Man City eye swoop for highly-regarded Everton academy keeper

We are in such a poor financial shape that a garage sale is more likely to happen than not.

The price for Ishe Samuels-Smith (£3 Million + add-ons) will now serve as the floor for anyone to get Thelwell calling back re any of our prospects.

A couple of sales like him, Cannon and Simms might hurt in the long run (let's have a recap 5 years from now and see if we will have excruciating pain on those sales), but they are essential to help minimise the number of sales at 1st team level.

The entire point of the academy is to fund the club.

As much as we want local, homegrown players in the first team, as Man City and Liverpool have shown, a great way to finance success is to grow players, sell them and repeat.

Would be great if some of their unwanted young players came to us in part-exchange. They may not be good enough for City first team but I can imagine a lot will be good enough for ours!

Shame. Feels sad that City can take the likes of Lukjanciks and Jayden Lienou and Emilio Lawrence before him.

But who knows how their careers will unfold. Lawrence for example is now surrounded by so much talent in the City academy that it's hard to see him breaking through. He's only managed 11 games in the U21s this season. Had he stayed with us, he might well be close to first team appearances.

Indeed, City's academy is now so good, and so well stocked that it's a good place to pick up 18- to 21-year-olds who are ready / close to ready for our first team. Loads of their U21 side are out of contract this summer – including many with lots of youth international experience.

Their captain, 20 year old Micah Hamilton even played and scored against Red Star Belgrade this season for the full team. He is very, very unlikely to make it at City but could be a great signing for us for just a development fee (he's out of contract too).

So sad as it is to lose players, we can also work the system to our own advantage.

Very interesting, and full of sensible logic Robert.

I remember when Real Madrid were going all Galactico and they kept buying very expensive players and selling better ones at a much cheaper price. What fee would Cole Palmer fetch right now?

There really needs to be some sort of rule regarding this. Not only are the rich clubs spending ridiculous money, they are also hoovering up all the best kids. The only way for Everton to catch up is to get lucky, develop some world-beaters, and have them break into the first team.

Maybe if your academy is already listed as elite, you can't move club until you're 18 and have signed a professional contract.

Maybe the compensation could be looked at. If you poach a kid then the club that developed gets 50% of all future transfer fees received for the next 5 years.

Something needs to be done to stop this. When everyone was going on about Klopp's kids, did you notice only one actually came through from Liverpool? – All the rest were poached from other academies.

In today's world, Rooney would have been poached before he even kicked a ball for us.

Seems that this predatory move on our young keeper by Man City may be less likely now, with a recent piece in The Athletic reviewing possible Everton transfers indicating that Doug Lukjanciks is “currently expected to remain at the club.”