stable? If so expect Rodwell or Barkley to go this summer. We cannot continue to sell players without giving David Moyes the proceeds and not expect to get relegated sooner or later.

The sale of the football club

Bill Kenwright has claimed there is no better salesman for Everton than him. But after searching 24/7 for investment for however many years it is now this is quite clearly not true. All we have got close to is selling to a man in a 2 bed flat in Manchester. We keep being told about these “interested parties”, there’s normally 3, we tend to hear about this around the time of protests and nothing ever happens.

Asking price: In an interview with Sky Sports News a few months ago, Keith Harris, appointed to help sell Everton, was asked if £150m would be enough to buy Everton. “You’re not far wrong” was his reply. We find this simply staggering. We have no assets, they’ve all been sold, we have a lot of debt, why on earth would anyone want to pay £150m for a club with no assets and debt? On top of that a new stadium is required, the training ground needs to be bought back, and new players are desperately needed. So it seems plainly obvious why we’ve not been sold. If Kenwright really loved the club he would lower the asking price and give it a chance of being sold, making a profit should not be on the agenda

Lies

We’ve been lied to on a number of occasions and highlight just 2 of these below, this should not be tolerated at all.

Goodison safety certificate: When trying to move the club to Kirkby Bill Kenwright told fans in an interview on ITV4 that Goodison would soon fail its safety certificate. 4 years later it still hasn’t and there no longer appears to be an urgency to move which you’d think there would be if Goodison was to soon be declared unsafe.

Arteta money: We all knew we were in financial meltdown so when we received £10m for him from Arsenal we all knew it would go straight to the bank (minus the sell on fee owed to Real Sociedad). The Liverpool Echo knew it too and reported that that was where the money would go. Everton made them retract this and apologise as it apparently wasn’t true. Yet a few weeks ago David Moyes said it had all gone to the bank and he thought everyone knew that.

Why we think it’s worthwhile publicly backing the Blue Union

We feel that are far too many fans who are uneducated as to the true facts. There are some fans whom will only use the official website for Everton news and are thus being fed spin and propaganda from the club and are believing every word. This was highlighted no more so than in the leaked emails where Robert Elstone sent an email planning a string of interviews with former and current players telling the fans nice things about the board just before the first Blue Union protest, as well as claiming the Liverpool Echo “owe them”. We feel the more websites there are who are publishing the facts of Kenwright’s reign, the more chance there is of Evertonians learning what is actually going on which we feel is important. We think pressure on the chairman and the board needs to be kept up, and if our fans can be united in that pressure then that can only help.

The other side of coin

We hate the fan base being split, but it’s even more frustrating when the arguments from the other side of the debate who are against the Blue Union are so weak and bereft of facts. The most common things said are: “but he’s an Evertonian”, “protesting is for kopites” and “Bill’s trying his best”. The fact that Bill is an Evertonian is irrelevant, we’re all Evertonians but that doesn’t mean we’re fit to run the club. He has been able to get away with murder because he’s one of us, if he wasn’t an Evertonian he’d have been hounded out of town a long time ago. We’ve held off protesting for a while now, but it is at the point now where doing nothing is not option, the club is dying in front of our eyes and we have to try whatever we can to urge Bill Kenwright to forget about making money, and just sell the club for a reasonable price to someone who can take it forward. If Bill is trying his best then quite frankly his best isn’t good enough.

If we continue down this path we will unquestionably be relegated, the message from us is simple: Please Bill, lower your asking price, find the right buyer and get this club sold before it sinks into oblivion. If you love the club, let go.

Everton FC acquired the land for Finch Farm in 2006 – but sold the land  to ROM Capital for £2.1mil as the board were unable to produce the funds to develop the training facility. ROM Capital completed the training ground to the clubs specifications in 2007 – the training ground and land was at this point then valued at just under £10mil. This all meant that Everton tied themselves into a lease deal with ROM Capital which would cost the club over £110mil over  a 50 year period after the yearly payment increase as a result of 2.5% compound interest is taken into account. The club are currently paying just over £1.25mil a year ‘rent’ – a payment which the vendors suggest is ’secured’ against the Sky TV money.

