If Everton are still a big club they CANNOT sell John Stones to Chelsea

Whether the view is right or not, this whole thing has gotten very odd given that what Chelsea are doing now with Stones happens every single transfer window somewhere. RS held firm on Ratboy when Arsenal bid £40m and £1 but Man Utd squeezed out £80m odd from Madrid when Ronaldo said he wanted off; same with Spurs and Bale. Man Utd chased Shaw for ages until Southampton finally accepted the £24m on offer.

This whole Stones saga has so many vested interests involved, it's untrue. What annoys me now is when papers like the Mirror try to get all righteous and 'take a stand against the money clubs'. Where were their articles in the past when the rich clubs bankrolled other transfers? They've been kissing the arse of the big clubs for so many years and now all of a sudden they get all righteous about it. Talk about jumping on the bandwagon (late) just to try and sell more papers. It was only a few days ago they were saying Man Utd would be a great club for him to move to!

At the end of the day, whether Stones stays or goes is down to one person and one person only and that is the player himself. Let's not kid ourselves about the whole 'long-term contract' thing – it means fuck all these days. If a player really wants to leave and is going to throw his dummy out of the pram, then the club is better off getting rid. However, in saying that, there has been no public showing or signs from Stones that he actually badly wants to leave. He's still playing well (unlike the 6-1 stuffing during the Lescott saga) and has made no public comments about wanting out (unlike Ratboy). Doesn't obviously mean it hasn't happen in private.

I'm sure Stones's new agent will be trying to persuade him to leave (as she'll no doubt get a £300-400k bonus plus 1-2% of his Chelsea salary). I'm also sure that Stones would love to go to a CL club (which ambitious young player wouldn't?) and if we accepted a bid he'd happily go. However, he doesn't seem the dummy-out-the-pram type so may be okay to stay knowing he'll probably go after the Euros.

If/once Stones goes, I'm sure the paper will start raving about how a great England prospect can learn off the 'great' JT!

Everton at the start did the right thing saying 'not for sale'. However, in football these days 'not for sale' more often than not just means 'not unless you bid a massive amount'. I think looking back, we should have said Stones is not for sale but if Chelsea really want him the price is £Xm and you have until 15 August to make the bid or he's going nowhere. X could have been something like £40m.

Stones would be a massive loss but one single player does not make a club. I would not have been too unhappy to lose him for a silly amount, that was then reinvested into the squad. But that was a couple of weeks ago. It's now getting to the 'too late' stage to bring any non-panic signings in so for that reason we should keep him. By all means let Chelsea pay £10m now for an option to sign him for £30m or £40m next summer but I think it's too late to get decent replacements in.