Farewell to these Departing Players?

And Gylfi doesn't belong on this list. Whatever his shortcomings, he had 6 goals and 5 assists this season, more than all the other remaining players on this list combined -- for their entire Everton careers.

For what it's worth, yes he's not physically strong enough for the league that's been sussed out since the start of the 2019/20 season after much promise in his first.

But would he have done any worse than the absolute footballing crab that is Andre Gomes or the "he's had a good game today" Tom Davies?

Two players that have not scored a single goal all season from midfield.

Our other wide option Alex Iwobi who's been a regular all season but played like a shithouse throughout it.

We paid £8m for Delph, I suspect any fee would just go back into subsidise his wages at a less gullible club.

Holgate and Bernard will command some fees, as will Kean. A weaker Premier league team like a Palace would take Iwobi for half what we paid I guess.

I think you might get what £60-70m. But an already threadbare squad susceptible to injury, is going to be even more threadbare. That's 6 out plus the out of contract deadwood.

I don't know what you do with Gomes or Gbamin. One is a shadow of himself and the other is broken.

And then Sigurdsson. He ain't good enough, but will we have the ability to bring in the numbers needed to freshen this squad? We need at least 5 starter players, and probably another 3-4 hungry squad players capable of pushing the first choice over 12-24 months.

A total and utter waste of time and money, that's my opinion of him.

Godfrey was the stand-out buy, and my player of the season. He was fully committed wherever he was asked to play. Keane is trying to adopt the manager's tactics of playing out from the back, Digne has been our best source of crosses from the wing, Mina had a few setbacks with injuries, but is worth retaining.

Richarlison and Calvert-Lewin need quality competition for their places.

Doucouré and Allan, do give us some bite and energy in midfield, but need more quality around them.

I think Gomes is gone mate!

To be honest I'm surprised we even signed him for £20 million because apart from 5 or 6 good games when he first arrived in the team, back in October - December 2018, he was anonymous mostly.

Games pass him by; for a physically big fella, he doesn't dominate matches, doesn't go up for headers, can't tackle, can't shoot and he's got no turn of foot.

Gomes needs a move to the Portuguese or Spanish league where he'd have all the time he needs on the ball there.

Gbamin I put alongside Delph, doesn't even feel like an Everton player because I've never seen him play properly and frankly I don't think we will.

I'd like the chop to begin though at Finch Farm, and a coaching team brought in that can coach to pass, move and teach Calvert-Lewin to be able to shoot.

If Davies in midfield is “he's had a good game today” then God knows what Sigurdsson is. He is the most anonymous player I've ever seen in an Everton midfield, and I witnessed Claus Thomsen!!!!

With Allan and Doucoure behind him and Richarlison and, say, Bailey wide of him, there's a good chance of him performing even better.

Indeed, it will be very difficult to find a better player for this role with our limited budget. Although, for us, he's a disappointment at £45m, really he is what you generally get for the relatively modest sum of £45m. And yes, £45m is not that big a sum of money to at least 4 clubs in the Premier League. Look at £70m Pepe at Arsenal, for example.

If you want a player with the same goal contribution who also dominates games you typically have to spend much more.

With at least the same amount somehow going out the door. Harder to do these days, especially with the idiotic contracts we give them.

If the groundwork on these new players is not already done, then Brands needs to just do one as he's not fit for purpose.

So for a bit of fun this picture came into my mind of Besic, Bolasie, Delph, Bernard, Tosun, Sigurdsson, Gomes, Walcott and Iwobi. They are all out of work and in the job centre and looking for an outlet. Then it comes to them in a blinding flash: The Full Monty - Deadwood to Hollywood.

I wouldn't be surprised if James and Richarlison looked to move on this summer too.

There is no doubt that somebody at Finch Farm has had a calming effect on Jordan Pickford and he looks a better goalkeeper for it.

I think Mina and Keane is our best centre-back pairing; Godfrey has done well and can play in either full-back position, but at the moment he lacks positional sense to play in a centre-back role.

