Deco. Played a trial game when we had Wally at the helm. Didn't work out for whatever reason. Two years later, he was regarded as one of the best players in Europe.

Collymore. We had just won the FA Cup under Big Joe. Could you have imagined him and Dunc up front, with Limpar providing for them???

Ravenelli is another.

I remember us being linked to Deco before he made a name for itself but it may have just been papertalk.

I'm sure Moutinho will end up being one of those players as we were linked with him for ages but looks like he'll be at a bigger club within a season or so.

I also remember when we were linked with Dean Saunders and Mark Wright in the early 90s before they both buggered off to Liverpool - that was pretty annoying!

Requelmi (SPELLING)

Nigel Martyn.....the first time

Didn't we speak to Collymore before he went to Liverpool? I remember being gutted at the time. If hindsight was foresight and so on.

Sean Davis (Fulham) — failed medical.

Apparently we turned down the chance to sign Ruud Gullit when he was 16???

May be one of those myths that are actually utter bollocks but I remember this one doing the rounds when I was a kid a Gullit was awesome!

Klinsman. We were in for him then he said he wouldn't come to English football... before heading to Spurs.

One player that would have really spurred us on under Moyes would have been the young Benni McCarthy. I think we ended up with Beatie instead.

Scott Parker rings a bell before taking the pay packed at Newcastle. Dion Dublin and Flo were both to have consequences for HK 1&2 I think.

Fortunately we messed up with Sissoko, so it does go both ways.

Remember Ravenelli turning up at Goodison with about 10 other men all suited and booted looking like the Mafia.

I do remember the Dean Saunders, Mark Wright fiasco. I'm sure that went on for ages. I was pretty gutted at the time. Also remember Ian Rush signing for us, only to find out it was a bloody April Fools joke on behalf of Match magazine!!!!

For me, by far the worst non-signing of the seventies was Bobby Robson as our manager, he agreed a deal, was given a cheque for £50'000 by John Moores as a thank you for agreeing to be our new boss, the only thing he stipulated was the we said nothing until he'd gone back to Ipswich and told his bosses there what was happening.

He got up the next morning and the story was in all the Sunday newspapers, he ripped up the cheque and sent it back to John Moores, and that was that.

Source: Bobby Robson's autobiography.

I can safely say we were never close to signing Hagi.

Howard may have made an enquiry but that's as far as it went I think. I remember it being in the Echo and it basically said he had no interest.

How he could turn down the opportunity to link up with Bob the Pole, Preki & John Ebbrell?

What a footballer by the way, loved him.

Dahlin, he wanted us to pay his tax for him....gerterfuck.

Essien: Seem to remember we refused to budge on the fee then he moved to Lyon. What a signing that would have been.

Dean Ashton: again seemed to be a refusal to negotiate. Would have been a cracker for us, and maybe he would have avoided injury.

Dion Dublin: would have been magnificant for us, on another level to anyone we had in the 90's (minus Kanchelskis)

Ole Gunnar Solskjær: we werent sure he'd make it in the Premier League so didnt take the risk.....DOH!!!!

Agger: I remember us being linked with him a season or 2 before the shite got him, seemd pretty concrete at the time.

Moutinho: If only we sold Arteta 2 years earlier to fund this one...hindsight.

Wasn't Pat Jennings the most capped Everton player never to have played for us? Brought in as cover when Southall got injured as a backup to his replacement.

Flo who went to Chelsea, wasnt there another player involved?

Cue Joe being mutually consented.

Vadis Odjidja Ofoe. Sigh.

"Agger: I remember us being linked with him a season or 2 before the shite got him, seemd pretty concrete at the time."

Didn't he already have Liverpool tattoos? I'm pretty sure he'd made it clear he didn't want to play for us.

Scott Parker would have been a perfect fit for Moyes Everton & probably would have done himself a lot more good football wise than the Newcastle/West Ham route he took.

Barry Ferguson made the wrong move opting for Souness Blackburn as well.

We have been close to Bellamy a couple of times, on ability rate him highly and if it wasnt for the dodgy knees could have had much better career than he has.

On a curveball seeing as we have only had him on loan......Donovan, tremendous wide attacker, rarely gives it away and provides penetration, chances and goals. If only we had secured him after that first loan.

Petr Cech. Linked strongly with him in 2002, he ended up at Rennes before going to Chelsea two years later. We got Richard Wright instead.

