brisbaneblue

Would be surprised if he didn't tweak the midfield 3 and yank Tosun. Expecting something along the lines of this:
                         Pickford
Kenny      Zouma       Mina        Digne
                           Gueye
             Sigurdsson     Bernard
Walcott                                    Richarlison
                      Calvert-Lewin
Bench: Stekelenburg, Holgate, Baines, Schneiderlin, Lookman, Niasse, Tosun
 
Personally, I'd keep the faith with Tosun for one more match. The combination of Walcott, Tosun and Richarlison looked good up until Richarlison's red card.

Would be surprised if he didn't tweak the midfield 3 and yank Tosun. Expecting something along the lines of this:
                         Pickford
Kenny      Zouma       Mina        Digne
                           Gueye
             Sigurdsson     Bernard
Walcott                                    Richarlison
                      Calvert-Lewin
Bench: Stekelenburg, Holgate, Baines, Schneiderlin, Lookman, Niasse, Tosun
 
Personally, I'd keep the faith with Tosun for one more match. The combination of Walcott, Tosun and Richarlison looked good up until Richarlison's red card.

I thought letting Sandro go out on loan was a mistake. We've only got 2 natural wingers remaining in the squad outside of the starting XI and if Lookman leaves as well then we are down to just Bernard. It's going to pain me when Calvert-Lewin or Dowell inevitably gets subbed on as a winger at some point.

Squad Depth
Happy to be corrected but based on pre-season and Silva's comments I'd say at this moment our squad depth looks something like this:
GK: Pickford, Stekelenburg, Virginia
RB: Coleman, Kenny, Holgate, Martina, Zouma?, Browning
CB: Mina, Zouma?, Holgate, Keane, Jagielka, Pennington, Browning, Galloway
LB: Digne, Baines, Galloway, Martina
DM/CM: Gueye, Gomes, Schneiderlin, Davies, Besic, McCarthy, Dowell, Baningime, J. Williams
RW: Walcott, Richarlison, Ramirez, Bernard, Bolasie, Calvert-Lewin, Vlasic
ACM: Sigurdsson, Bernard, Vlasic, Dowell, Lookman
LW: Richarlison, Lookman, Bernard, Bolasie, Sigurdsson, Vlasic
ST: Tosun, Niasse, Calvert-Lewin, Ramirez
 
Players to Leave:
The squad is still way too big so i'd say there is probably going to be at least 6 outs.
Probably Gone: Martina, Besic, Bolasie, Vlasic (Loan?), Galloway(Loan?), Pennington(Loan?), Browning(Loan?), J. Williams (Loan)
Possibly Gone: Ramirez, Baningime (Loan), Dowell (Loan)
We're going to need to keep one of Bolasie/Vlasic/Ramirez otherwise we will have no first team wingers outside of the matchday squad as you will see below. If Zouma's deal falls through I'd say we'd need to keep Pennington at the club as CB cover.
 
Starting XI
Silva has already said he'll play a 4-3-3 this season saying last month “Depending the profile of my No. 6, I can play one and two or I can play two and one behind the striker depending on the profile of our No. 6. If we play Schneiderlin, he is a player who likes to play more alone which gives more freedom to the other two midfielders and this is the system I use more”. I think Gomes will eventually be the No. 6 in this system, relegating Schneiderlin to the bench. With Gomes (or Schneiderlin) sitting behind Gylfi I think it's going to work more like a 4-2-3-1 in possession but then a 4-3-3 behind the ball and counter attacking. So I think our full strength starting XI will eventually look like this:

 
Apart from the CB pairing, I think the rest of the starting XI picks itself. I'd be surprised if Mina is paired with Keane or Jagielka. Given his height, size and lack of pace I think Mina will need to be paired with a more mobile defender who can track back in counter attacks (in the same way that Mertesacker was always paired with Hummels or Friedrich for Germany or Koscielny for Arsenal) which will either be Zouma, the 9th fastest player in the premier league, or Holgate who also has an impressive recovery pace.
 
 
Thoughts blues?

Could not agree more.
 
Some of the contracts signed this season have been questionable to say the least:
- a 1 year extension for 36 year old Gareth Barry who plays in a position where we already have Gueye, Schneiderlin, Davies, McCarthy and Besic.
- Matthew Pennington getting a new 2 year deal, when next season he's going to be 24 years old and probably the 7th choice CB.
- Dominic Calvert-Lewin signing a new 5 year deal when he was already on a 4 year deal and hadn't really done anything too impressive since making his debut.
- Seamus Coleman, who still had 2 years left on his deal, signing a new 5 year contract weeks after suffering a double leg break with no return date.
- Kevin Mirallas getting this new 3 year deal after 2 consecutive underwhelming seasons.
 
I can't see how any of these are even transfer market-minded contract renewals. I thought Steve Walsh would help us make better decisions in the transfer/contracts market but my fear is that we still don't have a capable board and management making these decisions. To transform the club, half of it has to be on the field and the other half has to be off it.

