Shopping for Dresses

The worrying thing is, bar Allardyce, none of Moshiri's appointments have had any sort of plan – they sorta drift in and wing it for a while before realising the size of the job; by then, it's too late. Any number of supporters have been saying the squad needs rinsing year after year but Moshiri just doesn't get it. Presumably this delusion is fed to the candidates he employs.

Harry Enfield had a comedy character – "Tim Nice But Dim" – gormlessly taking on the opinion of whoever he last spoke to; this is Moshiri.

Someone (Brands) needs to lay it on the line and tell him just how shite the situation is made even worse by Ancelotti's desperation buys of the hapless Doucouré and Allan.

Moshiri is a real worry!

Brands is an enigma who is now part of the Everton establishment and has not performed as he should have.

Anchelotti has left by mutual consent. Everton were not prepared to change as he wanted and the Everton establishment were not prepared to tolerate his public thinly-disguised criticism of them. Ancelotti needed Europe to tip the balance of power in the Club and more than him knew that. Not getting it meant the game was up.

I agree that Brands's initial plans where promising, but he is not his own man in his decisions regarding transfers, being influenced by others. He has failed at Finch Farm, most markedly in Youth Development, as you have said, having brought in promising changes only to rollover for Unsworth and his new mate Baines.

It will be more of the same with Brands advising Moshiri and Bill giving his tuppence worth.

Very apt, timely and well observed article.

I think Marcel's retainment should be entirely at the discretion of the new manager. Some managers, eg, Moyes, like to do the spotting themselves, and are rather good at it.

He is a Director on the Board and has a new contract.

Probably this is one of the reasons Ancelotti is gone. By rights, Brands should have been gone with Silva.

As they pointed out, this is really the time for the owner and board to allow Brands to choose the manager and all of the other stuff on the football side; he is, after all, the Director of Football.

My god, we need a manager to put a flame thrower through the mediocrity that is festering in every corner and start running the club like a Top 6 outfit. We need someone with a pair of balls the size of grapefruits to come in and stamp his authority and get this club functioning as it should be. This mediocrity has gone on far too long, and it's time to put it right.

And Martin, I agree that Brands has to choose the manager; the two of them will be the main drivers for Everton to change and become successful. It makes total sense that he should be the one who has the final say.

In my opinion, Moshiri promoted Brands to the Board to compensate for his own lack of football knowledge, which had previously seen him ripped off by directors, management, managers and players for staggering amounts of money. Brands was loyal and knowledgable. He could take on Moshiri's responsiblity and allow Moshiri to be at arm's length. Moshiri also had been allowed to be roughed up by the existing management to put him in his place.

I initially thought that Brands, with supposedly increased power with the appointment, would be able to take total control of contracts and transfers and begin structural change with his much-heralded youth policy when he started.

His first Transfer window was promising, but no hidden gems came to light. Even his January policy of no panic buying impressed. . . until recently abandoned. I was concerned by his lack of support for Silva after Moshiri treating AGM pronouncements. My faith in Brands's control of contracts and transfers was damaged in the Zaha Summer Transfer Window, which showed he was not his own man.

I did attack his Youth development only to be told of noticable changes by on the ground ToffeeWebs who actually follow and attend Everton's youth matches and had talked to their coaches. To a man, they were all not impressed with Unsworth's elevation. I was not impressed by a job being created for Baines by Brands which the Chief Executive hinted at. Baines has recently recieved alcolades from Unsworth.

I have concluded that Brands is very much one of the Everton Establishment now and he's swallowed his football principles.

The Moshiri [cough: *Unsmanov*] appointment of Ancelotti was a bold attempt at change. But, even one of the most experienced managers could not make an impression on the established Everton culture that is content with Premier League survival, with no extra European work. This was especially the case when change would have been inevitable, had the European-experienced Ancelotti got European qualification. As Ancelotti would say, you can only flog a dead cat for so long. . .

Anyone who thinks a new manager will change things does not know Everton. AGM: Moshiri absent, Brands wheeled out, smiling Chief Executive, smug silent Chairman, managed small shareholders, holiday camp Finch Farm, perpetual long-suffering supporters.

As Martin says, now is the time for Brands to step up and run this club on the playing side with a manager who buys into the vision. This is likely to be a younger guy rather than an older one with his ideas at odds with Brands.

Whether we appoint Conte or Santo or Howe makes no real difference. Maybe the difference between 6th and 10th in the league for all that really matters.

What we should be asking is how do we turn a deteriorating £500m squad into a competitive £1bn (+) squad without spending £500m.

With a £1bn(+) squad we might find by strange coincidence that our managers start to get better at winning things.

I would even question whether there is a unanimous objective to get a European Spot at Everton.