M'baye Niang also (you'll see)

Two for our older readers in the mid-fifties: Maurice Setters, England and West Brom, slipped through our fingers to become a Man Utd legend.

Also a certain Tommy Docherty, who was ours for the taking when he left Preston, but we dithered on the deal and Arsenal stepped in.

An interesting trialist in that distant decade was Garfield Sobers who wanted to be a goalkeeper; sadly, it was not to be but at least it enabled him to concentrate on other things.

When we signed Bob Latchford from Birmingham City, I remember reading that we had first refusal on Tevor Francis. However, by the time he moved on to Nottingham Forest we had already signed Duncan McKenzie instead.

We were in for jo, but thankfully didn't get him.

Think smth came close with viduka when at Celtic.

Moyes fancied taking yay a toure when at Monaco, but went to barca.

I heard we were interested in a young, netbusting prodigy called Kev Johnson in pre season, but couldnt agree terms.

Dion Dublin. Cost us a good manager when the board wouldn't stump up the one mill needed.

Dino Baggio. Wasn't he meant to sign with bilic, and another big name?

THE Everton chairman, Peter Johnson, was accused of breaking promises on major signings last night - by one of his own players.

The unhappy Slaven Bilic, bought for £4.5M from West Ham, claimed he was told he would be part of a £15M revolution at the club. Now, though, the Croatian international defender has hit out at Johnson for going back on a plan to buy two Italian players, Dino Baggio and Pierluigi Casiraghi.

Bilic said: "I was made promises before I signed, I was told so many things, but I could see straight away it was not like that. I was told by Joe Royle that he was going to buy me, Baggio and Casiraghi. He told me he wanted me to be his leader of the field.

"I could have pulled out of the deal when Joe was sacked," Bilic added, "but the chairman spoke to me and said that even though he [Royle] had gone it was the same story."

Bilic thinks that the failure to close the deals for the Parma midfielder Baggio and the Lazio striker Casiraghi was one of the main reasons the club slumped. He said: "Missing out on those players was not the only reason for our disappointing season, but maybe with Baggio and Casiraghi we could have been fighting for the championship."

Bilic also attacks the club for selling some of their best players during the season and not replacing them with suitable talent. "We had to do without Gary Speed, Andy Hinchcliffe and Graham Stuart. It's hard to lose that quality from the team," he said. "Why sell the best players from positions we are already short in?

"It was unbelievable that we did not sign somebody before the transfer deadline. We didn't even make the effort to show people we were trying." Bilic always seemed likely to be on his way this summer, and Howard Kendall left him out of Everton's last game against Coventry. His words may now have guaranteed his exit.

Don't forget we were in for Shearer, or at least we were told that a month after he went to thr Bar Codes

What about the thank God we didn't get him nearly men. Forsell springs to mind.

I give you......Robbie Savage.

I take your Robbie savage, and raise you David nuggent.

Lee Trundle

A lot of people wanted Nuggent at the time as we were desperate for a striker. Glad we didn't get him. Just shows how as fans we can all be the Football Manager type.

We were in for Peter Shilton but Billy Bingham refused to pay the £300,000 asking price saying something along the lines of "I´ll never pay that much for a goalkeeper". Shilton would have replaced George Wood who whilst competent was not quite in of the same class. Another tale of what might have been.

Didn't we have a deal done to sign Ian Rush from Juventus before the RS got wind of it and used a 1st option clause to resign him?

Billy Bremner — we had a bid of £15k accepted by the Leeds Board but Revie went in and banged the table, "If he goes, I go!"

The Board blinked first... An all redheaded Holy Trinity: Bremner, Ball, Kay.

Gordon Banks would you believe about 1964?

I remember a high profile bid for the (then) prolific Glasgow Rangers striker Colin Stein as Catterick was (and evidently always did) believe that Joe Royle was not fulfilling his potential and could do a lot more.

Also the story (which I put on here a year ago) about Don Revie telling his players he was off to replace Catterick in 1973 only for Leeds to go saying it was against the government pay rules.

Didn't Gordon Lee take Ian Rush on trial from Chester, played him in midfield in a couple of reserve games and then decided not to buy?

The Gullitt thing was a similar story, took him on trial at 18 but didn't take him on. To be fair, he didn't really set the world on fire as a youngster, even in Holland.

