ToffeeWeb - Season 2007-08

The Mail Bag

Wakey Wakey Time

Sorry to harp upon about my concerns but lets get back to this season realities ? forget the bloody ground issue . Now what am I talking about? See these facts :

Spurs 30
Villa 25
West Ham 28
Bolton 25
Blackburn 23
Man City 21
Everton 19

The numbers refer to their numbers of players they have in their current 1st team squad ? and only taking into account players who have regularly played in Premier League or equivalent overseas.

Now whilst we can say quality vs quantity we got to face the fact that unless we sign at least another 4-6 players hopefully (but no chance) by Aug 11th than we could be in deep shit by I'd say 1st round UEFA cup. Other than Blackburn the rest are still buying or are showing that they want to continue to buy, but all we have is done is to say dont worry we'll find the faces before the deadline, and in the meantime Moyes is over in USA with his fit 15 players.

Kirkby or Liverpool ? couldn't give a damn because at this rate we'll only be in Coca Cola or whatever they call it now. I'm not normally this down, and as I said yesterday I rate Moyes and Co, but for Christ's sake lets see some half-decent buys in next few weeks.
Mike Oates, West Sussex Posted 23/07/2007 at 17:18:08

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John Holmes
1 Posted 23/07/2007 at 19:41:48

I don’t know how you get 19 Mike. I see no reason to discount Ruddy and Turner they are no better or worse than most clubs reserve keepers. Da Silva has played plenty of games in his career and given his appearances in friendlys seems likely to do so at Everton this season. Of the squad listed on the OS you can realistically only drop Vidarsson, Boyle and Jutkiewicz and even that’s harsh on the latter as he’s played a number of games for Swindon. So I make it 21 dropping those three plus the likely signings of Pineaar and Vogel makes 23. Still not entirely adequate but far better than the drastic situation you paint.

Neil Todd
2 Posted 23/07/2007 at 19:42:55

As much as I would love to see more new faces at Goodison and agree wholeheartedly with your concerns, I think we have to face the hars reality that we are skint and cant compete in this inflated transfer market.

Dutch Schaffaer
3 Posted 23/07/2007 at 20:23:44

Lets have a count: Tony Hibbert, Joseph Yobo, Joleon Lescott, Mikel Arteta, Andy Van der Meyde, Andy Johnson, James Beattie, James McFadden, Iain Turner, James Vaughan, Alan Stubbs, Phil Jagielka, Tim Cahill, Phil Neville, Nuno Valente, Leon Osman, Tim Howard, Anderson de Silva, Lee Carsley, Lucas Jutkiewicz, Victor Anichebe, Patrick Boyle, John Ruddy & Bjarni Vidarsson, I make that 24 squad players.

You cannot fail to include the likes of Vidarsson, Ruddy and Jutkiewicz, they have been issued a number and are a part of the squad. I’m sure Spurs and the others have fringe players too.

So that 24 squad players and you can add to that Pineaar and hopefully Vogel which would make 26.

Not as bad as you make out.

sean
4 Posted 23/07/2007 at 20:47:41

i wud luv to see us sign sum new players an personally am confident that we will see Pienaar (workpermit pending), vogel and smith sign for us. wudnt be suprised if moyes is watchin the Baines transfer and Gravesen too since we wud like numbers for europe.
i think the quality in our squad is far better than those mentioned above except Spurs.
however, every season we always here comments of how we are gettin relegated due to small numbers an guess wat...it hasnt happened so far. it wnt happen this yr either. for a team who’s fans ask for quality we must sign quality.
it wasnt too long ago ppl wer askin for quality wen we had to make do with radz, jeffers etc in our squad. for the first time in yrs our squad is no longer full up of ’work horse-like’ players.
moyes basically had to build from scratch. another few yrs an we will be confidently calling for 4th spot. it is then that we can call for masses of signings.
in yrs to come evry1 will be sayin ’Everton wasnt built in a day’.
come on the blues!!!