In midfield, I would keep Allan and Davies to come on from the bench in games; I know it's not possible but I would sell the rest of the midfield. Doucouré needs to improve a lot defensively, he is all over the place and not much better going forward with the ball at his feet. His one main attribute is he has a good engine but you need more than that.

Up front, Calvert-Lewin is good in the 6-yard box but his all-round game needs to improve a lot, to be a complete striker like Kane. I think there are a few young strikers in the Premier League who have more in their locker than him.

Richarlison has been poor this season; he does have ability but needs to show it on a regular basis – not just when he feels like it. King will go as will Bernard, but who would offer Iwobi a contract? And nobody would pay him the money we are. He's another who will be here till his contract runs out; great signing, Marcel.

A fellow Blue sent me a text saying this is the team that played against Liverpool before Silva was sacked:

Pickford, Sidibé, Holgate, Keane, Mina, Digne, Iwobi, Davies, Sigurdsson, Richarlison, Calvert-Lewin.

This is very similar to the side that finished against Man City so the same people who failed the previous 2 managers look like doing the same to Ancelotti, unless drastic action is taken in the summer. I live in hope.

As you say, I don't think Sigurdsson is as bad as he is painted. I also don't think he is good as you are making him out to be... and, of course, I take his transfer fee into that consideration. This was what Everton agreed to pay for him, but when you add in the wages over five years, £35M? It really is an unbelievable and terrible transfer all round and should make every fan aware of what was going on in the background by the Everton board at the time.

And to think most of them are still here and having a say in the running of this asylum, sorry... football club.

Horrifying analysis, reminding us of the perennial deadwood problem. Where are you getting your stats from? I ask because some seem to be a little off. These are what I believe to be the correct numbers:

Besic – 22 (15)
Tosun – 12 (23) [excluding 2017-18: 12 (2) and 5 goals]

I'd like to cross-check and see if it's mine that are wrong. Thanks!

Do we need to add Olsen to the list when his loan expires? I do not think we need him back as Virginia looked a perfectly decent reserve keeper to me.

Unfortunately the thread has been mostly taken over by the “shift the deadwood” posters who live in a parallel universe to me. It is not realistic to expect Brands to be able to sell Iwobi, Gomes and Gbamin whose contracts with us run till 2024 – that’s 3 more seasons. Holgate is contracted till 2025! There may be other clubs out there who would be happy to take these players on and maybe even pay us a transfer fee but the wages we pay are highly unlikely to be matched anywhere else. Do we expect these guys to move on but accept lower earnings? Would we do that in our own lives? These boys are set for life by staying with us: £100K a week is over £5M a year which is £15M through to the end of the 2023/24 season. Who in their right mind would walk away from a deal like that? The biggest winner must be HM Revenue and Customs! I hope they’re on PAYE contracts not dubious payments to off-shore shell companies in a tax haven somewhere.

So we’re stuck with them, I fear, like it or not, and this severely impacts our ability to bring in new signings, unless Moshiri wants to go absolutely bananas at a time he must be focussing his resources on building a new stadium.

Finally, I read a lot of comments about our need for a new right back. To mis-quote that well-known Evertonian Jay Z: we got 99 problems and a right back ain’t one. Seamus can still do a job and will be at Everton for life, I suspect. Kenny also has a year left on his contract and acquitted himself well at Celtic I understand. Have any of us truly seen enough of him to say “definitely no”. Why don’t we give him a good go next season then we’ll know for sure; otherwise, we’re all just guessing at his potential. We also have plenty of centre halves who can cover across at right back as has happened often this season. Where we do need to splash out is ahead of the right back, maybe with money in from a Kean sale.

Wholesale changes are not going to happen this summer, however much people are desperate for it. So please stop going on about it!

Agree with hugely unrealistic expectations about selling deadwood. There is no market for our high-earning, low-performing crap.

Also enjoyed your hip-hop references.

If we buy seven or eight players, then we'll have a worse season than this one as we won't be buying top quality because we can't afford it and we're not in Europe.

So seven or eight more average players? No thanks. As torturous as it's been, we need patience, improve what we've got, get rid of the obvious dross, and buy carefully.