Arshavin was another one. I remember after we'd beaten Zenit a price of £6 million being quoted then a year later he went to Arsenal for £20 mil.

A few good players we missed out on - but plenty more bullets dodged:
Collymore, Forsell, Sean Davis (never really injury free), Bellamy (good player but attitude issues), Mueller, Kuyt (willing but limited), Barton, Michael Johnson (the new Stevie G) etc etc

Jimmy Bullard and Lee Trundle.

Jason Koumas, bobby Zamora (Brighton), Mark Schwarzer.

The really big one - Don Revie.Thank fuck for that.

Andrew Ellams (#212), Not sure Rush ever played a trial for us but do recall Gordon Lee saying he had a choice of signing Graeme Sharp or Rush at the time and opted for Sharpie.

As for nearly men, anyone remember Nunez? This was a Brazilian who scored a couple against the shite in the 1981 world club final & was reportedly offered to Kendall during the dark days of Autumn 1983 to solve the clubs scoring problems.

Other strikers linked at that time were Steve Archibald & Alan Brazil at Spurs & Paul Mariner at Ipswich before Andy Gray was brought in from Wolves.

Barry Venison?? According to Kendall he tried to sign him in 1992 from Liverpool but he failed his medical so the deal was called off. So as not to jeapardise his chances of another transfer away from the shite, Kendall put out the story that Everton had failed to agree terms. He signed Gary Ablett instead.

Paul Stewart striker from Man City, held talks with Colin Harvey in the summer of 1988 but opted to join Spurs after both clubs had agreed a £1.7M fee. We signed Cottee instead. Mark Everton Walters, agreed to sign for Everton from Aston Villa in November 1987 before the deal was highjacked by Souness who flashed the cash & took him to Ibrox.

Mark Schwartzer 1997. Mick Harford 1992

Last but not least Andy Gray.............as Manager!!! 1997

Sissoko, banega, ba, obinna, Joe hart, Andy Townsend,

Dean Saunders, and Mickey Thomas, even though he did play for us

Didn't Andy gray say he wanted it sign dwight Yorke?

Andy Gray stunned managerless Everton yesterday by making a dramatic U-turn, rejecting their job offer, and staying with Sky TV. The former Scottish international striker, celebrated for his straight opinions as a pundit, left Everton feeling in the need of an action replay of the events of the past few days.

Instead of being installed as the new Everton manager at the club's scheduled press conference, Gray was explaining his reasons for a baffling change of mind. "In my heart I wanted to manage Everton, in many ways it would have been the realisation of a dream," he said. "But increasingly, over the weekend, my head has been telling me different things."

"Maybe I got a little carried away with all the speculation, and to take the job and then let the supporters down would have been too much to bear," Gray added.

Gray's decision, broken to the club by his agent, came as a complete shock to Everton, who believed they had finally found someone keen to be their manager. The strong-minded Scot even told the club chairman, Peter Johnson, that he wanted Richard Money, Manchester City's coach, and Kenny Hibbitt, Cardiff City's director of football, as his management team. That closed the door on the other half of Johnson's proposed dream ticket — Howard Kendall, currently Sheffield United's manager.

Gray also went to the extent of telling Everton who he planned to buy, headed by Aston Villa's Dwight Yorke, and leaked the hit-list to several newspapers. Now the news has left Everton stunned and still seeking a saviour.

Kendall, much as he loves his old club, surely has too much pride to answer any call now. Bobby Robson will once more be linked with the job. His future at Barcelona is in doubt, despite his claims that he will remain in Spain.

"I am aghast that the man has behaved like this. It is quite difficult to believe and to take in," Johnson said. "Andy Gray applied for the job, came to an interview with us and then went straight out from the interview and started talking about the job. We have been nothing other than the totally wronged party in this episode. What has happened has shocked me. You can gather I'm very upset."

Ruddy - we only saw him for most of one match against Blackburn Rovers. I was surprised Moyes let him go.

Tony HIbbert.

Oh wait, we got that fucker.

If I remember correctly, we were in for Darren Bent.

Ian Bennett, how do you sleep at night remembering all of those demons?

Sissoko and Ba were heart wrenching at the time.

Harry Kewell is another one.

Will be interesting to scour Toffeeweb's archives for the players that Toffeewebbers wanted but Moyes thought otherwise.