holystove

I think a few good strikers would get a good return in this side given an extended run as lone striker. We are set up for strikers to flourish.

Maybe someone with a year on their contract, but is he going to intentionally play like a plank for three years? Missing any number of international matches as a result? Is he bollocks.
 
He likes it here, it's obvious, and he's going nowhere unless it's the right deal for Everton.

Yes, let's replace a 22/23 year old striker with a 28/29 year old striker when our only other striker is 30+ already... Veeeeeeery clever.

Guess we'll see. If all that is correct, 30m for a player in his last season of a contract after proving himself for 1 season at the highest level is still steep for me.

I probabably go to more Everton games than you, I certainly watch most of the other Everton games on streams, I've played enough games at center forward and scored way more goals than you could ever dream of Billy!
 
You've just got a hard on because Lukaku missed a couple of goals yesterday.
 
'recreational poster',.........you might post a lot, but most of it is bullsbut.
 
Keep telling every one that Kone is better than Lukaku, maybe someone will come in with a £50million bid for him
 
Oh, what did I make of the game, what do you think I made of it Billy, pissed of we didn't get three points.

If we had a prime Beardsley now we would be in top 4 - what a player he was, he was the perfect strike partner. We never even had a good side when he was playing for us, the amount of times his shimmy sold a player was a joke, they knew he was gonna do it but nothing they could do about it.

I give up.

It was more about keeping the faith in a talented, young player who performed poorly in a shit team but still managed to bang in goals to help us out rather than writing him off because he (along with the whole team) was asked to completely redevelop his (and their) game and was expensive, neither were his fault.
 
I don't believe, and never have, that its a matter of if you get vaulted, it's a matter of when you accept you have been

Its almost like he has never had a spell of games where even his most ardent supporters were left somewhat "dissapointed and concerned"..... well thats not exactly true is it.....
 
Whatever happened before the Derby game has somewhat stayed with him. Lets not get all gooey and gloss over some pretty abysmal games lads, its still the same player and we can only hope the penny has dropped because I am not prepared to go down that route again.
 
If Rom vaults me then great - it means that he is putting shifts in - it means he has realised he isn't just in the team to be "johnny on the spot", it means that he realises that there is more to football than coasting through a match, not jumping, not using strength - just waiting for the perfect pass.
 
 
At the moment we have 2 p[layers with a chance of young player of the year - Rom and Gerry.

Mertens, De Bruyne, Hazard. He's just not as good as them.

Don't get me wrong, he should have been better than anything he's shown so far, but I dont think he was ever destined to go to the top. Just a run of the mill player who should have had a decent career (and still may go on to do just that).

He stood out because he was an Englishman that could use both feet, which was rare. It was just that those two feet were only good for passing the ball 5 yards and not achieving anything. That goal against United was the exception, nowhere near the norm. His norm was to be invisible. We robbed City for £12m, great business by whoever negotiated that.
 
He was exceptional at marking empty space though, I'll give him that.

£40M?
 
it's a definate sell from me. I know Matt may not be surprised to hear that and be potentially heartbroken but its good business, just in the way £28m for Fellaini was - and for exactly the same reasons.
 
Lukaku "on his day" is worth £50m+, however Lukaku on "one of those days" is worth £8m. Felliani was very much the same but had a higher "lower level perfomance" than Rom.
 
If he was able to demonstrate the ability to apply himself like he did against Liverpool in the derby and cut out the usual mundane nothing games then I would keep at all costs really. I just feel that by the time he is 25 and the word "potential" becomes replaced with "frustrating" we will have seen too many games where he doesn't offer enough.
 
£40m if we have the time to do some serious striker scouting can be a fair chunk of money to spend. We could get 2 top end strikers for that. Look at the business West Ham did.

Fair play to him lasting that long, that is one marathon of a game

we have a few problems I agree, but with ball retention being a necessity - having our front man miscontrol the ball or generally just not compete for it is unacceptable. Going sideways or whatever isn't an issue for Lukaku - its when the ball is played to him and is travelling at knee height, chest height, head height or hit with pace, it doesn't stick.
 
I really do not think the game accomodates players who can't control a football. We can say play to his strengths - which means:-
 
wait till he is onside before passing (he really has to sort this out, its an absolute crime how often he is offside, I have looked to see if it is down to the other players, it isn't - it really is poor and the stats prove it)
play every pass to him on the deck at a moderate pace  
The tell tale game for me was against Algeria in the world cup. He was awful. People said he was isolated... he wasnt. He made himself isolated. He had a tremendously talented support line and really just didnt do anything. Was taken off, origi showed him the way and then he was a different beast vs USA - because he made himself less isolated and the tired legs gave him more space.

