ToffeeWeb

The amount of air time this right back subject gets seems excessive to me. I know I am in the minority, but I personally like how Moyes tries to develop future players by giving them games out of position.

Jake O’Brien will have got a huge amount of development playing out of position for a whole season rather than sitting on the bench. His overall ball control, fitness and distribution has improved dramatically, even if he won’t ever become a right-back.

Overall what did we lose as a team playing Jake instead of Nathan Patterson? Probably very little, Patterson’s best season for us was in 2022-23 where he started 14 times, notching up zero assists.

Now looking ahead to this season, I can see we are overstocked in the central midfield, with Garner, Norgaard, Iroegbunam, Armstrong, Dewsbury-Hall, Alcaraz and Hackney all fighting for places. And for all Rohl’s qualities, he probably doesn’t get in the side ahead of Dewsbury-Hall, Garner and Norgaard or Hackney.

This makes me think Moyes may instead use the open right-back position to accommodate the development of Rohl, rather than throwing transfer budget at overpriced players like Alastair Johnston.

For me personally, I don’t want to see Moyes buying any more players as he won’t be here beyond his contract. Our next manager will need a pretty heavy rebuild, so will need as much cash as we can get!

I agree with Stu #7. Three weeks to the start of the season and we ended last season dreadfully with Moyes complaining of the lack of depth in the squad and we have brought in only two players who are new to the squad.

We need at least three new players and two of those are at right-back (one plus cover), and a centre-forward who can score 20 in a season.

So frustrating being an Everton fan these days. I’ve been one for 70 years and realize that I may never see a great team here again after Howard Kendall’s great squad of the 1980s.

So many managers since then and so many failures. To cap it all, they bring Moyes back after all his failings at Man Utd, Sunderland and Sociedad.

Yet another Summer of apparent inactivity and apathy by the ownership will convince us that getting into the top echelons of the Premier League table will be very difficult.

There is a nucleus of good talent at the club but failure to address the obvious weaknesses up front is unacceptable.

I, like everyone else, would love to see Beto and/or Barry become regular goal scorers but it seems obvious we have seen the best of them… which is mediocre mostly.

Just so you know how to pronounce his name correctly…

The Nør bit is pronounced «Ner» and the Gaard bit is pronounced «Gord» ….. so ‘Nergord’ it is. Won’t stop everyone calling him ‘Norgard’ though!

Ajay, not at all. I’m just saying what I believe to be the reason we’re not spending fortunes and trying to negotiate every deal.

Transfers, I’d imagine, are a matter of timing. Hackney and Norgaard were available, willing to come, within budget (after negotiations), and it looks like there wasn’t a queue of competition for their signature.

I’m in complete agreement and share everyone’s frustration about a lack of a right-back. Seeing O’Brien there last season drove me mad.

I’m not trying to make excuses. Just stating that the club is likely trying to identify right-backs who are willing to come to a club who have won nothing for years and have no European football, who are available for sale, within budget for both fee and wages, and who will be of a sufficient level to merit a place in the starting line-up.

We could go all out, throw £40M at a right-back, go outside the new rules and, with our history, take a 6-point deduction for our troubles.

Like Jeff says above, I’d imagine we’d be happy to sell certain players to improve our budgets… but it’s down to other clubs wanting them and then the players wanting to make the move.

In an ideal world, we’d sell all the players we don’t want… but as we’ve seen, some of them are pretty shit!