I have to say, Moyes making him captain, means he’s a certain starter, but this season so far, I think he’s played well, sadly Moyes has Keane ahead of O’Brien, and worryingly Mykolenko is injured again on International duty, so Branthwaite could be left back against Hull, with two slow coaches playing together in the centre. Regarding O’Brien’s stats, you can’t judge his passing or heading duels playing out of position at right back. On Sunday against Israel he won every heading duel and every duel on the floor, but Moyes stubbornness won’t change.

How many goals have we conceded this season Michael. Credit where due

I guess they vote for it because it, in theory makes it harder for EFL clubs to match the levels that PL spend. So PL mid to lower table teams want to cement their place, their share of the TV money and riches the PL offers, while making it harder for others to join and then stay in the PL . Everyone is out for themselves, the top few want to stay there, the rest are so scared of relegation it suits them .

Don’t look back in anger. 😆

An appalling Player. Has been for the past two seasons. Slowest player in the league. Repeatedly runs under the ball because he cannot adjust his feet after misjudging the flight of it. Anchors the team to its only penalty area. Those who dont understand why he has to make so many blocks under his own goal posts will applaud is last ditch “heroics”. Those who do, cant wait to see the back of him. Another Everton “legend” who has only ever known failure.

This is the bit I have never been able to understand, other than it cements the fact that being in the Premier League is the success for most owners. The league isn’t about glory, it’s about money and the dining out on owning an epl team. To have glory, most owners would have to take a huge loss now. Abramovich, Mansour just wanted to buy success like a toy. The irony is, clubs like Man U can be bled dry for profit whilst accruing incredible debt. Go figure

Former Liverpool Chief Executive, Christian Purslow admitted that Liverpool effectively were in administration, were it not for their Bankers ( and Sponsors I think) Santander extending the foreclosure timescales. A preferential treatment not afforded to many.

Excellent summary. Why did 14 out of 20, including Everton vote in favour. It needed a two thirds majority, one more vote against would have overturned it. It’s a non meritocracy, a closed shop. Only the Revenue rich can achieve success under this model. The rest are handcuffed. This would be a good moment to revisit the Rules, the Government Regulator should ask pertinent questions. If Financial security was the purpose, what about Man Utd, £1.1bn in debt. This whole thing stinks. I don’t excuse City, cheating should get its just outcome, but the system is the reason they took the path they did. Horrible as that behaviour is.

I’m glad you noticed that. I saw it in the Roma friendly at GP, so that was 2024 when he played on the left side of the centre backs.

Shhh Dave. You might wake him up

Is that the same Peter Johnson who won us our last trophy?

Manchester City, Aston Villa, Fulham, Southampton, Swansea City & West Brom were the clubs who voted against it at the time, I believe.

If clubs incurring excessive debt was or still is the real concern, then why not just address that? It just seems bizarre that the majority of Premier League clubs (at lest 14 out of 20) would freely vote for something that limits their potential future glory. Why would they do that?

Brian, your comment on a different thread said this: “I was listening to Kevin Mcguire a supposedly financial expert on football matters, and I agree with him when he said that PSR and all the other financial constraints weren’t there to allow fairness — they were brought in so the cartels weren’t impacted and gave them a massive financial position over the rest. “They brought in these rules to bring up the ladder and stop nation states doing what they have done at City and PSG. So seeing these rules benefit a select few, why not scrap them altogether? Let clubs spend whatever they want as long as their are rules in place to stop them walking away from the club and leaving them in massive debt. Maybe the Gary Neville idea of new owners having to give a bond to the premie rleague which guarantees the club will not be in a worse financial position than it was before the current owners took over.” The rules really do not seem to be fit for purpose, do they?

Injuries when was the last time Tarky was injured good luck there . Also when Jarrad gets injured Keane will play because Jake can’t kick with his left foot . If i was jake i would go else where in january .

Jake is certain to get his chance owing to injuries,loss of form etc.Be patient lad,your time will come!

One good point is that Francis accepted that scholarship when it was offered so I think he will be with Everton until he is 18.

