The Mail Bag
Fellaini and the future
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Fellaini seems to be a great divider of Evertonian opinion at the moment, with some singing his praises and other questioning his ability. One thing that seems certain is that expectation is raised due to the price tag. Everton and Liege are the only ones responsible for the price that was paid for him and Fellaini would still be the same player whether we paid 15 million euros or 15 quid for him.
This piece isn't just about Fellaini, however; I think the bigger picture is being missed by a lot of fans, this is about Moyes's transfer policy. For the record my opinion is that Fellaini, right now, has not provided great value for ?15M, but is a very good player. And it's his future that will decide whether he's good value or not ? not this season and maybe not next season ? but hopefully the one after that and the one after, for some time to come.
I think we can more or less categorise the current 1st team squad into 4 rough groups:
- We have the backbone of a decent, young-ish first team, players who should be big players in Everton's push for Champs League football in the form of Howard, Jags, Lescott, Baines, Fellaini, Arteta, Cahill, Pienaar and Yakubu.
- We have a couple of older, ex-top level players in Saha and Neville.
- We then have the players who make up the numbers like Ossie, Hibbert, Anichebe and I'm also going to lump Yobo into this category after the emergence of Jags & Lescott as a top pairing.
- Last we have the youngsters who we hope will be part of a bright blue future, like Rodwell, Gosling, Vaughan and possibly Kissock, Irving, Baxter et al.
I think Fellaini is a risk, as he's not the finished article, but how else can we hope to EVER compete without following this policy? Fellaini, at 21 years old, already possesses the ability to be a good Premier League player and with 2, 3, 4 more years under his belt he could be a top Premier League player. I feel that the Fellaini 'model' should be our transfer policy for the next 2 or 3 years, unless circumstances change.
I am excited at the prospect of Moyes bringing in top, young, talented players to supplement the backbone of our squad, who can grow together, improve together and become the team of 2012 or 2013 which challenges for honours. If a bit of patience ? with Fellaini and hopefully another couple of signings in the same mould this summer and the one after that ? is what it takes, then I am happy with that.
At the end of the day, the challenge is to take a top-6 squad and turn it into a top-2 squad, without top-2 levels of investment, and I would love to hear if anyone has a better idea of how to achieve it.
Richard Parker, Posted 30/03/2009 at 06:14:00
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Everton paid no more than around £5 million for Fellaini upfront, with the rest being paid in installments, depending on the players development and success in the future.
I am still undecided on Fellaini, but I am however fairly confident that after a season in the Premier League he will adjust accordingly and turn out to be a decent player for us, hopefully finding his position in a settled starting XI.
The worst thing you can do with Fellaini is dispute whether he is worth £15 million, because he isn’t, and he wasn’t ever intended to after such a short period of time.
People forget we couldn’t up our bid for Moutinho in the summer to £15 million which is what Sporting where asking for, yet we go out and supposedly splash the same figure on an inferior player, can people not see the problem with this?
In conclusion, he is NOT a £15 million player. He may well be in the future and IF he is, then that is what we will pay.
My advice would be to view Felli as a promising player with potential and to stop expecting so much from him. If we had signed a player of proper pedigree, like a Moutinho, a Lucho Gonzalez, a Riquelme then we’d know what we were getting. With Felli we don’t, that’s the point, but we shall see and the early signs are fairly positive.
Hopefully Fellaini does turn out to be a good player, because he is only young, but he has a lot of improving to do in my opinion. For a holding midfielder he should be doing alot more than he is regardless of his price tag as players take him on far too easily and he doesn’t track back enough for the team. Maybe he will just need a season or two to adapt to the English game like many foreigners do before turning out to be top premier league players.
I read an article last week about Cahill which showed cahills ratio of goals per game in the prem was much better than Lampard and Gerrards, and someone commented saying ’’i cant believe how few goals Gerrard has scored in the league’’. This is because in recent times he seems to score hatricks every week and seems to have been great for years, but if you look at it more closley although he as always been very good its only been the last 3 or 4 years, since he was about 24 when he has really stepped up.
Even with Lampard, the comentator said his goal on saturday was his first since he scored against Croatioa, which brought something back to me that his very first England goal was against Croatia in a friendly not that long ago when he was about 24. You would have thought he would have been around the England set up a lot longer than that.
Then John Terry mentioned about his 50th cap for England and i remebered that he had only established himself in the England team in the Euros the same year Rooney made himself a regular, So Terry was about 23-24.
