Defined by who you sign

Rather than just sacking the manager annually, or watching him swan off for nowt to Madrid, perhaps it would have been wise to look at the contributions or lack thereof of each aspect of the playing, recruitment and coaching groups.

My feelings on Benitez are well known, but making him a scapegoat for the systemic failures of others isn't going to fix Everton anytime soon either. Root out the incompetence and fuckwittery, set high standards and hold the people the club employs to those standards – it's really not that difficult.

Going on thirty years without a trophy. And then serving up performances like yesterday – it disheartens so many of us who can recall a time our club was renowned for it's serial success.

We're further away than ever.

We're now back to virtually square one, down to just Allan. Saturday's performance was akin to some of those diabolical midfield performances of the 2019-20 season.

With Doucouré injured we have absolutely nothing of Premier League standard in back up. Delph, Gomes Gbamin and Davies for various reasons are four central midfielders who need replacing by two who can improve us. If any of those were the answer, they would have stamped their authority by now.

With regards Gbamin, who knows? It is telling in the extreme, though, that he wasn't trusted on Saturday. Iwobi seen as a better alternative. What diabolical message does that send us?

Iwobi's signing is unfathomable. Why? Have we ever made a more pointless signing? He's not a winger, more of a No 10, but we already had ‘the player with no name' a £45M No 10 on the books earning £5M a year.

Benitez has brought in Townsend and Gray for £1.7M, the two give him credit in the bank. Rondon, although free, is on the debit side of the accounts.

There must have been a few other strikers we could have enticed, who may have been happy to play second fiddle at a bigger club or even challenge Calvert-Lewin. I'd advise Rafa to cut his losses and readdress this in January.

Admitting mistakes and putting things right is a strength, not a weakness.

The team is set up and almost exists to provide for Calvert-Lewin. Before Saturday, some stat said we were creating as many chances as Bayern Munich so far... but, with Rondon permanently half-fit, and really not of the required standard anyway, all the providers are seeing no end product.

Worse still, Rondon is not even getting close to connecting or being in the right place at the right time. Calvert-Lewin out is killing us as we have no meaningful replacement. Surely now Richarlison has to play through the middle and we have to pray for his fitness.

So Barry, Benitez will be defined by who he signs and, at the moment, Rondon is unfortunately defining him in that respect. His ineffectiveness is overshadowing Gray and Townsend.

The plus side is we've spent hardly any money on these players. Rondon may be shipped out at the end of the season (or 1 January!) to Qatar or somewhere.

The players that will define Benitez have yet to be signed. I am expecting a few changes in January and some big, big changes next June.

This season is now another one of damage limitation. We have to live with the hope that the Benitez's defining signings over the next two windows can address the shortcomings and give us a chance of being a Top 6 competitor next season.

Look at our second XI, 3 youth players and 7 Brands signings. How do you reckon this team would fare in the league??? (Then think that at least 6 of them are likely to be on £50k + a week and it gets even more depressing)

Bergovic
Kenny, Holgate, Godfrey, Delph
Davies, Gomes, Gbamin
Gordon, Rondon, Iwobi

The irony here is that some on this site have criticised Rodriguez, since Benitez arrived, on the basis that he is fragile and injury-prone. Well, it seems that most Everton players are fragile and injury prone, hence our current predicament.

So we get rid of class and bring in mediocrity. The signing of Townsend and Gray is obviously very positive, but does not make up for what’s happened.

I’m patient with Benitez, but that patience might not last long. I don’t waste my time watching disorganised shite. I’ve wasted enough time in the past with Everton, but no more. If there’s no significant improvement from the next game onwards, I’m unlikely to be watching anymore despite following this club for 60 years.

As for the general criticism of Rondon, of course he's appalling but we needed a free transfer and, due to bad luck, he's been forced to play much more and much sooner than anticipated.

In fairness, Benitez pulled off a near miracle bringing in the pace and quality of Gray and Townsend for £1.7M.

