Ramirez joins Valladolid on loan

Well done if this is the case

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p71DzBVSmcI

He'd be a fine player if someone could explain to him that the big white rectangular thing at the end of the pitch is actually related to the objective of the game.

I'm 63 years old, and I play on a men's open league team of 25-year-olds (when I'm healthy enough and they're desperate for players), and, in the past two years, I have scored more goals (2) than Sandro (1).

Sandro and Davy were totally unsuited to the Premier League as neither could cope with the level of fitness and strength required. Bolasie was a show pony similar to the likes of Beagrie. Dreadful amount of money recklessly squandered.

Fingers crossed Sandro leaves without us having to pay up part of his contract. His transfer fee was low but his wages are huge... get rid!

Can only assume that the 14-goal season at Malaga was a fluke, a rare exception to the rule.

Wherever he goes from now though he needs to put down some roots and make a career for himself, the Premier League just wasn't for him at this moment in time.

Our acquisitions of strikers has been unbelievably bad for 30 years! Only Rooney has been world class and he was world class at 15!

The Yak's only limitation was his ability to link up play but that wasn't what we bought him for. We bought him as a goal poacher and that he certainly was. Sadly he was never the same player after his Achilles injury.

Good luck to Sandro - score 17 goals lad and we might get our money back.

If Marcel hadn't come in and saved us with some terrific signings last year, god knows where we'd be.

Sandro Ramírez | Malaga | Goals, Skills, Assists | 2016/17 - HD

I've seen worse players in an Everton shirt. I don't know what happened when he got to Finch Farm, but I and many others were happy.

I located Lyndon's article on the signing: Everton seal Sandro transfer. Unfortunately, all the ToffeeWeb comments saying this was a disastrous signing have been removed.

Bottom line is that he's just not good enough for the Premier League.

On saying that, I wish the lad well and hope he moves on.

I remember when Chelsea signed Bogarde in 2000, he was on 㿔k per week: he played 11 games in his first season, he played 1 more game in the next 3 seasons, wouldn't move because of the money. Then again could you blame him?

Steve Walsh should have been taken to court for the gross neglect that took place and as for Koeman, too much time spent on the golf course in summer 2017 thinking he had Giroud “in the bag” rather than seeing what was going on under his nose.

Imo, all the above spent almost as bad as us, none improved, most sacked managers afterwards.

Our biggest problem was we hammered the transfer window on around 10 players who didn't really better the team.

Rooney, Vlasic, Williams, Schneiderlin, Sandro – all pretty much flopped, so did all the others really apart from Sigurdsson, and he struggled once Koeman decided to play him wide.

We have to take it on the chin, get the wage bill down, kick our wounds and crack back on. We should just be thankful Moshiri allows us to keep spending!!!

Buying Tosun and Walcott was another waste of a fortune, add that to Sam's paydays and we lost unbelievable amounts of good money.

No matter how it went wrong here, I can't understand why it all fell apart for him back in Spain? There was obviously ability there to get into positions to put that final ball away!

Oh, well. Much regret, but I hope he makes it wherever!

Thanks also, to the thousands who volunteered to drive him to the Airport, but it could be a Taxi Service you may come to regret.

Mike G, Valladolidity? 😂

For those of you into your stats, I remember reading that he exceeded his expected goals metric in Spain for that one fluke season. He shouldn't have scored as many as he did. He just caught lightning in a bottle that year.

All seasons prior, he had a much lower expected goals. Meaning he wasn't getting into scoring positions and, when he did, he was wasteful.

I'm not sure what weight to put in that new “expected goals” stat as it's only been around a few years.

As for Peter Warren @15. To put Duncan Ferguson ahead of Lukaku is absurd.

Granted when he first signed in 1994-95, loan and permanent there was no doubt we were signing one of the hottest striking prospects in British Football. However, he failed to live up to his potential for a large number of reasons. Discipline was one, missed too many games through suspension and cost us games by putting us down to ten men. Injury, missed a lot of games through injury. Not his fault.

