Kenwright calls for emergency board meeting at Everton

Things might be happening at Everton as news breaks that Chairman Bill Kenwright has called an unexpected emergency meeting of the board.

So, what is going on at Everton? It’s hard to know exactly of course but it appears, according to the Mirror’s story anyway, as though Kenwright is seeking to get all the key decision-makers together to discuss the future of the club and the manager.

This comes just 24 hours or so after owner Farhad Moshiri had backed Rafa Benitez publically when he sent a text to his favourite correspondent at Sky Sports following the horrific derby defeat at Goodison Park on Wednesday.

The fact he couldn’t make this statement to the club website or a Blues’ fansite is telling and certainly didn’t help the growing sense that the people in charge of this football club don’t have any regard for the fans.

According to these reports today Moshiri will travel to the UK to attend this meeting and will then discuss with Kenwright and the other board members what happens next.

Apparently if this news is true, Benitez’s future is set to be the main topic of discussion at the meeting at least from Kenwright’s point of view.

It’s pretty evident that the Chairman didn’t want Benitez and would have preferred another candidate or perhaps his old mate David Moyes to take over again this summer when Carlo Ancelotti left.

Now, with the team in terrible form and facing a really demanding run of fixtures in the rest of December starting with Arsenal on Monday night, perhaps Kenwright is trying to engineer Benitez’s removal.

If this meeting is indeed happening this weekend or on Monday, it just indicates again how chaotic and divided this club is now with key people taking opposed positions on the crucial question of what happens to the football club’s manager.

I don’t know if this is just a PR exercise and on face value at least it seems as though the question of Benitez’s future is settled for the moment, if Moshiri’s comments are to be believed.

But, as we know in football tradition a vote of confidence from a Chairman or owner often leads to the sack for the manager in question, so is that about to happen at Everton now?

I’ve written that I can’t really see how this situaiton can be sustained with the team in freefall and Benitez making some critical errors and appearing increasingly stubborn and eccentric in his team tactics and selections.

When he was obviously becoming the favourite to take over I wasn’t opposed to him because of the Liverpool connection, but I felt that perhaps the game had passed him by as with Jose Mourinho and his tactics and football philosphy would ultimately be found out.

While it is obviously not the primary reason for the club’s disasterous situation, the only short-term thing that can be done to arrest this terrible form is to change manager.

Maybe Kenwright is now determined to make that happen and has called this meeting presumably in the belief he has allies amongst the other board members.

But, if they believe that doing this will take the mounting and increasingly hostile pressure off them, I think they will be proven mistaken.

Evertonians are not stupid and I don’t think sacking Benitez will appease them unless whoever takes over proves a brilliant replacement. We shall see what unfolds in the next few days.