If we could get Maitland-Niles and someone like Djuricic (the Serbian attacking midfielder at Sassuolo linked today at bargain price due to expiring contract), then the quality and depth deepens again at very low cost.

This season was never going to amount to much – so my hope is that we end it with the likes of Gordon, Dobbin, Branthwaite, Onyango and Simms having started to make a good impression in the first team.

If we build carefully over about 2 or 3 seasons, we could have a very good squad. If you're hoping for a quicker pace of improvement, then you're likely to be disappointed.

Obviously, I'm with that. As long as he is making the right moves and saying the right things, he is more than what we need; he may be the best we can get for now.

After seeing this debacle, the adverse selection effect of who would want the Everton job is too much for my risk preferences. Benitez may offer the additional value of being a good picker of discouraged Premier League level talent, probably the most valuable of his various competencies.

Yes, true, if we make those signings, then the quality in depth would likely be better. But we need to do it ASAP; otherwise, the effect of Townsend and Gray could well decrease rapidly, in the way that quite a few of our signings have declined following initially good performances, once they've become mired in the Everton mould of fragility that we've come to know so well.

It's really Everton I'm losing patience with, mainly the fragility and the predictability of fucking up at every opportunity. The problem is clearly systemic, because you just know it will show itself every season, seemingly regardless of who the manager is.

Level-headed reasonable post IMO. With regard to the Watford game specifically, I think Rafa made mistakes but the problem with this group is their inherent mental weakness, energy and effort. Meaning, a manager's tactical error that might cost you a goal snowballs into four or five goals as we've seen under Koeman, Silva and Carlo.

The other thing is the zonal marking. It's frustrating to see him use that approach because we saw what happened under Silva. But in fairness to Rafa, it's something that works for other teams, indeed it worked for Everton under Howard Kendall, according to Ratcliffe. But our players seem to have some kind of inability to learn how operate it. How hard can it be? Really? But again, it's seemingly an accommodation we have to make because of their ineptitude.

It would help of course if we had some fit midfielders so we could change the shape of the team or else if we drop Rondon then Richarlison will be up on his own and we know he can't help himself coming deep to get involved. Not that there was any shape, rhyme or reason for those last 13 minutes.

We'd better hope some of those younger players noted above are actually good enough. How can we possibly be in such better circumstances in January that would allow us to fix this squad?

I'm not just pissed off with our manager, l'm pissed about the last few years, the last few choice of managers, the money wasted... on managers or transfers, and it's all too much. I'm sure we even paid £2M for Walsh. Urggh

DFS to stand in for DCL?

Far from unloading, Brands was the one who scoured the forest floor for our current wood pile of Delph, Rondon, Gbamin, etc. Not to mention, he cleared out other petrified logs he had lumbered on us, such as Bernard this summer.

Utterly depressing. Along the current theme of the thread, l need a bar stool.

No doubt we signed Rondon on his past relationship with our manager. No scouting, no trial. No fitness test. Nothing.

I didn't expect him to be so far off it that when he jumps his feet don't leave the ground. He can't even hold the ball up. He is even worse, unfortunately, than Koeman's Cuco Martina and Martinez's Antolin Alcaraz.

I mean, I don't know why teams spend a fortune on a top striker when there are so many available for next to nothing.

Stop gaps are fine, but they can't all be stop gaps otherwise you're always in transition.

We should build towards something capable of success in the 2024/25 season and go all out in the cups in the meantime.

I mentioned on a previous thread the true greats of Busby, Shankly and Wenger tended to find unheralded talent for buttons and/or inspire ordinary players to greatness. So it is possible to shake off the shackles but the odds are massively against.

Is Benitez in the company of Busby, Shankly and Wenger? Townsend and Gray suggest possibly but Rondon and the goalie indicate otherwise. I've long held the view that a hit rate of 50% on transfers is pretty usual for most managers but the truth is we need more, a lot more

It's not sustainable to have £50M+ of players walk out for free each year and trying to replace them with whoever other clubs don't want and hope they turn out to be a Gray rather than a Rondon.