A new keeper would be nice and we probably will buy one, but this should be like the 5th or 6th priority in terms of signings. Robles is a B to B+ keeper. Someone list me the occasions where we dropped points because of Robles this season? And then give me the list of the available A-quality goalkeepers who are realistic transfers?
 
IMO if you want to increase efficiency in this squad, the priority of signings should look like this:
1. a quicker, ball-playing central defender to partner Williams
2. a quick tall target-man striker to either replace or supplement Lukaku
3. a right winger who can get 8+ goals and alleviate the goalscoring responsibilities
4. a creative attacking play maker to either replace or supplement Barkley
5. a new goalkeeper
6. a designated right back who has greater crossing accuracy than Mason Holgate
7. a backup left back

Mirallas has been ineffectual as a sub this season so I don't know if I buy into the argument that he'll be a handy squad player next season. Valencia has looked much better coming off the bench than Mirallas, but I doubt he'll be signed permanently next season. Sample size is too small as Valencia has only started in 4 league games, but I think most people's opinion would be that Mirallas is a better player than Valencia - but IMO i'd rather have Valencia on the bench than Mirallas..

Looking back at why we didn't crack the top 6 this year, it comes down to the 10 game stretch between Late-September and Mid-December where we dropped 23 points from an available 30:
 
Bournemouth L 1-0
Crystal Palace D 0-0
Manchester City D 1-1
Burnley L 2-1
West Ham W 2-0
Chelsea L 5-0
Swansea D 1-1
Southampton L 1-0
Man U D 1-1
Watford L 3-2
 
Kevin Mirallas was poor in all 10 of those games, and especially so against Bournemouth, Swansea and Watford in particular. If you took the 11 most used players in the squad and averaged their performances over the course of the season, I'd say Mirallas would be last barring maybe Funes Mori.
 
I think Mirallas falls into the Deulofeu category of player - high max, low mean..

Looking back at why we didn't crack the top 6 this year, it comes down to the 10 game stretch between Late-September and Mid-December where we dropped 23 points from an available 30:
 
Bournemouth L 1-0
Crystal Palace D 0-0
Manchester City D 1-1
Burnley L 2-1
West Ham W 2-0
Chelsea L 5-0
Swansea D 1-1
Southampton L 1-0
Man U D 1-1
Watford L 3-2
 
Kevin Mirallas was poor in all 10 of those games, and especially so against Bournemouth, Swansea and Watford in particular. If you took the 11 most used players in the squad and averaged their performances over the course of the season, I'd say Mirallas would be last barring maybe Funes Mori.
 
I think Mirallas falls into the Deulofeu category of player - high max, low mean..

Mate, I was young free and single myself a long, long, long
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Long time ago ??
 
I had a red 3 litre Capri and I thought Inwas fucking gorgeous in it.

Student accommodation may suit you, if so look around the Sefton Park area for a flat/bedsit.

Ha ha, one bit of advice mate is this is Everton so expect something to go wrong somewhere down the line ?

Hi mate, you will get a season ticket for next season no problem, but you're best applying as soon as they come out, that way you'll get the best seats available.
 
For a first time ST I'd recommend the main stand or Upper Bullens as long as they aren't obstructedvisws.
 
You can put the ticket on stub hub but there's no guarantee it'll sell. You can sell it as many times as you like and you can ask as much or as little you want for it. Once it's sold the club issue an actual match ticket to the buyer so you don't have to send your season ticket in. The person buying it can pay an upgrade fee to make it into a full adult ticket
 
With regards to where to stay, a young lad on the lash, it has to be in the City Centre. You'd be surprisedhow reasonable a 1 bed flat rental is in the city centre if you look carefully enough

He doesn't say anywhere he wants him to be sold. On top of that funes Mori is our worst centre half and I cringe at the thought of him becoming our first choice cb

I agree he has all the attributes to a better than average central defender with good coaching.

Ha ha, a 25 year old with potential, he may have had potential 5 or 6 years ago but I agree with what your saying.
 
The other two should be sold before Mori.

We have a 34 year old and a 32 year old and you want to sell the 25 year old full Argentinian international who has huge potential. Absolutely clueless

The Chelsea game while painful to watch, was a good exercise in showing what we need to fix in our squad. If I had my way I would bring three new key players in either January or in the summer:
 
A tall, strong, quick striker to backup Lukaku = Sebastien Haller
A good young goalkeeper to replace Stekelenberg = Jordan Pickford
A naturally athletic box-to-box midfielder = Youri Tielemans or Ruben Neves (although both probably too young and raw to go straight into the starting XI)
 
 
IMO, of the current squad:
- Browning, Garbutt, Rodríguez, Kone, Niasse, Gibson, McCarthy and Miralas should be offloaded unless they can prove their worth before the end of the season.
- Barkley, Deulofeu, Besic, Tarashaj, Galloway, Holgate and Davies should be in the squad for next season based solely on their age and potential.
- Joel, Lennon and Oviedo (maybe less so) are useful squad players.
- Jags and Barry could be useful squad players and provide experience to the younger blokes in training.
- Lukaku and Gueye should be kept at all costs.
- Bolasie, Williams and Baines should stay in the starting XI.
- Jury is still out on what to do with Stek, Cleverely, Valencia, Funes Mori or Coleman.