I do agree on the PL not having a set punishment. 3- 4 -5 -6 points for psr breaching wouldn’t affect a city, utd or arsenal in the same way it affects a team battling relegation. Chelsea or city could just see how a season is going, if they think a 5-6 point deduction wouldn’t knock them out the CL places or stop them winning a title, they’re likely to just break the rule and take the pre determined point deduction, therfore strengthening their squad for next year. There absolutely needs to be a limit on spend, not linked to your income, which creates a cartel of the already rich, a realistic number, and tiered so the lowest finishing club can spend the most, and the champions the least, to create a healthier competition.

I would like to see a deep dive on Peter Johnson so we have a proper context and a reminder of how bad it was.

UK government has an annual trade budget of £25 billion with the owners of City. Not a chance of relegation imo. UK Government will step in.

Had a great start to the season James, as the goals conceded show. More of the same please Tarks.

Lets get things straight asking Moyes to do something different is a no no. All Evertoinians would love to see Branthwaite and O Brien play together regular, but the big issues are Moyes and Tarkowski will believe there doing nothing wrong they will point at results which Moyes loves . You see Moyes has said after many a game that was a good point, in hindsight you would of accepted that before the game Thats what it says on MOYES TIN. We have 8 more months of this before he is sent packing and O Brien will have to sit and wait for his chance simple really.

Yes Michael, and what is strange is that as an EU operator they are contravening the fundamental competition policy of the EU. The rules are fostering cartel type market dynamics. It probably needs a Bosman type case to clear the decks.

Let it go, Dave. He’s long dead. Although I’d like someone to write a critical article about the total fuck-ups he made while Chairman of Everton FC. [Funny how nobody talks about the current Everton Chairman? It’s Dan and Angus that get all the flack!]

Laurie there was a lot more inter action with the priest speaking and the response from the congregation that was different from the usual way the mass was said as well as inter action between fellow members of the congregation.

[I need to write less, obviously… bumping up against the ridiculous Arena system character limit, which we hope to change soon!] This line from Conn’s 2011 piece is particularly poignant: “The £500M Mansour has spent in three seasons has helped Man City to move six places up the Premier League from the 9th they were in when Thaksin went missing, and win the FA Cup. Other clubs cannot and should not have to compete with that sort of owner investment just to make it into Europe.” Hmmm… is he still writing for The Guardian? I might have to start reading it again! PSR wasn’t introduced in the Premier League until later — it must have been the 2013-14 season after the BBC reported “The 20 Premier League clubs have agreed, in principle, to introduce radical new cost controls.” That was in December 2012. “Man City and Fulham are the only clubs opposed to any spending controls, BBC Sport understands.” — Oh the irony…

I absolutely hate City. But I hope they take the corrupt bastard EPL with them. I see Andy Burnham was defending the owners. Money always talks, as does corruption. Fuck Manchester, Andy. You’re a blue.

Steve, am I right in thinking it was Uefa who originally brought in Financial Fair Play rules for clubs in European compteitions? But David Conn in The Guardian was quick to point out: “Uefa’s well-intentioned new ruling on club spending may merely serve to help the rich get richer” — that was way back in 2011. he goes on to write: “With Financial Fair Play now upon Europe’s clubs, who must seriously rein in their spending to comply with its break‑even requirements, it is not clear whether Uefa has quite thought through two of its potentially negative consequences. “The first is that if clubs are no longer permitted to rely on owners putting money in, then those who make the most income without owners’ help could become even more inevitable winners of the game’s prizes. The second is that clubs will seek to further increase their income, leading to yet more expensive ticket prices, as is happening in England, with rises announced at United, Arsenal and Liverpool.”

Michael I think you are asking an old dog to learn new tricks when referring to Moyes.

Philip hopefully he might have enough time to slip him his P45 and his comics!

These stats clearly confirm what an effective player James Tarkowski is. But he still gets nasty abuse from certain sections of the fanbase which I find hard to comprehend. Even so, it would be wise for Moyes to go beyond his strict substitution protocols — which have actually got worse this season. He needs to rotate players like James O’Brien in much earlier than 70 minutes (it used to be that 60 minutes was the standard time for a switch but this has now changed).