My point is Fellaini is just 21 and i dont think will see him near his best for another couple of seasons, but who knows how much of an impact he will have made when Gerrard or Lampards age. Who knows, people might one day be saying ’’i cant believe how few goals Fellaini has score’’ when he’s banging them in left right and centre when in his prime.
Gerrard recalled in a November 2008 interview with The Guardian, "I was out of position and out of my depth." The Liverpool hierarchy nonetheless remained convinced that he would improve. Gerrard saw himself as a defensive player primarily, looking to make key tackles rather than push the team forward.
However, he began to suffer from nagging back problems, which sports consultant Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt later diagnosed as a result of accelerated growth, coupled with excessive playing, during his teenage years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Gerrard
First of all, as mentioned by others Fellaini was NOT £15m. Even Belgian newspapers were stating that Liege were ASKING 15 million euros which at the prevailing exchange rate was £11m which I am sure we would have knocked down and got on installments with the popular consensus being c £4.5m down payment the rest in lucky bags.
I do however remain unconvinced not so much about his ability but about his head (and I don't mean his hair). He loses concentration quite a lot and his attitude with other players and referees makes him easily unsettled.
Lastly we do not know the extent of the back injury he has been carrying but it?s obvious his form has gone right out of the window recently.
All this talk of his improvement is an unknown quantity and to my eye he lacks stamina, pace and his tackling is abysmal. Pace does not come with development although stamina and tackling can. However, when compared to Henry, as one writer has, then that is completely laughable. Henry had fantastic ball control and MADE lots of goals besides becoming probably Arsenal's greatest ever player.
Talking of youth and obvious potential, not including Rooney, there has been Fabregas who was purchased for an absolute pittance. Now that is what I call foresight... I honestly believe that our top players in today's side have cost the least.
I dont think that any of our so called star buys... Beattie, Johnson, Yakubu etc have ever really been value for money. The Yak has scored but does little else and when he doesn?t score he is worthless. Beattie I won't even go into... and Johnson for me is just an honest worker who would not get into any of the top sides.
Our best bargains have been Arteta, Cahill, Lescott, Yobo, Jags and Baines... the latter two should have cost us nothing!!! Neville has also been a great acquisition. If we are to spend big money then we should be looking for a decent playmaker and fast winger who can cross the ball accurately.
Felli for my money has a lot to prove !!
Fellaini is an example of what seems to happen when Moyes is given more money to spend, he doesn’t know what to do with it. Fellaini was a total panic buy and will be very costly for our club when we have fuck all to spend in the first place.
Jury is out on Fellaini, but lets be positive.
And the future has to be about developing the academy first and foremost.
Fellaini already contributes more than Osmen, even on a bad day; I think this is his best chance of getting in the 1st team with a fully fit squad.
Before the responses come in, I don?t consider a £6m siging to be a "big" signing, so there goes Beattie and Krøldrup, Davies et al.
We sold AJ at a £3 million profit, Yak scored the most he ever has in a season for his first year and Fellaini, love him or hate him, IS an influence in this team, has been playing with an injury and is picked on by the ref. It?s too early to judge him yet, let's get a full season without a pretty serious back injury behind him before saying he isn?t worth this or that much.
The point being that we need money to spend big money to compete with the big four ? but it is debatable if Moyes is capable of spending relatively big amounts without getting a nosebleed.
By the way - what exactly does ?world class? mean?
World Class, in my view, is that the player is good/outstanding for both club and country on a world stage, less Messi for Barcelona and Argentine but not Stevie Mee Laaa for Liverpool and England
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1 Posted 30/03/2009 at 14:50:44
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People may be divided on opinion of Fellaini, however, I don?t think anyone can argue that ?15 mill (and without evidence that this is not the case we have to accept the clubs word that this was the price) - was way over the odds for the ?possible potential? to be a decent Premier League player. But then again, the quality of Fellaini is a separate issue from the abstract idea of a spending big money on youth players. However, it does pose the question of whether Moyes is capable of spending large amounts of money wisely.
Therefore the proposition that this is a sounds basis for the clubs transfer policy is certainly debatable. We would all love to have the world's best young talent in our team... but realistically ? that?s not gonna happen until we become an attractive proposition ? and how does that happen?
Simple really. Money.
We may have ambitions of being a top four team ? but while the potless crew are in charge of the bank balance ? that simply isn?t going to happen.