Branthwaite withdrawn from England U21 squad

Lack of information and communication at Everton is worrying.

We play you in 11 days time. I just want you to know that we will possibly be without one of our first-choice centre-backs and so we might be playing Michael Keane alongside James Tarkowski.

Given the differences in strengths and weaknesses of Michael Keane and Jarrad Branthwaite, I wanted to give you as much time as possible to plan your tactics to take full advantage of our injury problem.

Jarrad may be fit to play but he has a problem with his groin and so he will not be able to sprint as well and this should also be factored into your preparations.

Yours,
Sean Dyche

Yeah, Mick, we need to know about every injury and publicise it. Fancy a game of poker, but only if you show me your cards.

Good signs, and hopefully this international break has come at the right time for Everton.

At some point, I'm sure there will be mistakes and his inexperience will show but what an exciting propsect he looks.

It's early days but I think it's possible that in Branthwaite, Onana and maybe Beto we have a spine of players who could be worth £50M+ each over the next few years. This should help us both on and off the pitch.

The aim (as it should have been for the last 6 years! Grrr!) should be to keep finding young talent who have the potential to become the next Rice, Caciedo, Lavia, Livramento, Hojlund, Doku, Nunes etc. There's so many good players coming through and I'd like to see us shopping a bit more at source in South America and in particular Africa, where I think there are real opportunities to make ties with academies.

That is just plain silly, I mean, how would we get it there as we still haven't found the fax paper and Bill refuses to let anyone look down the back of his sofa – especially for anything to do with Arteta.

No wonder poor Bill isn't feeling well… probably worried sick.

It's great to have players worth money, but where has the glory gone?

Maybe the paper with instructions written on is actually rice paper, so player comes on with instructions on a piece of rice paper, passes instructions on, then eats rice paper, which is a delicious and nutritious option to enjoy as a snack or as a meal. So kill two birds with one stone!! 😁😁😁

I remember hearing about Gazza when he played for us. One of Walter's staff wrote 'Holland' on his arm in marker pen, so he knew which guy to mark at corners.

Admittedly, Gazza wasn't much of an academic, but very few footballers are.

I was discussing the 'central spine' topic with a colleague the other day - and recalling that managers and coaches, including Shankly, Bobby Robson, Don Howe and Alex Ferguson, always highlighted the importance.

In our position, Pickford, Branthwaite and Beto or Calvert-Lewin form part of it; however, it highlights the lack of a dominant midfield player. Onana may prove to be the answer, but I'm not sure he is at present.

I think maybe Kante is the last one I can think of. Unless we talk about De Bruyne and the like but creative players aren't usually described that way. I expect he's as close to a dominant midfield player as we are likely to get for a little while.

Statistically, Onana is very good at what he does (breaking up play and winning the ball). This season he's also added creativity to his game by creating chances and spraying the ball long accurately. If he keeps that up all season I think he will have a £60m+ price tag by the end of it.

The enforcers (for want of a better word) at the likes of Man City, Arsenal et al, are usually found in the defence, probably because those teams have so much possession in any given match.

At the mid to lower level, you need more protection in the middle of the park, because those teams don't have a great deal of the ball, at least not for prolonged periods.

Everton struggle when they play similar ranked teams, because we have too many 'stoppers' and not enough creators in the squad never mind in the team. This lack of creativity means that it is very difficult to change tack from game to game and even during a game.

Given the amount of defensive-minded players we have in the group, it's so galling that even against Sheffield United we conceded quite a lot of chances for them to score, and didn't really create as many clear-cut chances that our possession of the ball, possibly merited.

Don't get me started on John McGinn. I went on and on about him when he was at Hibs. he could have got him for about £2.5 million at the time and I said even had it not worked out for him or us we'd easily have got our money back.

As usual, Celtic went in for him – his boyhood Club – and offered peanuts. Villa came in and got him for less than £3 million. great buy. I think they'd get their money back if they sold him these days!

Yes, McGinn played for Stubbs when they beat Rangers in the Cup Final. Actually, Stubbs did well there but decided he wanted to be closer to home so went to Rotherham or somewhere, closer???

Anyway, McGinn was a steal; how he wasn't chased by a ton ofclubs to this day is a mystery?