Poor management not grasping the nettle first time round when agreement couldn't be reached.

Similar circumstances arise again what do you think the club should do?

Advocating policies that cost us money then moaning we're skint is as thick as it gets.

By my maths £3 million transfer fee received + £3.6 million in saved wages (if Pienaar's reputed "demands" of £70k were to believed) is a greater sum than what we've just paid to take him back.

Proved to be a smart move as we got £10m for Arteta - you knew the cards were marked when he became the top earner. We're just lucky we could get Pienaar back in.

From the wages side of things, Cahill, Saha, Arteta & Yakubu were all still at the club on fat contracts. With hindsight its easy to say that selling him was a mistake, but the van persie & Nasri example help to show that players hold the power where contracts are concerned.

Also, who would have expected at the time that he would ever resign? It seemed the sensible thing to do back then. At 4.5 million he represents reasonable value for a player of his standard, Distin cost 5 million at 31, and he doesnt have the same effect on the team.

Glad he is back, bit of a shitter that it cost a few quid, but means the team has a bit of the creativity we all crave.

And look how Arteta's form dipped immediately after his bumper pay rise, then Fellaini, Cahill, Neville etc. could have had claim to parity with Arteta as he was no better than them!

Basically, what I'm saying is, is it the clubs fault for not offering high wages or is Peanut's fault. I have a feeling it's the latter... Or not,... ah balls I dunno

The simple fact of the matter is that we have got a decent player who fits!! What more do you need?

Our squad has been really pruned with the exits of Pienaar, Arteta, Gosling, Yobo, Cahill, Yakubu, Bily, Beckford, Vaughan, Ruddy etc etc. I have not counted the players we loan out each season and the youngsters who have been released. Our wage bill has been decimated and we have only signed two proven players in Jelavic and now Pienaar. Naismith has not yet proved himself so I'm waiting to see what impact he makes. Our best hope for replacements suitable to be able to hold down Premier League places lies in Rodwell, Junior and Barkley. I sincerely hope that they all make the grade.

My view of the transfer budgetting and manouverings by our present board of directors is of ineptitude. Pienaar was well worth parity with Arteta who has never regained the standard he showed prior to his injury and I include his play at Arsenal since leaving us.

As I said earlier, giving Pienaar the money made much better sense than wasting it on the likes of McFadden and Hahnemann who contributed nothing to my mind. Talking of the wage structure, the ceiling was already in place with Arteta and probably Cahill.

We were and still are skint and the way I look at this is that we have got back a very good player at a cheap price.

What's more, having realized that he plays his best football in a blue shirt, the little transfer episode may have actually made Peanuts a much more committed and effective perfomer then he ever was before. This could work out in our favour.

It might not have worked out for Peinaar in the long run, but I'm sure when he lined out against AC Milan in the San Siro for a Champions League fixture that spring, he felt justified in his decision.

With all that now water under the bridge, the questions we need to ask are (1) would you like Peinaar back at Everton, and (2) what is his value? Personally, yes I do, and £4.5 is great value for a hard-woring, creative player with years of Premier League experience. Try name as many better left-wingers in the league as you can and compare their supposed values? Would you rather N'Zogbia or Downing, and see how much they cost?

You are right to say that it doesn't matter what the sums are, it's a moot point at this stage whether or not we have saved money on Pienaar. The guy is simply an Everton player on a permenent deal and lets just get on with it.

I have to say I have been surprised - and quite happy - to see Pienaar so keen to come back. I often felt he saw us as a very good stepping stone. What's above Everton? CL clubs only. Either I was wrong about him, or he misunderstood what a great thing he was leaving in Everton.

However, I doubt very much that it's a straight payment of £ 4.5m.

I have my conspiracy hat on now and I'm thinking how strange it is for our club, who generally tell the fans so little, to disclose the amount of the transfer.

Secondly, look at it this way... we paid £4.5M on an industrious, passionate, creative, hard working, attack-minded, popular player who sets up chances, scores goals, always offers a pass, tracks back, links up well with the left back (Lescott, Baines), contributes massively to making the team tick, and recognises his affinity with the club.

