ToffeeWeb - Season 2007-08

The Mail Bag

Why we shouldn't go Dutch or any other Nationality

I've read with great interest some of the posts regarding signing bargains from overseas. To my mind, Arteta apart, we have had our fingers badly burned with foreign imports not already playing in the Premiership. Not mentioning any names of course! Not adapting to our league, getting homesick (the grass can look greener when wads of money flash before their eyes), just not as good in terms of quality or desire to play as the scouts reports suggested. All valid reasons not to sign an overseas bargain maybe?

Now consider Arteta, our only successful import in recent years. Given current transfer values, he may have cost £10 million plus in my guesstimations this year, if we were looking to bring him in from overseas now. My point is we shouldn't even be looking below someone in the Arteta mould and as such I don't think we could afford to purchase similar quality from overseas in the current climate. Arteta had also played in Scotland previously and whilst not as strong as the Premiership, at least it was a different league to his homeland.

I'll stick my neck out and say we shouldn't and we won't be signing any overseas-based players anytime soon. All hypothesis I know and feel free to disagree as I would certainly welcome people's opinions on this topic both positive or negative.
Steve Williams, Southport Posted 06/07/2007 at 00:03:24

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Lyndon

I disagree quite strongly, actually, if only because the domestic market is so over-heated and because the type of players we now need are going to require that bit of flair, quality and Continental experience that we currently lack. There are plenty of overseas players who arrived for next to nothing but have excelled in England (granted, most of them have been Scandinavian ? e.g. Gamst Pedersen, Gudjohnsen, Solskjaer) but if we're thinking of paying upwards of £6m for Alan Smith, we could probably do better with a well-considered foreign player. Trouble is, with Moyes's focus on Britain, I've yet to see much evidence that we have the scouting network in place for that.

Dave Turner
1 Posted 06/07/2007 at 04:23:13

Yobo not count as recent?

He was a Moyes signing, I think the policy of bringing players in on loan from abroad should be further looked into.

Would have saved trouble with Koldrup and VDM.

Yobo, Arteta and Fernandez we all succesful loans from abroad.

Infact would it be surprising if we saw it happen again this season?

(Though granted, Moyes does favour Christmas for it rather than summer, though not always didn’t Yobo come for a full season loan?)

Carsten Hansen
2 Posted 06/07/2007 at 09:27:34

I have to disagree with you, very much so in fact. Transfer fees in England at the moment are completely ludicrous. Only when players have certain stipulations in their contracts or their contracts are running out, they can be bought for a fair price - as is the the case with jagielka. I’m afraid I have to say that, as a whole, British players are vastly overpriced in comparison to European, and for me it would make a lot of sense to increse scouting in Europe, both in Scandinavia and especially the former Eastern European Countries.
The the growing economies of the former East block countries, means that they are getting back into full fight as far as football is concerned, their academies function well etc. etc., and they procuce an abundance of good players, who are technically very good amd usually physically able to cope with the ordeals of the Premier League.
But of course this would mean doing proper scouting, just as you would have to do in Britain, in order to make sure that you get a player who fits in - and Moyes is obvioulsy very keen to make sure of that - but if you ’do your homework’, I feel pretty sure that you’d be able to find talent outside of Britain which would cost far less than your Alan Smiths, Kieran Richardson’s - just in my humble opinion!

Steve Williams
3 Posted 06/07/2007 at 09:38:44

Thanks for your comments Lyndon. I was thinking more we had the kiss of death with slightly less well known players and as such it would not be worth making signings we have a poor track record with eg the Tobias Linderoths and the like, compared to Blackburn, Portsmouth etc who seem to pick em up on the cheap and one of them snatches a jammy goal against us at Goodison in the last few minutes.... or was that QPR who used to have a habit of getting dodgy goals against us (Les Ferdinand)

Anyway back on topic, good call Dave, that certainly is one way of reducing the risk factor involved with more loan signings. If their current targets don’t come off, would we be happy with 2 quality flair players on loan-(some young USA players are being touted-I’m not convinced but a different type of player possibly??? Manny realistically looks out of reach on the loan front, but I suppose its a case of never say never.

Steve Williams
4 Posted 06/07/2007 at 09:50:10

Sorry Carsten I was posting as your reply appeared wasn’t ignoring you.... you are right that is maybe the way to go with the scouting network, which is part of our problem and my reasoning behind being very cautious about not signing from overseas until they have their proper scouting networks in place to really dig out the talent, but that again is deep investment in the infrastructure of the club, money they haven’t even got for team building at present. Watching the Copa America whilst most games are poor as entertainment, it gets you thinking about some of the talent on show and then you think there’s as much chance of Everton scouting in South America as Blue Bill declaring he’s just bought out Gillette and Hicks. So for me they’ve neglected the overseas scouting network for too long which might mean more Koldrups than Mickeys unless as Dave points out they’re signed on loan 1st.

Stefan Tosev
5 Posted 06/07/2007 at 14:18:24

I cant believe what I am reading, our problem are not the European players but the lack of it. The only Everton players I have seen with skill, vision, elegance were Europeans - Arteta, Fernandes, Kanchelskis.

There are a lot of quality Europeans at very,very low prices. I can go on and on but I have discussed the matter 100 of times. Just to point out Riquelme was snapped on free,Berbatov costed Leverkusen 1,5 GBP, RVP 700K, when we were linked with Essien his price was 4m, Diego costed Bremen only 2.5m Schalke sold Lincoln (great playmeker) for only 2m. All these players are better by miles than the likes of Smith,Richardson and Koumas but unfortunately our European scouting network sucks and as a result we have to compete on the overinflated English market.

One more thing, the reason of Arsenal free-flowing football style are the European players as well and until we turn our attention to quality Europeans at reasonable prices we cannot expect to break into top 4.

Neil Patten
6 Posted 06/07/2007 at 19:54:13

Unfortunately a big part of whether or not a player is signed/kept on is based upon their "attitude" during the training sessions in the week rather than what they do on a Sat at 3.00 at GP and I suspect that this may be in part responsible for our preference for "local" players. I remember a few years ago having a heated discussion with a very senior member of the backroom staff at Everton about the state of the team. He was adamant that Michael Ball was shite because he thought he was better than everone else during training (to which I replied that he was for a couple of hours every Sat), Tommy G was a show pony who was shite and just played up to the fans (ended up at Real Madrid though), and that Mark Pembridge was the best player that we had at the time! Sadly, it seems that the main criteria for being an Everton player is a team ethic above any flair. Don?t get me wrong, I think that this is crucial, but it needs to be married with some real flair and ability as well if we are going to progress from what is now a very solid base. Here?s hoping!