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21 goals in 21 games. Only Wigan, QPR and Fulham have scored fewer.

He'd certainly be good cover for Saha and Cahill. Could even get a start if one of those was injured

SSN came up with an incredible stat today - Everton's strikers have not scored a goal between them this season from the starting XI!

Same with Vic again today.

Looks like we need to put a sub on after the 1st minute and give them 89 minutes to get a few

Everton were by far the better team in the first half. Should have taken some chances then. Was cringing when Vic went down, hoped it wasn't bad and thankfully he walked away from it. Thought Darron and Shane did quite well on the debuts, considering. The atmosphere there seemed grim.

Ha - snap!

That's a game we should have won with our first half performance. If we had anything up front we'd have been out of sight before Villa scored.

How on earth did Saha stay on the pitch for 87 minutes, he was truly awful.

Still, some positives to take out of it - Donovan looked good, Gibson did OK considering he's not trained with the team and Duffy looked solid enough - altho both him and Heitinga could have done better for the goal.

Al Ahly have denied they're in talks with a Premier League club.

Which almost certainly means they are in talks - just that it won't be with us

I think this could possibly be the issue. I think for players 24 and under, if you sign them on a Pre contract agreement, then you have to pay compensation to the club the player is signed to. I'm not sure how the compensation is worked out though.

He's 25 in April - don't know if that makes a difference?

we bought Vellios last year. We havent spent big money for a long time

You're right Matt. Vellios & Gueye were nominal fee, probably about less than we've paid for loan arrangements for Drenthe and Donovan. That said, we still must be nearly thru instalment payments?

Instalments for previous players and signing on bonuses

This is true but only Fellaini and Barkley have had significant improvements on their contracts this year. And we haven't paid a fee for a player (until today) for more than 2 years, so instalments must be dwindling.

Remember too, that we have reduced the wage bill by about 6m/year net with the players out versus players in.

Prentice has clearly got to Elstone.

' This is not an ageing, threadbare squad'

Average age of the the starting 11 against Spurs was 29.2

What Elstone fails to observe is that the only question isn't 'where has the Arteta money gone'?

The real question for 2011 is 'Where has the Arteta, Pienaar, Vaughan, Yakubu, Beckford and Yobo money gone?' because that amounts to about £19m rather than £10m. So come on Robert, where's the other £9m?

The on;ly way this can be an OK signing is if we still have transfer funds available in this window and we don't sell a centre mid

This is rubbish. We're now claiming he's a goal scoring midfielder ffs. Spose we don't need a striker now!

At least his 1 goal in 10 ratio is better than our current strikeforce (

If we're spending our entire transfer budget on Darron Gibson then we need to offload Bily sharpish. If we don't then he'll get sold last day of the window and Moyes won't see any of the money - again!

They don't WANT to say "the money's paying off the debts" because they are trying to sell the club and don't want it to become a distress sale (which it's close to being)

 

They don't want to reveal the true mess they are in, to put it bluntly.

 

Any interest they have mustered is no more than a polite 'whiff' of the club (since any serious potential of an offer would require the shareholders to be formally notified).... note 'potential' (not a formal offer). If there is reasonable cause to suspect an interested buyer, there's a legal obligation for the shareholders to be notified.

 

It reeks of the board not wanting to actually lose their own money, and discovering they can't sell the club without doing so, since the price of the club is too high.

 

God only knows how many long term agreements the club are entered into.... 50 year lease on Finch Farm is just one example. There could be many other commitments the club are under.

These points would come out in any due diligence, so largely irrelevant

I've done some basic maths based on who's come and gone in 2011. I've tried to be fair and reasonable to the club in the assumptions I've made.

Out - Arteta, Yakubu, Beckford, Vaughan, Pienaar, Yobo, Turner. This amounts to approx 19m income from transfer fees. I don't know what players each are paid but I'd estimate that the reduction in salaries is circa 12m per year.

For sales, I'm assuming the club have 19m in fees and reduced running costs by 12m/year.

In - Donovan, Hahnemann, McFadden, Drenthe, Stracqualursi, Vellios. Including loan and signing-on fees we can assume that has cost us approx 3m. Plus wage costs of approx 6.5m. We also extended Fellaini's contract which will have cost (maybe??) 1.5m signing on fee and an additional 1m/year.

Add all this up and the club should have from player transactions alone - 14.5m from transfer fees and reduced the annual wage bill by 4.5m.

Given that last years operating loss was circa 4m we should be back on an even keel and seen 14m come off the debt? Even if some of the fees are paid in instalments, we can assume that as we have not paid a significant fee for a player for more than 2 years, then we aren't still paying out significant sums in transfer fee instalments?

If our MD and Finance Director are better than me with numbers (please God, lets hope so) then a proportion of the money would be put towards keeping the Bank happy with several million left for some player dealings?

I made him wait whilst i pulled out of a junction today (off a bridge), my Seat shits on his Bentley Continental. "Have THAT Wilson!!!" Oh man, I made myself laugh I did

I thought a lot of the Stoke players were on Wychwood Park?!

It's worth pointing out that they are paid when player's leave the club also.

 

Arteta's agent would take a cut of the Arsenal fee for example.

I thought that was only if a player was being paid a fee by the selling club, a loyalty bonus for example. Everton made Arteta submit a transfer request so they could minimise their costs because technically he asked for the move.

Arsenal as the buying club would have paid the majority of the agents fees.

Admittedly, we'll be paying sizeable agent fees for loan players esp if the owning club isn't getting a big wedge.

It's inconceivable that we've spent 3 mill on agents fees given the financial constraints we have.

Stoke spent loads on players in the summer but only 2 mill to agents??

I hope he does well for us but this can't be seen as anything but a step in the wrong direction. We sold players like McFadden (Beattie, Johnson etc) because we were steadily bringing in better players to replace them and move the squad forward.

Sums up our current predicament really and doesn't give much hope for Bily and Gueye?

Promising start for Luke

http://www.robinsnestforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7426&start=0

Some feel his love for the club and don't want to destroy that nice man who saved us from Peter Johnson. The problem is, that nice man is destroying us and he has no understanding of how he is perceived.

I think that most Evertonians would accept that Bill has done his best for the club. Ultimately it may be that his best is not good enough but I don't think it appropriate for Bill to be ridiculed or lambasted by some of the fans/forum comments (not just on TT).

It would be a shame if any Evertonian felt that they couldn't attend GP to support the team and this should also go for Bill. We, as Evertonians, pride ourselves on being better than the run of the mill fickle footy fans.

So whilst I agree that its time for a change in the boardroom, lets not make it personal.

Finally we are going to buy someone

That's what Mike Ashley said when he sold Andy Carroll

If he was then there's absolutely nothing to say that Leicester turned him down (unless anyone knows different?). Maybe he turned them down?

Fair point. I'm just pissed off I guess.

Does anyone know if Straqualursi was actually on trial at Leicester?

Be interested to know if this rumour is true because Leicester have been trying like hell to get in any number of strikers and took Beckford from us but passed up the chance to sign Straq?

Maybe the loan fee put them off. £1.8m? Really???

Jeez and we can't sell Yobo for that.

Depressing as hell