Gavin Ramejkis
5 Posted 23/07/2007 at 20:57:35

I’ve got to agree with a line from Sean that I can’t see us getting relegated with the quality in the current squad, my argument is making do won’t help push onto another level, if you want to aspire to win trophies be they in this country or Europe that entails a whole lot more games and unless you have the luck of the devil that is bound to bring injuries and suspensions and very tired players, a bigger squad allows your better players to be rotated and rested in lesser games reducing the chances of injury and burnout.

Ross Trotter
6 Posted 24/07/2007 at 09:35:52

Although it’d be a majorly strange coincidence if it happened , can you imagine if AJ, Lescott, Arteta and Tim Howard all got injured over a 4 week period. We’d be fucked. We have depth, just not much quality therein.

sean
7 Posted 24/07/2007 at 10:36:11

evry team has star players who, if injured, wud lead to the team struggling. that is a very negative comment Ross.
put it this way, if arsenal lost toure and fabregas (jus 2 players!) theyd be in more trouble than us.
if liverpool lost carra, gerrard, alonso and agger theyd find it much harder. if united lost ronaldo, giggs, scholes and rooney.
evertons squad deserves more credit than wat most fans giv it.

Ross Trotter
8 Posted 24/07/2007 at 11:04:19

Sean, of course every team has better players that they would struggle if they got injured, the point is they’d still have quality players that could come in and do the job asked of them.

If Vaughn and AJ got injured Victor would probably start with Beattie or McFadden. count how many goals they’ve got between them. If Arteta got injured who’d replace him? Ossie? Phil neville? Da Silva? I’m sure you see my point. A good squad should have a good replacement for every position. Chelsea will lose Kalou and Drogba to the African nations, they’ve only got Shevchenko and Pizarro to replace them though(!)

We have Europe, the domestic cups and league to think about this season, we should have a big enough squad to be able to play a different 11 two games on the trot. We’ll struggle if we don’t have that kind of strength in depth. Remember, we’re also losing Joey Yobo to the African Nations.

sean
9 Posted 24/07/2007 at 14:01:12

of course we wud struggle, i nvr sed we wudnt but u failed to tell me who liverpool, arsenal an man utd wud replace them players with.
guess u cud say nani and anderson for man utd now but arsenal wud clearly be overwhelmed by a lack of quality. who wud liverpool replace gerrard, carra, agger an alonso with? sissoko, hyypia, kewell or pennant? they wud also struggle.
but really i think it is typical of a lot of ppl who come on this site to imagine the most unimaginable occurance and use it as evidence to support the ideology that our squad is of poor quality and thin on numbers.
moyes must be amazin to get the prems worst team to 6th place then.

Ross Trotter
10 Posted 24/07/2007 at 14:08:49

First of all, I’m not really interested in talking about Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea or anyone else, I’m talking about Everton.

2nd of all you’re exagerrating and twisting my words.

where up there did i say we had the worst team in the Premiership?

I said we’re thin on QUALITY players. We’ve got plenty workhorses, plenty guys who’d knock their pan but just aren’t quality. Beattie runs about continually, he’s not much fucking use though is he?

We’re supposed to be a top 6 side, our squad doesn’t reflect that. You should have a quality replacement in each position and we don’t have that.

sean
11 Posted 24/07/2007 at 15:23:12

u arent concerned about man utd, arsenal, chelsea or anyone? so ur not bothered about teams we compete with? if u ignore the teams we r competin with then u must surely be ignoring ther squads. here’s a tip. luk at villas, pompeys, bolton an blackburns squad. see who starts for them an also see who can replace any gud injured players.
i bet ud find that we do infact hav better quality than most teams besides last yrs top 5.
QUANTITY:fulham hav signed lots of players an i can guarentee that we will finish above them.
QUALITY:man city hav spent big on 3 players and i can guarentee we will finish above them.
in order to compete we hav to take note of other ppls teams, that way we can see if our team is in as bad a condition as many think.
but personally i wud like to see better players on the pitch, like fernandes, but who wudnt.
the comment about everton bein the worst team in the league was not directed at u but at those who seem to think nxt yr will be a CRISIS season.