Longest Thread! for Everton Discussion

[Palfy]

Sat in the bar at lunch and started talking to an Italian who happened to be an Inter supporter, obviously got on to subject of Lukaku they worship him, telling me he’s scored 14 goals in 18 league games  plus 2 in CL.

Then he said of Kean very talented player but will be trouble like Ballotelli, found that quite interesting that that’s how some Italians view him. 
Then I thought in all honesty who would we want at the club right now out of those 2, for me it would have to be Lukaku for me he does what it says on the tin and scores goals were ever he goes. 

[markjazzbassist]

1 hour ago, Palfy said:

Sat in the bar at lunch and started talking to an Italian who happened to be an Inter supporter, obviously got on to subject of Lukaku they worship him, telling me he’s scored 14 goals in 18 league games  plus 2 in CL.

Then he said of Kean very talented player but will be trouble like Ballotelli, found that quite interesting that that’s how some Italians view him. 
Then I thought in all honesty who would we want at the club right now out of those 2, for me it would have to be Lukaku for me he does what it says on the tin and scores goals were ever he goes. 

Loved Lukaku he was a legend for me the dude scored goals like a machine.  He wasn’t perfect but he was a fun to watch.

[MikeO]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/51021054

[Palfy]

4 hours ago, MikeO said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/51021054

Once a blue always a blue. 

[pete0]

Made me smile that. Just think once he'd learned his trade at Arsenal he can come here for a job for life. 

[Cornish Steve]

On 07/01/2020 at 07:58, MikeO said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/51021054

Just read that. Quite funny.

[duncanmckenzieismagic]

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jan/08/everton-director-marcel-brands-wards-off-angry-fans-at-training-base

Goodison will be toxic on Saturday if every single player gives anything less than 200% for the entire 90 minutes 

[Matt]

17 minutes ago, TallPaul1878 said:

I absolutely have no problem at all with the fans protesting at the training ground. Something has to give at the club, our recruitment has been abysmal. We are paying top dollar for players who weren't good enough for their old clubs and aren't good enough to be at our club.

They have no affinity for the club nor, it seems, personal pride. I don't expect a foreign player to be a die hard Evertonian but I do expect them to be a professional. Are they even ashamed of the way they have been playing?

I read an article today with regards to Steve Walsh who was criticised for pur previous recruitment of players like Williams and Bolasie. Apparently he claims he had deals prepared for players such as Robertson, Maguire and Haaland a season before they had left for other clubs and these "diamonds in the rough" were turned down by top brass as they were committed to "big name" signings. If this is true then it is damning.

We can ill afford to be making scatter brained recruitment decisions. We have let good players leave the club and generally have profited well from them. Lukaku, Stones, Barkley etc have all boosted the coffers but we have utterly failed to replace them properly. I have no problem with players moving on so long as it is not happening every season ala Southampton and we are getting maximum value. Players come, players go. We don't want to be a club that is known to make it unnecessarily difficult for players to move if they want to eventually. We need to be a club that signs players who are actually proud to pull on the shirt, who will give their best even if that is only for a few seasons. So long as we are bringing in the best young talent available we will be fine.

I’d only add to that last line, and say we need to balance best young talent with proven winners, ala Barry. The Napoli lad who, I think you, said was too old, would be fine by me even if we made a loss provided that he helped improve the squad.

Balance between youth and experience is more important than balancing the books. Not to say that the latter isn’t important, but if you get the player balance, the books will look after themselves as well as occupy the trophy cabinet 

[Bailey]

33 minutes ago, TallPaul1878 said:

I absolutely have no problem at all with the fans protesting at the training ground. Something has to give at the club, our recruitment has been abysmal. We are paying top dollar for players who weren't good enough for their old clubs and aren't good enough to be at our club.

They have no affinity for the club nor, it seems, personal pride. I don't expect a foreign player to be a die hard Evertonian but I do expect them to be a professional. Are they even ashamed of the way they have been playing?

I read an article today with regards to Steve Walsh who was criticised for pur previous recruitment of players like Williams and Bolasie. Apparently he claims he had deals prepared for players such as Robertson, Maguire and Haaland a season before they had left for other clubs and these "diamonds in the rough" were turned down by top brass as they were committed to "big name" signings. If this is true then it is damning.

We can ill afford to be making scatter brained recruitment decisions. We have let good players leave the club and generally have profited well from them. Lukaku, Stones, Barkley etc have all boosted the coffers but we have utterly failed to replace them properly. I have no problem with players moving on so long as it is not happening every season ala Southampton and we are getting maximum value. Players come, players go. We don't want to be a club that is known to make it unnecessarily difficult for players to move if they want to eventually. We need to be a club that signs players who are actually proud to pull on the shirt, who will give their best even if that is only for a few seasons. So long as we are bringing in the best young talent available we will be fine.

Part of this is also being able to get a manager to improve them. Obviously we went through a terrible patch of buying players that had been made to look good by other managers, but we ultimately did the same with Barkley, Rom and Stones. Martinez made them into those players. Silva has done the same with Richarlison, Digne and probably Gomes too. 