Spurs paid £3M for a player they could have got for free 6 months later, who didn't score, didn't set up many chances, warmed the bench, and was unhappy, unsettled and filled with regret about leaving Everton.

BTW, the transfer "was protracted in the usual Everton way" according to some on here. I believe that Levy's mother was really ill; seeing as how he's the tranfer mover and shaker at Spurs, any dealings were going to take a little longer.

Oh, and ... IN MOYES I TRUST!!!

I hope he shows the same form but will wait and see before I start celebrating too much. Also going by recent history, I hope he doesn't end up in prison in the near future!

We should sell any of our top players who are under 30 once they only have two years to go – or get them signed up. We do not have the money not to do otherwise. Simples.

Only thing that matters is whether we will look back and wish we spent the £4.5 million somewhere else. If he stays out of prison and does what he is capable of on the pitch for us for the next few seasons everyone will agree that it was money well spent.

We are back to having a very strong midfield, after feeling depressed 10 months ago, having lost Pienaar, Arteta, and expecting loss of Felli.
Now a 5-man midfied would likely be:

Pienaar - Rodwell or Barkley - Fellaini - Osman or Gibson - Junior. Sweet!
Search those desperate loanees for another striker.

And I do think that he wanted to leave. He was a class act about it, he never went to the media, he always played his heart out, but he wanted CL football and got dazzled by the bright lights of London. Most players don't do what he did, which is stay silent and not play things out in the media with whinging and a transfer request. That's why we still love him.

So there was no real way to avoid him leaving, we make money on the whole thing as long as you think he still has a couple of years in the tank (I do), and it was good management.

I am especially pleased to have him back and at 4.5 million he is good value.

However I think the club needs a policy that if a player has not renewed his contract before 12 months to go then we should immediately tranfer list him.

A number of players are trying to run down their contracts these days with a view to big signing on fees as if they were not on enough wages as it is.

Everton lost a player for a few months but if they had paid Pienaar the £70k a week his agent was looking for, the £10.5m deal signed yesterday would have cost £14.5m.

It has worked out very well indeed for us: not only have they got him for £4m less than he was originally looking for, we have not had to pay the wages Spurs were mug enough to pay. We have also sent out a message to others who may be thinking of asking more than the club can afford. All this and we managed to palm Saha off on them too.

The outcome probably had more to do with good luck than good management, but who gives a fuck? We have a cracking little footballer who improves our football dramatically and I'm made up.

I wonder if Spurs would be interested in Jagielka?

We now have Stevie happy to play for us at £50 grand per week as opposed to the reported £70 he was after when he left us.

Stevie's come back a "born again" (I know) player realising that he & Everton are a match made in heaven (I know, I know)

Hopefully it will confirm the perception amongst the players that Moyes really has created something special here at Everton and remind any that need reminding that "the grass isn't always greener"

Still it gives people a chance to moan about something else wrong with Everton rather than look at the positive which is that we signed a proven, premier, performer – Pienaar.

See, sometimes alliteration can be used to accentuate positive things too!

It's P I E N A A R

PEA-NUTS

Oh yeh!

Will you come back next year and buy it back for what I paid plus about 30% please?

Plus, Pienaar wasn't sold at "half market value" by us at the time was he? He was sold at the market value at the point in time, which was circa £3m. The market value is dictated by what someone will pay

A more accurate analogy would be - sell me your apartment when it has a year left on the lease and then I buy it back 18 months down the line when you have extended the leasehold to a much longer one. Now, at which point will the house be worth more money?

Chris, I'm tempted honestly I really am but I'm just about to have a late lunch and this has all the makings of eternal bollocks - so thanks but no thanks.

You obviously get the point and don't like it probably like all the other spin merchants but who cares? you're wrong.

Pass the salt please.

I'm still unconvinced with how you perceive this to be a bad bit of business. It's really easy to criticize when we have the big picture, i.e. transfers to and from Spurs. But as some posters have pointed out, could you really be 100% certain we could have kept Pienaar the first time round? Was it just an issue of a wage increase?