Don't get your knickers in a twist, some of the greatest footballers ever have been one footed - at the same time don't get all excited over Roms goal. Unless you are being selective it is fair to say Rom is poor on his right foot.
 
Even a blind squirrel finds the odd nut.

He's left-footed. No, he's not elite with both feet. But, he has the confidence and skill to just go ahead and bend in a shot like that with his right. And that's good enough. I wouldn't describe him as poor with his weak foot.
 
I would say he could improve his back-to-goal play (which he started to do this past season), jumping/heading, physicality, intensity, first touch (started to improve this as well) and close control while running (he leans a bit too far forward and his feet and the ball get behind him).
 
However, none of this means that he isn't a good striker. He could be elite if he improved a few of those things. Every player has aspects of their game that are lacking. It's about identifying those things and working on them in training to improve them a bit, while also having an identity as a player. We also need to play to his strengths as much as he needs to work to improve those weaker aspects of his game. He has great technique, excellent vision, a rocket for a left foot, and can find the back of the net. He makes good runs, and we need to start getting the ball to him when he's making these runs. He will finish or find the person who can. He's shown this repeatedly. You can't ignore that.

Who gives a shit whether he can defend or not, what I want to know is does he have a good first touch?

Yes definitely.

See, I told you that you would be talking shite!

You could , but you would be talking shite

You know what, it is a strange argument. Especially when you insist on objective debate but when provided to you, you go "yeah, but..." and find some other nonsense to skip over the fact you're wrong and have no counterargument to present. For example:
 
"What about that 1 time where he got 1 goal in 11. He's not good enough" - Proven wrong, he contributed to 6 goals in that period
"Yeah but.... His numbers are inflated because he played in a crap league when he was young. Rooney would've done that" - Proven that, even when you choose to ignore certain bits of evidence to suit your argument, you're proven wrong.
"Yeah but.... He should be better for 28m" - Finally accepted at that its actually Martinezs fault regarding the fee and nothing to do with the player, but still blame he player
"Yeah but.... Kone is a better footballer" - Enough said.
"Yeah but.... He shouldn't be talking to the press" - Even though he is contractually obligated to. Then, when he says he wants to win and play at the top, he is chastised for showing real ambition i.e. wanting to win stuff.
 
On top of that, you would rather reminisce about players who we didn't sign, probably because they didn't want to come or we couldn't afford like Welbeck and Bony (who so far have done sod all since their respective transfers), or compare him to other players 4-9 years older in opposition teams, often with regular CL quality supporting and expect him do the same with the same experience. Whilst at the same time, anyone you vouched for who contributes the square root of fuck all is defended to the hilt despite repeated dismal performances.
 
Then to finish things off, you don't provide your own counter argument in any detail! I assume because you've made your mind up and blame him for being so expensive.
 
The reason I have stuck with this argument with you is because, as I've mentioned several times, I respect you quite a lot. But if you're saying "I've decided, theres no point, I don't want to support him", then I have to change that statement. I respect you in every other topic, even the board stick, but absolutely not here.

You know what is hilarious though.... I understand a lot of Hafs criticisms because when I first joined TT, we had the same dance regarding Yakubu only with roles reversed and nowhere near as much discussion
 
In my defence though, I was only turning 26 and hadn't paid much attention in terms of tactics etc. It was only because of TT that I started really getting into the nuances of the game.
 
e.g. http://www.toffeetalk.com/index.php?/topic/21781-yakubu/?p=221800  
http://www.toffeetalk.com/index.php?/topic/20781-yakubu/?p=207613
 

I don't disagree that 16-year old Rooney was talented. I also don't disagree that the Jupiter League is a poor league.  
But I don't think a 16 year-old Rooney gets even 30 goals in one league season if he's in Belgium.

Yet strangely enough, the young Rooney, in a team playing about as well as we did last year only managed 17 goals in 77 appearances.
 
And then it took him six seasons at United to get to the magical 20 Premier league goals in one season.
 
11 in 29, 16 in 36, 14 in 35, 12 in 27, 12 in 30, 26 in 32.
 
Rom has 17 in 35, 15 in 31, 10 in 36.
 
Pretty similar records I'd say for young forwards, one of these lads played their games with Giggs, Scholes, Tevez and Ronaldo. The other played with Brunt, Morrison, Pienaar and Baines.
 
Before you rip my head off and shit down my throat Haf, I'm not saying Rom is as good as Rooney, but I am saying they aren't a million miles apart at similar ages in terms of putting the ball in the net, which is their primary job.