Statistics + the Daily Mail = must obvioulsy be concrete....

Neville is a) shite, b) old and c) will not get any better. Time to put him to pasture and save his 40-50k a week for someone else a) not shite b) younger c) who has room to improve of sell one value.

Going by the OP, allen is the RS' most valuable player this season....erm, right, ok.

Denis, while your Rafa rants facts are correct on points B & C. I think point A you make is over the top. You don't get to play 400 plus games for each of both Everton and Manchester United if you are shite. Especially in the case of Everon, where points gained with Phil Neville in the team average nearly two per match, but only one per match when he doesn't play.

Coming up with a replacement for Phil Neville will be a major problem in the coming seasons, as a person, squad member, player and club man.

My theory - totally unsubstantiated by any hard science, of course - is that Moyes only plays Neville in games that involve weak opposition. As such, we almost always win when Neville plays.

However, against tougher opponents, Moyes would rather play Jagielka at right-back than risk Neville there (unless it's an absolute necessity, say, because we simply do not have enough senior players available), and we all know we hardly win those games.

Hence, in terms of PPG or whatever stat, Neville would almost always come out by virtue of the crapness of the opposition.

Again, please note what I say in my opening sentence about this being "totally unsubstantiated".

Neville hasn't featured that much so its a bit of a misleading stat. Whenever we have faced a decent wide player Moyes has stuck Jagielka there so Rob has a point

Derek - by your logic we should get Big Nev back and stick him in goal as obviously you don't get to play 600+ games (or whatever the total is) for Everton by being shit.

Point I am trying to make is that Neville is shite now. Obviously mainly because he is 189 years old and spends most of his time looking for his colostomy bag when not either delighting us with his 3 mph cross field 'passes' or spouting some shite on the OS about knowing that 'we have to do better, its not good enough at the minute'. Also he's been with us 8 years and you still go on about his manure days? Being carried by the team (imo) is not the same as the team playing well when you're in the side.

Personally I cringe with embarassment whenever I see Neville in the starting line up nowadays (especially in CM). Add to that Anichebe, Naismith and Hitzlsberger - realistically these 4 players would struggle to get into most of the teams nearer the bottom of the league.

Champions League - we really are having a laugh!

Neville? Neville plays every time Gibson has been unfit - so a lot. If Gibson has been fit and both Hibbert and Coleman have been out, he is moved to RB, and Coleman was injured just as Gibson came back.

Jags only played RB when Gibson and the RBs were injured, and left Hitz on the bench.

Now we have Gibson and Coleman fit do not expect Neville to play.

The way we played on Saturday proved that we don't need him anywhere near our team.

At this moment in time he should be a fringe player, on filling in at RB when Coleman and Hibbert are injured, and should be nowhere near CM. Hitzlsperger does the job a lot better than Neville.

I respect the guy as a leader and his contribution to the club, but it's a similar situation to what happened to Cahill. He wasn't good enough anymore, so he left, and that's what Neville needs to do at the end of the season.

Neville's PPG ratio is roughly the same as Everton's over the period he's been here... in other words, it means sod all – apart from the fact that he's started nearly every game hes been fit for.

Rob,

I see your disclaimer in the final paragraph but you still want to inflict a nonsense theory on us, so maybe I can help with a little substantiation.

Phil Nevile has not played in 10 games this season

Reading, Norwich, Arsenal, Man City, Tottenham, Stoke. All of which he was injured. The other four were Chelsea, Aston Villa, Norwich and Reading which I suspect because we had played a midweek match either before or after.

As you can see it is a pretty fair cross section of teams and shows your theory to be utter nonsense. Just for completeness, our record in the ten games is W1 D6 L3 so it does seem he has a positive effect on the team despite the numerous detractors on this site and I am sure he will continue to play a key role in the remainder of the season.

For the record I wouldn't have him in our strongest 11, given Seamus's resurgent form.

Neville's a decent pro and is well respected amongst his peers, the coaching staff and the media. He will have no trouble finding work in the discipline he feels mostly attracted to which I suspect will be coaching. He is out of contract at the end of the season, has had a number of niggling injuries and does not appear to be the kind of player who will hang around looking for a few extra quid from either a contract extension or change of club.

He has gone on record as stating that he will let his intentions be known at the end of the season and given that his ability is quite clearly on the wane as witnessed in recent games I would expect that his time will be up in a playing capacity at Everton.

An exceptionally good pro in my opinion with limited talent, he has served Everton and Manchester United well and earned both respect and vast riches from football.

ps: In all honesty would he have been any good at cricket?!!