Everton do have an option to buy the ground back – and are able to exercise this once every five years – the next opportunity will be in July 2012 when we would need to find £16.5mil to fund the purchase. A mortgage deal would have saved the club a significant amount of money in 2006 – but it appears that this may not have been an option, given the club has already sold and mortgaged all of our fixed assets and the board can not or do not want to guarantee loans, this may well have not been an option. Finch Farm is being marketed for a price of just over £15mil plus VAT.

Now the point of this article is not just to point out that Finch Farm is to have a new owner – who will earn a significant sum of money from the club. Though this prospectus does shed more light on the ludicrous lease deal agreed by the club in 2006. The point of this article is to perhaps draw some attention to a spurious piece that appeared on the ‘Daisy Cutter‘ website on the 10th October. This article which was dismissed out of hand by most supporters who read it – due to the dubious, ‘football rumours’ nature of the site. However this article suggested that we may be subject to a buyout from an as of yet unidentified party from India. This group apparently developed an interest after finding out about a lucrative land deal on offer (which the author on Daisy Cutter now claims is Finch Farm). The board are apparently seriously courting this interest, which if true is no doubt down to the fact that we do not seem to have the finance or know how on the board to take us forward – we are in fact regressing.

There has been a follow up piece on the ‘Daisy Cutter‘ site maintaining that the original piece was true – and the author believes the released prospectus showing Finch Farms availability further backs up his story. So are we about to be bought out? Or is this yet more BS? One thing is for certain, the sale details further highlights the desperation of the board in terms of the ‘business deals’ we have in place. A new buyer for the land will be able to earn a pretty penny out of us.

MC

Football Aid 2012 – Play at Goodison Park!

Everton FC have once again joined forces with Football Aid allowing football fans the opportunity to play on the hallowed turf at Goodison Park in 2012, while raising vital funds for charity at the same time.

Football Aid offers fans the opportunity to Live the Dream of an authentic match day experience; to gain exclusive access to the pitch and tunnel areas, pull on their own personalised shirt in the official changing rooms, walk down the tunnel to the sound of a cheering crowd and ultimately to step out onto their Field of Dreams and represent their club in a never to be forgotten 90 minute match.

The matches have also been supported by a host of Toffees’ legends down the years, with the likes of Anders Limpar, Matthew Jackson and Football Aid Ambassadors Pat Nevin and Stuart Barlow all lending their valuable experience in recent years, by playing alongside supporters in the hugely enjoyable matches at Goodison Park.

Booking your position couldn’t be easier, just visit http://www.footballaid.com and choose your club, then you’ll have two ways to secure your Fixed Price position: Option 1: ‘Buy Now’ – Our quickest and most popular option, or Option 2: ‘Sponsored to Play’ – Pay a non-refundable £100 deposit to secure your position and then simply pay off the remaining balance anytime before 13th December.

So if you’re keen to secure your place on your Field of Dreams early this season, why not visithttp://www.footballaid.com today to make sure you’re ahead of the crowd! Alternatively if you’d like any additional information, you can call Football Aid on 0131 220 5999 or email info@footballaid.com.

Football Aid celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2010 and have allowed over 12,225 football fans the chance to Live the Dream in more than 460 matches. They are a groundbreaking organisation which generates funds annually by hosting charity football matches at iconic stadiums all over the UK. The unique concept was the brainchild of businessman and Football Aid Chairman Craig Paterson and funds raised from the event will benefit the work of a charitable project nominated by the club, as well as projects nominated by Football Aid’s parent charity Field of Dreams.

For more details, visit a representing website of the Blue Union via the link below:

http://peoplesgroup.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/blue-union-statement-protest-details/

The 24-year-old can also operate at left back but even a loan move is unlikely to materialize as no funds are available for manager David Moyes this transfer window.

by Ryan Grant