But most importantly this was a guy who simply could find no consistency at all in his motivation. He'd be unbelievable against Liverpool and Man Utd. But when we were rank desperate for 3 points at the Dell, or a performance at Highfield Road, even against the likes of bog-standard Wimbledon sides at home, this man was nowhere to be seen. Hence why we were often in a relegation battle. This man was a 10- to 12-goal-a-season striker at best.

Has to be one of the worst signings ever.

It's the worst business we have done since selling Lineker and spending the money on a new roof on the Gladwys Street stand.

I do have one international appearance. Pickup game in Hong Kong. But I was wearing an Argentina shirt at the time.

DK and Eddie, glad you liked that one. I was a little sleepy when I posted it, that's my only excuse for such a painful pun.

As for Sandro. Good to see that video again. If you watch it thinking Sandro is shit, then there's some signs, the control is not quite close enough, and there's some luck combined with some bad defending. But you have to say, if the lad gets a head of steam up, his touch is not bad. He's just not as quick as he needs to be and clearly needs confidence to hit the back of the net, but then what striker didn't? I think he'll come good again, but he's not a top class player and bottom half of La Liga is his level.

Personally, I'll never forget That Hat-trick. One of the best days ever. He gets a lot of respect for that, but he doesn't make a Premier League era top-five list for Everton strikers for me.

Don't know about you though?

A lightweight poor man's Jason Statham earning stupid amounts of money.

We are desperate for a striker... Would anyone take Lukaku back?

Only joking, he'd be our best striker still, but he's moved on, and we've moved on. We'd need to completely adjust our tactics to accommodate him and so whilst he's better than we have, would the team be better for having him, especially when we'd have to sacrifice a lot financially to get him back.

Anyway, let's see if Calvert-Lewin can have a top pre-season and start banging the goals in and silence his critics. Meanwhile, maybe Simms will score six against the Kenyans and force his way into Silva's thinking? Maybe Tosun will put on those tight shorts again and start scoring for fun in pre-season and not stop once the season kicks off.

Or maybe Brands will pull off a master stroke and we will forget all about Romelu. Gonna be an interesting summer for sure.

I was very excited about his signing and I still believe there's a player in there. His confidence is shot to shit but should it return?

Bit like I say, I'm in the minority.

I think me with Mark Labett strapped to my back has a better chance of winning the Grand National, than Sandro banging in 20 goals, mate.

Sleep easy.

Waggy was a very good defender and no more.

The two you mention, Wright and Butcher were far superior players. If Weight were not so injury prone he'd have won even more caps. He was an excellent player.

In an era of Bould, Adams, Walker, Mabbut, Pallister, Keown and even fellow ex-Canary centre-back Steve Bruce winning no caps at all I think Dave Watson will be pleased he managed 12 caps.

So you would be happy if we had Austin, Crouch, Calvert-Lewin kind of striker rather than a Lacazette, Aubameyang, Salah, Aguero kind of striker?

The difference being the first ones are in also-ran teams such as ourselves and the latter in top teams.

Hmmm....

Dave, sorry it was a brace! My memory of the game is a little hazy now, probably the amount I had to drink that day, and the picture is always of him holding up three fingers and so my memory transformed that into a hattrick, but having check I do remember Cahill's opener and can't believe how long ago that game was now.

Ralph, we didn't need a 30 goal a season striker last time we won the league. We sold Lineker and Sharpy was injured for a large part of the season. Instead we had a load of players score a lot of goals.

How often does the league's top scorer play for the side that wins the league? Alan Shearer was top scorer nearly every season he played and yet he only won the league once, and that season he was not top scorer!

We do not need one player to score 30 goals, we need to score goals, it does not matter who gets them. If we share them around like in 1987 and win the league, who would moan about DCL leading the line and scoring 9? The point Si was making is that Dominic can bring others into the attack and as long as the goals are scored to win us the games, then the name on the score sheet does not matter.