More like have we missed out badly because of the corruption of the FFP rules? All this hand-wringing over City breaking rules that were pretty obviously devised to benefit United, Liverpool and Arsenal. Toffeemen never let you down? They have in this case.

The Premier League have a lot to answer for in all of this. They are in some ways trying to shut the gate after the horse has bolted and in some ways shooting the actual horse. Their incompetence has created all of this, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool 2010, poor rules construction, no standard tariff for each breach, no annual audits, only reacting to a whistleblower several years after City breaches, all those who have gotten away with breaches of the rules because the EPL has not audited nor investigated. Their incompetence is ruining the game. So so frustrating!

Spot on About Chelsea Brian There is also LFC 2010 – not investigated!!! They were way out of FFP and in virtual administration until Fenway came in.

Yea, Brain, I think the latest tweak has taken us in completely the wrong direction — Sort order of Best instead of Newest by default is an absolute nightmare and I couldn’t believe it when I found it had become the default setting on every news story, starting a couple of days ago. Harry and I have stressed how important it is for our readers to get this reversed immediately. However, neither Harry nor I are coding people, nor do we have direct access to change the settings, which has to be done manually by one of the tech team working for the owners. We’ve both agreed on a long list of changes we want to see implemented by the Arena comment system people, but they’re telling us many of these things won’t happen for at least 2 to 4 weeks, which is simply astounding as they should all be optional tweaks the customer can change. Paul moaned about us not running changes by everyone before they occur so we could all have input, but that is an impossible ideal in the real world.

I think the only possible outcome for City has to be relegation. But I am sure that part of Citys defence will be that they are being accused of their owner pumping money into the club to buy players and pay some wages via bogus companies, but that is exactly what Chelsea admitted to the premier league that Abramovich did when he owned Chelsea. Yet because the new owners of Chelsea came forward they got a measly fine. Whether one team admitted guilt and the other did everything to conceal their guilt the actions of their owners was identical.

Was Kenwright ever vetted by the premier league as a right and proper owner of Everton FC — I think they were very much out of order if they didn’t have a good look at his financial value to be the owner!

I think Tony has said what most of us are feeling about certain changes to the new format. I also understand what Harry is saying that unfortunately new owners want to incorporate their ideas. I have been on this site since the beginning and I go on this site most days just to see what my fellow Blues are thinking. My worry is that you can tell that the number of posts are getting less and less each day and I am sure the new owners will be aware of this and will want to change that pattern very quickly. I would suggest 2 things that will help keep the posters we have now. First get the recent comments sorted as what is showing in these columns have been there for weeks, the other point is can we list the posts on each subject from first to last, as at present it doesn’t seem to show what order the posts were sent in. Harry I know you care as much as we do about this site but if change doesn’t happen quickly I fear we might end up with a handful of posters or no Toffeeweb at all.

Thanks for flagging, Eric. Will try and get this fixed today.

Bear with us, Brendan. A few teething issues, but I’ve put some of the issues we’re working on fixes for here: https://www.toffeeweb.com/season/26-27/news/toffeeweb-comment-system-update/

Will try and get that patched today Brendan. Thanks for flagging. Not sure why anyone would want to read from ‘best’ as can’t follow the conversation! We’ve asked the comment provider to instal an oldest first.

Nil postis nisi optimum?

Starting with the two fingers position, of course.

Now the “best” reply comes first? Why?

This new version of Toffeeweb is pretty poor. Even Evertonia looks a better bet Gotta pull it back guys Thanks for everything BTW… Michael K.

Now every thread defaults to display ‘Best’ instead of ‘Newest’ and doesn’t remember the change.

Good work, Brian.

Scratching my head here Dave. I am interested – what was the change.

Thanks Tony. Good player Franny mate. Good boxer, but most importantly, a good man. The kid is from good stock, fingers crossed.

Did Andy Burnham let his guard down when ansk about City’s owners, selling up? I would be really concerned to lose them. Was Andy speaking as a politician? Because at the end of the day these Politicians love money, more than anything else.