If/when Sunderland get relegated in May, I think Pickford would be available for around £10-14 million. Robles is contracted until June 2018 and Stek until June 2019. If I was manager I would sign someone new, keep Robles and offload Stekelenburg at the end of the season but the problem is that Stekelenburg has no transfer value while Robles does - the only other alternative is to have three senior goalkeepers and possibly loan one out.
 
I'd be disappointed if Stekelenburg was still first choice at the beginning of next season. While he was exceptional against Tottenham and truly exceptional against Manchester City, he was directly to blame for goals at Burnley and Chelsea. He's a good keeper and seems like a very professional bloke but I don't want him as number 1 because of his inconsistency, long history of injuries and age.

Thought Koeman got the balance wrong. McCarthy can't play the traditional DM/CM role that Barry plays - his distribution/passing is one of the weakest parts of his game. The only position that suits him is the ball winning midfielder role that Gueye plays. Unless Barkley drops back more, there is no point playing two of the same style DMs in the center of the park.

The Liverpool Echo is a joke. In his match ratings, Greg O'Keefe gave Gueye a 6 - which is the same rating he gave Stek, Williams and Lennon. And then he gives Barkley an 8..
It's like this guy didn't even watch the game.

Koeman's Southampton were very patchy last year, especially leading into November/Decemeber. Take out the 4-0 Arsenal win and you're seeing a 6 game undefeated run, followed by a 7 game winless run, followed by another 6 game undefeated run. With a tough run of fixtures in December - Man United (H), Watford (A), Arsenal (H), Liverpool (H), Leicester (A), Hull (A) - I'd be very weary that we don't drop too many points in November leading into that run: Chelsea away and Southampton away are the two that standout as potential 'momentum stoppers'.

Some of my own takeaways from this analysis:
- Besic is a defensive workhorse. Last season he made an impressive number of tackles, clearances and blocks for a DM. He's not a dissimilar player to Gueye.
- Deulofeu is one of our most valuable players when he is on the field. 9.1 crosses, 0.52 assists and 0.65 through balls per 90 are all pretty phenomenal stats. His shooting percentage and on target percentages are also extremely high - you can see why Koeman wanted to experiment with him up front. I'd like to see him get a few more opportunities leading the line.
- Valencia is still very raw but there could be something there. It's very obvious that Koeman needs to work on reducing his high number of offsides and improving his shooting accuracy. But that being said, he had a decent goals per 90 figure (0.357) and he gets away a healthy number of shots (3.033) - both a pretty good considering he was mainly used as a wider player at West Ham.
 
 

I realised yesterday that all of our new signings over the summer came from the Premier League and that with the exception of Mason Holgate, all members of our squad played at least 1 minute of PL football last season. I had a couple of hours to kill this afternoon so I imported statistical data from the PL website and crunched some numbers on our current squad based on last season's stats. I tend to think that season totals (e.g. total tackles, total passes, etc.) or stats per game (e.g. goals per game, shots per game) skew towards players who start matches. I find that stats per 90 minutes of football (e.g. assists per 90 minutes, blocks per 90 minutes) are much more accurate when comparing players. Below is the overview of the numbers I analysed:
 

 
Key:
M = Minutes YC = Yellow Cards RC = Red Cards FO = Fouls SA = Saves PU = Punches GC = Goals Conceded GC/SA% = Goals Conceded-to-Saves Percentage TA = Tackles
BL = Blocks CL = Clearances HC = Headed Clearances PA = Passes TB = Through Balls CR = Crosses GO = Goals AS = Assists SH = Shots SO = Shots On Target WO = Woodwork
OF = Offsides GO/SH% = Goals-to-Shots Percentage SO/SH% = On Target Shooting Percentage

Some of my own takeaways from this analysis:
- Besic is a defensive workhorse. Last season he made an impressive number of tackles, clearances and blocks for a DM. He's not a dissimilar player to Gueye.
- Deulofeu is one of our most valuable players when he is on the field. 9.1 crosses, 0.52 assists and 0.65 through balls per 90 are all pretty phenomenal stats. His shooting percentage and on target percentages are also extremely high - you can see why Koeman wanted to experiment with him up front. I'd like to see him get a few more opportunities leading the line.
- Valencia is still very raw but there could be something there. It's very obvious that Koeman needs to work on reducing his high number of offsides and improving his shooting accuracy. But that being said, he had a decent goals per 90 figure (0.357) and he gets away a healthy number of shots (3.033) - both a pretty good considering he was mainly used as a wider player at West Ham.