However, if Moshiri's aim is to be a top club, then the expenditure on players will need to be comparable with what the top clubs spend. It's a necessary condition to be at the top in any consistent way.

I can't see any point in signing Hollywood managers if we don't sign Hollywood players, ones who are more consistent and less prone to injury than the players we tend to sign. Until that happens, we're very likely to stay midtable.

We will need the right money and a bit more intelligence spending it to progress into the top 4 or even into the top six on a permanent basis.

As Robert mentioned in another post , this will be a three or four year incremental process . Brands and Nuno will be on the same page and there are good signs that the recruitment policy will now shift to Brands's philosophy without the headwinds.

They have chosen to assemble and develop players of outstanding talent. We have bought players at their underwhelming peak.

Both Leicester and the RS accept that all clubs sell players and therefore maximise their transfer kitty by selling players they have developed for more than they bought them for.

We struggle to shift our crap on a downward trajectory.

If we had focussed on the likes of Lukaku, Stones, Onyekuru, Lookman, Vlasic, Holgate, DCL, Branthwaite, Richarlison type players as a consistent strategy we would be in the same boat as Leicester and the RS. Since we just don't the the money to spend, spend, spend that is our only chance of building a £bn(+) squad.

Unfortunately Brands has been required to dance to various different (crap) tunes for the duration of his term here. Hence Leeds, Villa and WHU managed to catch (and ecen overtake) our deteriorating £500m squad quite easily.

That's what enables them to spend big gross. The RS would never have made the decisive signings of Alisson and VVD without capitalising on re-sale values.

And it isn't tough negotiators that determine sale price, it's market forces. Clubs bought Ibe, Brewster and Solanke (all bought in by the RS as teenagers) for big money because these are young players who had shown very significant early promise in the first team, international duty and / or on loan. A bit like us with Lookman. And Suarez and Coutinho were sold at their peak. The point is that this all enabled them to reinvest in a modestly priced but exceptional quality front 3 - and then the game changing centre half and goalie combo.

Just picking on 3 examples:

Torres. In for £20m, moved on for £50m
Suarez. In for £20+m, moved on for over £60m?
Coutinho. The best one of them all. In for £8.5m, moved on for £105m.

Never scared to sell their best and most popular players but made sure they got good money and made sure they recycled it wisely by going back to the market to find the next Torres, Suarez or Coutinho etc.

RB Leipzig has assembled a team in a similar vein. Not spending ridiculous in terms of their competitors. I don't thing they spend over £20m on most of their players.

Leicester. Respect. To get £80m for Harry Maguire is just shrewd and aggressive business negotiation. It made us look like we ripped off Burnely paying £30m for Michael Keane.

To highlight, we have spent £510m with a net spend of £255m. However, in all that time our squad has been deteriorating in quality because we have invested big money in mediocre players in their mid to late 20s leaving us with nothing to reinvest in their replacements.

In footballing terms this is the expensive route to midtable anonymity and in financial terms its a disaster.

But Martin, I did not quite get your last sentence: "By the way, Marcel, please get on the phone to Buenos Aires ASAP". Are you referring to Mauricio Pochhetino?

That said, maybe we could all learn a thing or two from the late good ol' Merle, a lifelong advocate of booze and marijuana.

I'm sure he has many followers at USMFF.

An owld scally made good Merle.
Willie is just Willie

I was brought up with the Everton of the 60s, and to me it's natural to EXPECT Everton to be top in terms of style and dominance. I'm not happy with the current Everton, with three decades of shite, and I wouldn't be happy being like Liverpool or Leicester, who I consider not only tedious occasional winners of a trophy but also cynical cheating dirty bastards.

As I say, unless we spend big on substantial talent, like City and Chelsea do, we aint going anywhere regardless of who the manager is.

In fact, we've had nothing but trouble from this DoF/head coach arrangement.

Ditch Brands and let the next manager do his job properly.

While this bumbling fool is anywhere near the decision making process we will not make any progress. He's been at the helm for 17 years now overseeing a slow, perpetual regression. Only darling David, and gormless Farhad have saved his fat ass. He should be frogmarched out of the club once and for all.

The one exception is our 'young Turk' manager Silva who remains unemployed, so I am baffled with the suggestions that we hire another up and coming manager to manage such a poor quality squad - a recipe for disaster. A high quality manager who is prepared to develop the squad over several years, a defined football philosophy set by the DoF, a recruitment strategy based on that plan and a radical overhaul of the Academy to accelerate playe development must now be the way forward.

Brand should be the only person involved in the recruitment of the new manager up to the point where he recommends his final candidate to Moshiri.

Colin @ 30, other clubs probably do look at weepy Bill and the Everton board and think 'what would they do?'. They can't go wrong provided they then do the exact opposite.