Cornish Steve

What little rays of sunshine you are. Just ignore all the silly games in the press and see how things look when the new season begins - otherwise we're all going to be driven to distraction!

Darn.

Kitbag were told to toe the line.

I know we disagree about Traore and Kone, but just wait and see. PS - The Lukaku move is not just in the Mail. It's also in the Telegraph. 18m is being quoted.

It's possible we could end up with Lukaku, Hernandez, Traore, and Kone. Add Mirallas and Naismith into the mix, and that's a powerful lineup. Both Kone and Traore are underrated.

If you think about it, that means that 7 of the first 15 weekends will feature Everton. Those are good numbers. NBC only show one game a week, right?

Rumours of a loan... http://www.sos1878.co.uk/everton-transfers/blues-linked-loan-move-chicarito/

including Tim Howard against Bolton... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4SbJpQPA40#t=16

You need to copyright that so you make money when the Mirror does use it.

I look at that Twitter thread, and all I see are hungry reporters gathering like vultures to make money. Such a shame. Can't the family grieve in private?

Flip this on its head. Since he spent a season with Everton, it doesn't matter so much whether he attends pre-season training. That gives us another month to get the best deal.

Why? In many cases, they are overpaying. And have they thought through how these players will blend with the team? Spurs didn't last year. Waiting until the moment is right takes discipline, but it's how we should do business. As someone else wrote, we fans tend to be like children who can't wait for Christmas.

You'd rather pay 5m over the odds simply because you have no patience? If so, I have a nice car I'd like to sell you.

This has to be George Best and Miss World at halftime. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scoring-At-Half-Time-Adventures-Pitch/dp/0091890349

Oh dear - that's bad! I did a Google search to track down the trivia I had heard previously. The two didn't play for the West Indies, but a father and son did play for the same team in a Guyana league - and they did both score centuries. https://cricket.yahoo.com/news/shivnarine-and-tagenarine--father-and-son-bat-together.html

Because you're missing the socks.

Nope.

The shoeless clueless. Our kit is so good, it even blew the dummies' socks off.

The club have kept the fans informed. Martinez has publicly made clear a few times his strategy and expectations for this window. But, if he or the club were to say "we're going to buy player-X", then that player's price immediately goes up a few million. The moneybags' clubs like to feed their egos by announcing their targets and then buying them, as if they have the power to get anyone they want, but they pay over the odds when they do that. And some (thinking United) make fools of themselves when they fail to bring in their targets. If United had kept things quiet, I'm sure they would have paid 3m less for Fellaini. Having set expectations in public, however, they either had to pay us more than his value or let everyone down.

Instead of the owl we see today?

But the point is that 99% of the rumours quoted in the press are off the mark - made up or speculation or next door neighbour's aunt's dustman's sister's hairstylist lives nextdoor to someone, or deliberate lie leaked by a club to raise someone's price. When I negotiate contracts, it is always done behind closed doors. Competitors play games by releasing misleading statements, but that's just a distraction. To get the best deals, you keep things quiet. Plus we're a little over two weeks into the transfer window. Two weeks! That's less than a quarter of the way through. Why all the panic? Again, it's the press taking advantage.

Did anyone have a clue we were bringing in Deulofeu before it was announced? No. Did anyone have even a hint ahead of time that we were recruiting Lukaku? No. Was there anything in the press about Everton loaning Barry ahead of time? No. The fact that there were loans and not buys is irrelevant. Real business is conducted behind closed doors and not in public. What appears in the papers is designed to sell those papers to the gullible - full stop.

The main headline at the BBC website right now is that a Malaysian Airlines jetliner has crashed in Ukraine. What do we think when reading this? For me, at least, I draw the comparison with the Malaysian Airlines plane that went missing earlier in the year, and it reflects badly on the airline. But no, that's not the real story at all: Someone on the ground in eastern Ukraine shot the plane down. The real headline should be "Passenger jet shot down over Ukraine". The airline is almost irrelevant. I don't believe there is any such thing as a neutral and objective news service any more, and maybe there never has been. It seems that CNN, in the US, stands for Commentary Not News, because they are just as bad as the BBC. Come on guys: Just report what happens and let others interpret.

Well, since we finished fifth in the league, we can obviously do better. I'm all for more practicing of set pieces.

Am I able to do that? Let me try. PS - done.