It looks like Richarlison will play alongside Calvert-Lewin, he won't be played as a winger. So we really need someone who can beat a man and cross accurately.

Gylfi's own Wikipedia entry – and a simple google search – reveals the consensus value at the time for his services was in the range of £25M. The end fee Everton paid and that valuation are absurdly disparate. Rather like peg leg Whelan did at Wigan, Swansea held their nerve and utterly soaked us.

To end up paying as far over the odds as we did is still baffling to me – who were we bidding against? Why didn't we walk away? There were many many Evertonians at the time pointing out the foolishness of overpaying for a player such as Gylfi – tidy on his day but no world beater. Just another disastrous transfer in a recent history of disastrous transfers.

The opportunity cost alone makes Gylfi an absolute turd of a signing in my book, his modest playing contribution notwithstanding. Vlasic arrived two weeks after Gylfi, believe it or not, a young player we ended up taking a profit on. Even if we'd just paid the £25M for Gylfi, the £20M difference would have funded two other Vlasic-category players, wages included. Vlasic is today conservatively valued at twice what our Icelandic *ahem* "talisman" is, by the way.

That's what I mean by opportunity cost. Up there with Schneiderlin for me in wasting precious resources.

If Ancelotti has no faith in the present reserve full-backs then we need some form of cover.

We have no real wide players other than Richarlison - who doesn't get played there. Potentially we have Gordon, but Ancelotti hasn't rated him this season.

We have no-one in midfield who can put their foot on the ball and dictate play.

Unless Tosun or Kean return, we need a back-up striker – unless Simms's Blackpool performances have persuaded otherwise.

I also think it would be foolish to sell Davies. If you ever get the chance to listen to the interview with Davies and Calvert-Lewin, do it. Davies is the type of character that is good for the club.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fTnBwmANTS8

Using Vlasic as an example is hindsight – at the time, we paid the market rate for him, and made a profit on sale, not as an asset for resale above the balance sheet value.

So, who, at the time, discarding hindsight, do you suggest we should have "invested" in? Probably an impossible question to be fair. It falls back to my view that we sign players to make a profit on sale... Moneyball by any chance??

My point on Vlasic is we paid the going rate for a player who had a reasonable potential to rise in value. He did rise in value; we cashed in because we didn't value his services on the pitch. Advantage Everton!

It's impossible and unfair to ask whom I thought we ought to have bought at this stage, I agree with you.

The overarching concept that, when you have fewer resources than your immediate competitors, you have to be extremely prudent on how your own resources are deployed, is what ought to be remembered. At no stage did it make any sense to overpay for Sigurdsson on the scale that we did. It's hurt us.

"It falls back to my view that we sign players to make a profit on sale... Moneyball by any chance??"

I absolutely categorically agree. Liverpool and their ilk are in a position to amortize dross like Andy Carroll and it does not worry them; we most assuredly are not in that position. Paying overs for above-average at best talent must disappear from our MO or this midtable existence will forever continue.

The players are out there who are good and don't cost a fortune.

Leeds brought talent up from the Championship.

Leicester has been re-building, while back in Europe (Again).

WHU went from finishing 5 points off the drop last season to 3 points off a CL position this. 6th and in Europe next season.

As disappointing as this season was, we finished 8 points off a CL slot.

Talent's out there. Brands needs to start finding and signing some of it.

Gbamin needs to go out on loan, and hopefully play regularly at a lower level. Scottish league or Championship would do.

Sorry, that was a formatting error on my part. That line belonged in the next paragraph. I've edited Phil's copy slightly so that the lead-in on Sigurdsson makes sense.

Bernard is 28.

Glyfi Sigurdsson is a fraud and for me represents everything that is wrong at our great club. I accept he is far from the worst player but that makes it worse for me as he has some talent.

Watch him closely in any game: he is a cheat as in he cheats his teammates. He huffs and puffs but mainly avoids having to make a challenge and his first thought is to pass backwards as in a safety pass that probably makes his stats look good.

If we want to improve, we cannot continue to carry frauds like him.