The problem we have is that we have too many similar players. Look at our midfield problems as an example. If Gbamin was fit maybe it would have helped, but if you get a Tielemans type player in there as well, the options and dynamics of that midfield are completely different. 

I think Brands has done well, especially in balancing the purchases with the potential youth players coming through. It's not perfect but he really hasn't been here that long in the grand scheme of things and if you add a pacey promising CB and a midfielder as I have described, the team is a lot more balanced.

[Bailey]

15 minutes ago, TallPaul1878 said:

The problem is that the players we have signed are missing the vital ingredient required to be successful, a heart. Lee Carsley had nowhere near the ability of Schneiderlin or Sigurdsson but he was a million miles away from them in terms of commitment. 100% effort is the absolute bare minimum that a player can give.

We absolutely must put to an end this practice of signing players who are discarded from top clubs and players who are only leaving lower clubs or foreign clubs because we are offering triple or quadruple their old contracts.

Tim Cahill always talks about how he begged Blackburn Rovers to take him and give him a chance but they snubbed him. Look at what they missed out on. Look at what we are missing out on as other clubs are snapping up players whilst we chased Wilfried Zaha and ended up with Alex Iwobi.

I might be one of only a few on here but I don't think our players lack commitment.  I didnt see a lack of commitment on Sunday, I saw a lack of application and a lack of understanding intelligence. An example of that is Sidibe. I don't believe he wasn't trying but he didn't have a bloody clue what he was doing all the time he was at right mid. When they scored half our team starting trying to kick lumps out of them, that is commitment of some kind. Even with the Kean / Ferguson fiasco, it wasn't commitment that Kean didn't show it was application and intelligence. 

I do however agree to an extent with your point, in that we should be signing players with a point to prove but I think you would be hard pressed to argue that our latest cast offs from big clubs (Digne, Mina and Gomes) haven't been successful signings. Each player needs to be picked on their merits and we need to start thinking about how we want to play and getting players in that fit that mould and compliment the other players we have (and want to keep). That for me has been our biggest failing.

[duncanmckenzieismagic]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/every-everton-players-2019-20-21242022

[chicagoblue]

9 minutes ago, duncanmckenzieismagic said:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/every-everton-players-2019-20-21242022

Cuco fucking Martina is on 35k a week?!?  We are a laughing stock.

[Shukes]

5 hours ago, chicagoblue said:

Cuco fucking Martina is on 35k a week?!?  We are a laughing stock.

Would rather have him playing than this shower of shit.

[StevO]

I see the media have found another excuse to put the boot in. 
 

[duncanmckenzieismagic]

https://twitter.com/talksport/status/1215014059159896064?s=21

[Palfy]

7 minutes ago, duncanmckenzieismagic said:

https://twitter.com/talksport/status/1215014059159896064?s=21

Fair play to the supporters why shouldn’t they have the right to ask for explanations as to why players didn’t give a fuck. 

[StevO]

3 hours ago, Palfy said:

Fair play to the supporters why shouldn’t they have the right to ask for explanations as to why players didn’t give a fuck. 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but it doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t believe supporters should be turning up at the training ground kicking off. Some will think it’s fine and justified, I don’t agree with it myself. If I was friends or related to any of the players, even the ones who weren’t targeted, I’d be telling them to get out. 

I’ve seen people assaulted at work over £5, without half the passion of a football fan. Dangerous precedent for wound up supporters to be turning up, worries me a lot. It wouldn’t take too much for a situation like that to get out of hand. 
 

I’m sure plenty won’t agree with me, just my honest opinion. 

[Sibdane]

40 minutes ago, StevO said:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but it doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t believe supporters should be turning up at the training ground kicking off. Some will think it’s fine and justified, I don’t agree with it myself. If I was friends or related to any of the players, even the ones who weren’t targeted, I’d be telling them to get out. 

I’ve seen people assaulted at work over £5, without half the passion of a football fan. Dangerous precedent for wound up supporters to be turning up, worries me a lot. It wouldn’t take too much for a situation like that to get out of hand. 
 

I’m sure plenty won’t agree with me, just my honest opinion. 

If rumors are true, these supporters said they would bring 200/300 supporters back to wreck the players' vehicles. Sad state of affairs. 

[duncanmckenzieismagic]

22 minutes ago, Sibdane said:

If rumors are true, these supporters said they would bring 200/300 supporters back to wreck the players' vehicles. Sad state of affairs. 

It’s not true

[Sibdane]

36 minutes ago, duncanmckenzieismagic said:

It’s not true

I'm glad to hear that then. 

[Palfy]

1 hour ago, StevO said:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but it doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t believe supporters should be turning up at the training ground kicking off. Some will think it’s fine and justified, I don’t agree with it myself. If I was friends or related to any of the players, even the ones who weren’t targeted, I’d be telling them to get out. 

I’ve seen people assaulted at work over £5, without half the passion of a football fan. Dangerous precedent for wound up supporters to be turning up, worries me a lot. It wouldn’t take too much for a situation like that to get out of hand. 
 

I’m sure plenty won’t agree with me, just my honest opinion. 