I find too many variables to be able to pass judgement as easily as you have. Did Everton feel justified in breaking their wage structure at that time as opposed to now? After we sold him, did any of us know Pienaar would flop at Spurs? Would they have been willing to loan him back to us? Did God give him an epiphany that he should return to Everton???

Suppose you were representing Everton handling Pienaar's contract signing, how would you have done it?

ANDY CARROLL

..........puts it all in perspective.

First, the issue is that Pienaar seemingly wanted more wages, or wanted to be in parity with Arteta. This in my opinion is a no-go because a) Pienaar wasn't as valuable as Arteta, and b) it would break our wage structure, so we probably couldn't afford it.

People seem to forget that there is a wage budget as well as a transfer budget, and although our transfer budget is minimal, our wage budget is pretty high, at least in the top half. There's people like Fellaini, Jags, Baines, Distin, Jelavic and Pienaar to name a few, all on £40k a week at least I would have thought,

Then there's the transfer value. It doesn't take a genius to think when people's contracts are about to run out, then their value is gonna get lower. So £3 million for somebody with 6 months left is a decent deal. Then when Spurs buy him, he's tied down to a 3- or 4-year contract, therefore his value is going to be higher than £3 million, even if he is getting older.

So now he's 30, and then we buy him for £4.5 million. Now yeah, it's easy to think a club like us paying £4.5 million for a 30-year-old is crazy, but think about it: he was on a long-term contract at Spurs, he's proven, he's a very good creative player, he's played for us before.

So ineptitude or good management? Definitely good management. What more could Moyes do, seriously?

Getting yourself into a position of having to sell is crap in any industry you always take a hit and that's what happened with Pienaar. Rangers aren't giving away players to be penitent and we'll be following their example with more deals like this.

Going cap in hand to spurs offering their money back plus another mil or so is just a result of the original piss poor management. Glad he's back but it doesn't hide the paper trail and fans excusing this bollocky way of doing business are justifying more shit for the future. Every man and his dog will be whining why haven't we got 1 million to spend on 2 more Gibsons or whatever in 6 months.

Regarding Chris's analogy (and I'm just indulging Marcus here) what added value have spurs put on the deal equating to the longer lease? (I want a full conveyancing report please).

Are cars employees that are contracted to their owners? Can they drive away on a Bosman free transfer at the end of their contract, thereby diminishing their market value when there's under six months left on said contract?

If the answer is no to both of the above, then your analogy is indeed eternal bollocks.

First, how long should we have left it? 12 months, 18 months, 24 months?

Second, we have no idea when Pienaar made all of these wage demands.

And third, how do you know we could sell him earlier? How do you know clubs wanted to pay more than 3 million for him. There isn't a guarantee at all.

You must be snorting something a lot stronger than me mate.

Back when, we needed to sell Pienaar, rather than let him run down his contract... guess what? We sold him for £3M, which was low in terms of his ability as a player, but was still pretty amazing considering how little time he had left on his contract.

By the end of last season, it was probably clear to most fans that we needed to buy him back. Yesterday we did. The cost was £4.5M, which may be high considering his age, but is certainly a bargain considering what he can potentially do for the team.

I'm usually one of the first to scream 'ineptitude' but, in this case, I think both decisions were the right ones to make at the time, all things considered.

I'd say 18 months but of course thats completely abitrary.

You seem to be going against perceived wisdom suggesting Pienaars value to us wouldn't diminish as his contract wound down. No bad thing, shows a certain independence of mind.

You're off your cake of course but at least you like a good fantasy - (good stuff is it?)

Has Kenwright got your family?

I agree with Michael... NURSE! The world's gone mad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC-a-rdUMiA

A couple of decent players in this clip, probabaly the best Everton team of the seventies.

Some clubs have budgets, and have to stick to them. Wenger has a policy of 1 year for players when they reach 30. We've just given a 30 year old a 4 year deal. Wenger polarises Arsenal fans' views similarly to Moyes with our fans. Many blame him for Arsenal's relative malaise. Many others blame the boardroom. All too familiar!