Dead ball specialist? My arse.

Yours is a fraudulent post. It has already been stated by several of his teammates that he is the hardest worker of the group. Making him out to be grifting his mates is the most tone-deaf thing I've seen here in a while. Giving your namesake a good run there.

Trouble is, we don't have enough goals in the team. We don't have balance. We don't have style. Our manager would prefer to play a style that doesn't suit the players and plays them out of position to prove his point to our owner that his hands are tied.

He even played Bernard on the right when we all know his best position is on the left... in fact, he also improves Digne when he plays there. Get Digne involved and we are better. But hey, let's play Sigurdsson on the left and Doucouré on the right... and make a point to embarrass himself, the fans and the players.

If I am right about this, we must be prepared to accept a few seasons of mediocrity (as in 20-21) in the hope that it will all come out right in the latter part of this decade. As ever, patience is the watchword for Evertonians for the foreseeable future.

Bournemouth and Sheff U are now paying the price for this.

I do see the point on Siggi, we have taken a bath on him to a certain extent, as resale value is nil, but at the time we possibly saw him as the link to the Champions League

Bill@ 39,

So they went for James Madison as their 2nd option!? I don't recall Leicester were in for Gylfi but I could be wrong!

I can honestly only name 5 players worth keeping.

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/leicester-city-transfer-rumours-40-183121

Some interesting stats cited, such as Siggy rating best in the league at free kicks, and trailing only De Bruyne and Eriksen in assists.

Correct: Mike (1); Robert (11); Dale (35); David (36); Bill (39)

Of course we overpaid for him but that’s not his fault. He will be part of the squad next year and then he will possibly be offered another year extension.

Thoughts for simpletons.

The back pass should be totally banned from Everton Football Club – particularly in the 18-yard area.

Stop talking about "Top 6" and getting into Europe – it is pointless. Play your best in each game and success will follow; attack is best form of defense.

Other than that, he has always been a hopelessly nonproductive player, both before and after the injury.

In 75 Prem games, he has scored one meaningless goal for us. One. And his lovely passing has produced exactly three assists.

And on the defensive side, he has been directly to blame for at least four goals I can recall, either through foolish free kicks given up or poor defensive effort.

Having watched him play dozens of times for Barca, I was less than thrilled when we brought him in. In retrospect, he's been worse than I thought.

A very nice man, a very graceful player, and of course ridiculously handsome. And I wish him a swift and lucrative departure to another club as quickly as possible.

Take the rose tinted glasses off. He’s had a handful of decent games but on the whole he has been below the standard required. Yes he had a nasty injury but he’s much the same player after as he was before. He lacks the pace and mobility to compete in the PL.

He is also symptomatic of the lack of grit and mental toughness too many of our current squad exhibit. His time at Barcelona should have given us a clue. He arrived after two good seasons in a very good Valencia side. The Barca supporters quickly got on his case and to say he stunk the place out is probably generous.

Nice hair though

Godfrey
Digne
Doucoure
Allan
James
DCL

Richarlison possibly but he would need to improve.

Imo, nobody else in the squad is good enough to play CL football.

Unfortunately, the boy is slow and does not naturally possess the required agility . He is a three tonne Bentley trying to outwit Subaru turbos on a rally course.

It’s a shame this wasn’t spotted before Barcelona reeled us in.

Best midfielder in the EPL image and hair-wise though. He could start his own male cosmetics company.

Gomesh Pro+, For Men. Slow release formula.

Pickford definitely and I’d also include Mina.

And I wouldn’t include James. The skill undoubtedly, the mental strength and resilience not so much.

We’ve obviously made some terrible buys but tbf this years arrivals were of a much better quality. Gordon, Doucoure, Allan, James and Nkounkou.

Going to take another season to recycle this squad to the extent required

The goal shortage must be addressed by the team and must be a shared collective responsibility, but thus makes this seasons transfer window interesting.

I’m hoping for the best Everton can get and hopefully proper players who want to play for Everton and whom will have some bark, panache and fight.

Here’s to hoping.