The truth is they never kicked off they were orderly and civil through out there protest, that is very sobering in my opinion that football fans care that much that they would take the time to go and ask the players that let us down why. 
What you would hope it would achieve is that it makes them realise that there half hearted attitude as not gone unnoticed, and it spurs them into pulling there fingers out and trying in the future, because the supporters are the life blood of this club. 

[chicagoblue]

22 hours ago, Shukes said:

Would rather have him playing than this shower of shit.

How quickly we forget. I haven’t been watching as long as some in here but he’s the worst senior pro to pull on a shirt that I can remember. 

[markjazzbassist]

3 hours ago, StevO said:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but it doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t believe supporters should be turning up at the training ground kicking off. Some will think it’s fine and justified, I don’t agree with it myself. If I was friends or related to any of the players, even the ones who weren’t targeted, I’d be telling them to get out. 

I’ve seen people assaulted at work over £5, without half the passion of a football fan. Dangerous precedent for wound up supporters to be turning up, worries me a lot. It wouldn’t take too much for a situation like that to get out of hand. 
 

I’m sure plenty won’t agree with me, just my honest opinion. 

I’m with you all the way.  It honestly saddens me to see people on here get excited over fans acting like this.  There are ways to protest, to let the club and players know.  Showing up at the ground as a mob isn’t one of them.  We just signed a world class manager who had had no time with the team.  We have a lot of injuries.  Yes we understand the effort wasn’t there, yes we understand some players need to be moved on, but doing something you would expect from milwall fans or similar is not something I can get excited about or support.  How about being intelligent and realizing it takes more than 2 games for a manager to turn things around?  How about using your brains to see the squad and injuries and understand there is very little the manager can do?  How about use your eyes and see players that do care and do give it their all and focus on that knowing the crap ones will be gone?  Or you can use the logic of a 13 year old school bully and show up to beat em up.  Sickening.

[StevO]

7 hours ago, Palfy said:

The truth is they never kicked off they were orderly and civil through out there protest, that is very sobering in my opinion that football fans care that much that they would take the time to go and ask the players that let us down why. 
What you would hope it would achieve is that it makes them realise that there half hearted attitude as not gone unnoticed, and it spurs them into pulling there fingers out and trying in the future, because the supporters are the life blood of this club. 

I see what you’re saying Palfy, and I’m sure it was civil. But if one of those players did end up in conversation with those lads it wouldn’t have taken too much for passion to boil over and things get out of hand. If these lads were willing to turn up at Finch Farm it’s because they were extremely upset, it doesn’t take much for that to escalate. 
 

If people turned up at your sons workplace to tell him how angry and upset they were with him, how would you react?

[Shukes]

6 hours ago, chicagoblue said:

How quickly we forget. I haven’t been watching as long as some in here but he’s the worst senior pro to pull on a shirt that I can remember. 

I always though he was a scapegoat to be honest mate. Very average player, never good but never shit, just an average premier league mid table player. Not good enough for us, but always put more effort in than these pansies.

Never really saw him standing around letting opposition ghost last him like Morgan, never saw him have one good game and then a totally reverse like Sidibe, actually can remember him on the pitch, not like Sigurdson, remember him sprinting after players, not a gentle jog after them like Keane.

Haha going ott here, more frustration with our application than anything mate. I would accept Earl Barret out of retirement at the min. Niasse as CB, anything!

[Shukes]

8 hours ago, Sibdane said:

If rumors are true, these supporters said they would bring 200/300 supporters back to wreck the players' vehicles. Sad state of affairs. 

That report says that the threatened to come back with 200 players and that it wouldn’t be peaceful if they came back.

Are people saying this link is just BS? I haven’t actually listened to the radio interview.

[Palfy]

49 minutes ago, Shukes said:

That report says that the threatened to come back with 200 players and that it wouldn’t be peaceful if they came back.

Are people saying this link is just BS? I haven’t actually listened to the radio interview.

Yes it is, there were no threats or raised voices, just overly concerned supporters possibly going about it the wrong way, who knows. 
The club have confirmed that a conversation took place between Brands and a group of supporters.  
It never said any threats or aggressive behaviour was endured, and I’m sure if there had of been they would have said. 

[Shukes]

2 hours ago, Palfy said:

Yes it is, there were no threats or raised voices, just overly concerned supporters possibly going about it the wrong way, who knows. 
The club have confirmed that a conversation took place between Brands and a group of supporters.  
It never said any threats or aggressive behaviour was endured, and I’m sure if there had of been they would have said. 

Ahh I only read the linked report above. That said that they had threatened to come back with 200 supporters if they didn’t get to speak to anyone.

Usual tabloid crap then.

[Sibdane]

2 hours ago, Shukes said:

Ahh I only read the linked report above. That said that they had threatened to come back with 200 supporters if they didn’t get to speak to anyone.

Usual tabloid crap then.

That's what I read, but who really knows? There's no doubt the papers will want to sell headlines though. 

[Louis]

Li Tie is now China's manager and Brian McBride is now involved with the USA national team https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2020/01/brian-mcbride-named-general-manager-of-us-mens-national-team