I know from personal experience that it takes time to adapt to the challenges of living/working abroad, but I think whatever his issues, they are still there. Three different clubs with a combined 40+ appearances and not one single goal!! Sad thing is he's only 24 on a downward slope now, Sevilla to Sociedad and now Valladolid.

It seems even some our "supporters" are unable to distinguish good players from average.

We could risk missing that goal come the end of the season, just imagine getting pipped at the post for the Premier League title by one goal, it would be all Sandro's fault! :-)

Terry Butcher has a lot of top-evel experience at World Cups and in Europe acquired before Waggy would have even been remotely near contention for an international cap. He was the mainstay of a superb Ipswich defence. To say he wasn't fit to lace the boots of Watson is nothing short of absurd. Upon leaving Ipswich, he had the pick of any top English club really. He chose Rangers for his own reasons.

@68 Paul.

Surely you aren't serious? Unless I'm mistaken, Watson won a League Championship medal. Then he was the mainstay of a side that went into freefall thereafter. He featured in our worst ever top-flight sides. A brief reprieve and a further FA Cup and Charity Shield medal in 1995.

Hardly laden with medals.

Throughout his career he was massively exposed by pace. Ian Wright destroyed him often, as did Les Ferdinand. He didn't have enough to deal with players as technically gifted and paced as those two.

By the time he was up against Overmars in 1998, it was like he was playing a different game entirely,

Confidence back and ready for a new season.

No, I would rather play in a league where I will be lucky to score and feel even less like trying and take a bigger nosedive in wages when it is all over.

He was always a risk at only 5million but it wasn't long until we realised he wasn't good enough or suited to the EPL.

Someone needs hanging out to put him on that salary.

To respond to comments about Lukaku, he is by far the best striker we've had since Lineker, sure he has his faults but he is our leading PL scorer for a reason... We haven't replaced him and look lost without him.

I am sure the way the powers at the time we thinking - £36m over 5 years for a 20 goal a season striker from Spain. That is a bargain.

And I do recall significant enthusiasm on here for a steal by Walsh and Koeman. How did we ALL get it so wrong?

Even bigger bargain

at the time.

Here's the signings under him, you decide..

Stek - probably signed by Koeman
Gueye - definite success
Williams - regarded by many as what we needed at the time
Bolasie - poor
Calvert-Lewin- rumoured to have been signed by Unsworth
Valencia - who?
Lookman - still bags of potential
Schneiderlin - Koeman signing
Klaassen - poor but highly regarded
Pickford - definite success
Keane - success
Sandro - regarded as a steal at the time
Rooney - Kenwright signing?
Martina - Koeman signing?
Sigurdsson- success but overpriced
Vlasic - made a profit (just)
Tosun - awful, Walsh or Allardyce?
Walcott - poor, Walsh or Allardyce?

I'm sure there were a few youth signings dotted about as well such as Gibson, but not 100% sure.

Walsh could definitely have been better and I am glad we have Brands in his place now. But he wasn't all bad.

Unsworth is signing nobody Kevin. Absolutely no say in transfers I would suggest.

Keane being a ‘success' would be far too early to say.

I think you also have to judge it on how bad some of the signings have been. Not just the amount of good vs bad.

For example is it worth having 5 truly horrendous overpriced players for every Idrissa Gueye that is signed. I would argue not

As for Calvert-Lewin, it was rumoured at the time that Unsworth was given a say in some under 23 transfer activity and the likes of Calvert-Lewin, Matty Foulds and that guy who came to us in unusual circumstances (Donkor I think) were attributed to Unsworth. In Calvert-Lewin's case, Unsworth knew about him from Sheff Utd.

As for the incompetent Koeman and Walsh fiasco they are nothing more than a sickening virus that won't die and that we are still paying for.

Shit tactics, predictable slow football, 4 No. 10s and no striker, failure to sign Barkley to a 5 year deal, pissing away the Lukaku money and buying (in most part) dogs of war era level players whilst spurs and liverpool leapt forward.

Even Hitler did less harm to all things Everton.