Honestly Gomes reminds me a bit of watching Zico when he was 40 odd playing in the J league minus the goals. Yeah, he can pass the ball nicely over 25 yards, but you have to have more to your game than that especially if you're too slow to keep up with play and get within 45 yards of the other team's goal. He is a clumsy tackler, can't shoot, is too slow to dribble without getting caught in possession, and as I say even his passing is limited to a range of about 25 yards along the ground. Not so much as an occasional thirty yarder in the air with a bit of back spin on it.

In fairness he does run a lot, the problem is that he runs in the shadows from behind one defender to another so he never has to take responsibility for the ball.

I realise it’s a hobby horse of yours, but the facts just don’t bear you out.

10 assists in all competitions, more than any other player.

He has his limitations but he was much improved this season over last, due mainly to being played in a position that suits him.

I don’t think he’s a regular starter if we are serious but he can do a job for us next year.

Bernard and those out of contract will leave. We need five first teamers. My worry is that despite Carlo at the helm, those players that would take us to another level will still favour going to CL clubs or those that will most certainly improve greatly next season i.e. Spurs and Arsenal. We need to be looking to sign a couple of emerging stars from the championship. Young, hungry and energetic and know how to play in a physical league.

We've lost all semblance of doing the basics in recent years.

Whomever at Everton thought his game would satisfactorily translate to the Premier League needs professional guidance. Standing in the middle of the park pinging passes to runners and otherwise doing fuck all to mess up his immaculate and superior mane was going to help us how?
I thought Silva got Gomes on loan with the idea of playing him alongside Idrissa Gueye? A typical ball winner / distributor symbiotic type relationship? The results when they played together that season weren't compelling in any way. Why we permanently bought him I'll never really know, especially as Gueye was long targeted by PSG.

Good point, he didn't exactly have a Warzycha type loan spell. I felt it was all a bit "stars in our eyes" oooh Barcelona players

The problem I have with some players is that their positioning seems to have been changed from either their usual/natural positions which I assume is at the Manager's insistence. Iwobi seems to be played wide right and I'm not sure if that is meant to be as a winger or wing-back but it is not how I seem to remember him playing at Arsenal albeit I didn't see that much of him at Arsenal.
Davies also seems to be playing as the last line defensive midfield and gap cover whereas he was described as a box to box midfield when he first came into the side. Then we have full-backs who must get forward regardless of anyone in front of them or covering and Richarlison playing more centrally than when he first arrived.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me but I really don't see anymore than five at the very most leaving the first-team squad (I don't include juniors with little or no 1st team games) and I'd be surprised if more than three, four at the very most, joining unless we include younger players that will be future first-team players.

I suppose it is why it is called the "off" season but, with Euros and the World Cup in difficult and changed times, it could be a strange and difficult few years.

He's ponderous, has the defensive presence of a traffic cone, and no offensive game to speak of. He *is* capable of some silky passing, of the sort our midfield desperately needs, but doesn't do it with any sort of consistency.

Honestly, it might simply have been a case of the season ending promisingly under Silva, and continuity seeming crucial.

It seems as though we are interested in several keepers, including Romero, and I think that must mean that Olsen is on his way. I don't think he is a strong enough understudy for Pickford anyway.

Kenny will also be on his way and, while Holgate has not had a good end to the season, I think there is a reasonable player in there. We do need a decent younger right-back but I am not sure Aarons is the answer.

Midfield is the problem area. Other than Allan, Doucouré and Davies (I don't know if it is worth keeping Gbamin), the rest can go as Delph, Gomes, Iwobi and Sigurdsson are just too slow and well past their sell-by dates.

I always thought Bernard could have been useful but just doesn't score enough goals for me. I like the left-sided Rabiot from Juve but not sure if he is on the radar.

Then up front, get shot of Kean because he doesn't want to play for us, then bring in Diaby and another striker to put pressure on Calvert-Lewin... or maybe Coutinho as James will only ever be a part-time player.

So we would lose 10, counting Besic, Walcott and Bolasie, and maybe bring in 5. Hopefully the wage bill would then go down and we might have a team that could compete for the Top 4.