He's terrible on the ball, weak, slow and doesn't tackle that well. Neville does, hoewver, have a footballing brain that so few of our squad appear to have. If he plays defensive mid he'll give the ball away a lot of the time but from a defensive point of view he'll nearly always be in the right position. Similarly at RB if he's played in up the pitch he'll mess the move up but he hardly ever gets done one on one or from being out of position. The problem that all fan bases have is that they often only value attacking insticnts and often only what they can clearly see with their eyes rather than a players defensive positional prowess. It is probably for this same reason that we always concede goals despite the fact both Jagielka and Distin look great on the ball and are visibly quick. Its the out of position hesitation that is unseen which is ultimately punished by conceding goals.

Gibson is our best holding mid (depsite what some people say about his tackling) he shares neville's positional sense. If he's unfit however then no one else in the squad has the positional acumen to do this role which was one of the reasons the Fellaini-Rodwell axis was so shambolic, both looked good but didn't have a positional brain between them. Perhaps it is this sort of footballing education which is why Man U are top of the league and seemingly play the same way regardless of who plays in their midfield or how average it looks. their players are all taught how to play the game correctly from a positonal point of view both defensively and offensively, which is why they alwas seem to be in the right place when they attack and don't have any of our over-playing nonsense.

Anyone seen PN's passing stats? Apparently he was one of our better passers of the ball.

Look more closely and you realise that virtually all his passes are backwards, or 5 yards sideways and virtually every forward pass I can recall goes to the opposition, particularly his floaty crosses.

In short stats on their own tell you nothing outside of a very narrow window. However people read all sorts of stuff into stats which the stats simply do not bear out.

For example, we average more points per game when PN plays, ergo PN must be having a positive effect and be one of our better players....erm no, the stats just say that we score more points when he's played. The stats tell you precisely NOTHING about PN himself or how he played or what he contributed during those games.

Personally I believe what I see with my own eyes over any stats. He's mostly negative, slows our play, gives the ball away when he tries anything positive. He probably makes a great club captain due to his ability to toe the line and his ability to keep playing at the top level at his age, but I don't want to see him on the pitch, or taking home £50k / week.

Have to agree with James Martin about Nevilles defensive work. I'd rather see him at RB than Jags or Heitinga. He does have decent positioning; but doesn't have the necessary abilities to be effective in midfield.

JH is a bigger problem at centre half than PN at right back.

I love the way nev points his finger and shouts. That's the only thing I like about him as he is shite in everything else he does.

I love the way people only ever see what they want. In the cup replay Nev was constantly passing the ball forwards to the attacking midfielders only for them to give it to the centre backs. At the end of the game it was all about Neville always passing backwards.

I'd rather have anyone at RB or holding mid than Phil Neville. At RB in the Man Utd game, both times RVP broke free through our line, Neville was the one with poor positioning holding him onside. How people on here can say his positioning is better than Jags at the same position is preposterous. In midfield, he simply does not have any ball skills. The guy cannot be under any sort of real pressure or he will give it away. And then he tries to switch field with long balls that end up flying directly to the opposition.

Say what you want about his passing statistics going forward not being as bad as advertised. About 2 of them all season have really opened up a promising attack. Those were his ball down the line against Swansea that set up the eventual Mirallas goal in the 3-0 victory and the floating cross he had to Jagielka in the Wigan game I believe. Having featured so many times this year at both positions, there are a ton more blunders than notable moments of good play from Phil Neville.

Steve, I can't remember seeing PN constantly pass forwards in the Oldham game....but if we accept that you are correct (which I really doubt) and he did, then I'm still not sure what his performance in a home game against a side two divisions below us tells us about his ability to operate in midfield in the Premier League.

Certainly in any league game I've seen him in, for a few seasons now, any forward pass he plays usually goes to the opposition, and the vast majority of passes he makes are sideways or backwards and are ones that I could make.

Nick, #419, why have you started throwing in sensible comments? You have littered the site with them lately and, frankly it is unacceptable.

Doesnt surprise me much at all. He genuinely does seem to have a positive effect on the team as a whole and we can look rudderless without him. And he very rarely puts in one of those "Can't be arsed" games that Fellaini, Piennar, Osman and Vic are prone to every few weeks or so.

How come Neville's getting stick for what Fellaini spent 4 seasons doing previously (crab and crap passes) yet he was hailed as our best player by some?

Phil Neville was a distinctly average player at Man Utd, then he came to Everton, where he continued to be bang average. Passing stats mean shit all, a successful pass isn't always a good one.

Father Time has caught up with him, stamped on his feet and punched him right in the kidneys. He should have retired two years ago.

"Father Time has caught up with him, stamped on his feet and punched him right in the kidneys" - Cracking summary, I'll have to remember that one.

Eric but Fellaini is our marquee player so when he does it its class, the slower the pass the better too, if anyone else does it they're crap.