Gibson out for another month

Andy@194, Mirallas played in 25 League games out of 30 last season and in 27 the season before.

Love how Moyes is a mug according to certain Toffeewebbers. I'm afraid Gibbo's injury, and Mirralles', were caused by them being rushed back in the side. Moyes' hand is sadly forced with the thin squad we have. Gibbo is no 'sick note'. He has an injury that he's been forced to aggravate.

DG's thin number of appearances for Man Utd was not just down to the fact that he was vying for places in a very good team. He had a horrid streak of injuries that kept him from ever being near the top of the pecking order. Now, I may be naive, but SAF (Happy Birthday Sir, 71 years young today) and our gaffer are pretty good mates and I don't think that the eternal teenager would offload crap on his apparently self-selected heir apparent.

DG is a very good player but, with so many injuries under his belt already while still young, he (1) cannot be counted on to have a single stretch of say 15-20 games at one time; and (2) he cannot be counted on to give us good years ahead. (Odds on DG hanging up his boots before 30?)

Now, no single player can guarantee even one more game (there are too many sewer-rats around to destroy bright careers with one evil rodent lunge), but DG is injury-prone and that has been the major character (flaw) of his career up to now. In other words and in a nutshell, it will always be nice to have him around and in the starting 11, but ...

Yet another reminder (if ever we needed one) of how thin our squad is and our 'cash-strappedness' (Ouch!) just rubs salt into a deep gaping canyon wound. If life was roses each second then, in tomorrow's window we: (1) would get a very good goalie to not just cover but replace flapping flailing TH; (2) a Gibbo-like but fitter centre-mid; and (3) a striker, for the love of Christ, a striker

DG was in my opinion at any rate a smart astute buy. But the last twelve months have revealed that he is as likely to be absent as present but £500k for the quality of the presences has already been paid back and more.

People say he's great, but he's just an average defensive centre mid who can tackle, pass or head the ball. The reason people think he's great is because he's not lightweight like pienaar or osman, and he's can tackle, and pass slightly better than cahill could. He also is a midfielder unlike neville or heitinga.

All in all, I think any decent centre mid would be able to make the team tick like gibson.....its just that over the years we've been used to sub-standard centre mids by premiership standard.

The upshot is that we shouldn't get carried away that we can't replace him easily or relatively cheaply because I think we can.

I don't know about being able to replace him "cheaply".

And of course both were/are unsung heroes to an extent.

We always did well when Carsley was played in the defensive midfield position.

It is possible the spur on the bone has been gradually getting worse over a couple of years and that surgery may not have been the first choice up until it got to a certain point (invasive surgery carrying risks of it's own). Maybe now it is the only real option, but they will still prefer to hang on until the summer if they can. If the operation goes well then this may resolve the problem for good, unless he has other problems we are not aware of.

Don't think he is in the same category as Whiteside considering how debiltating knee injuries can be and how much surgical techniques have improved in the last 25 years.

Has been a great signing

But, since arriving, the transformation has been amazing, he has lost weight and simply controls the centre of park. Nobody gives us that balance the way he does. The boy plays on the half-turn. spots & delivers the ball so quickly; he's simply a joy to watch.

You were shot down because you were talking guff.

If you've got a pulled muscle and you come back before you're 100% then the chances are you're going to aggravate it.

He's had a couple of injuries, fair enough.

I'm not having that he's a sick note though. You look at Vaughany or Saha. One week it was a shoulder. They get fit and then do a hammy. Then the next week it's a calf. These players are injury prone. Gibson is not in that category (yet).

It wasn't from kicking the ball FFS, get your shit together. On November 30th it was revealed what the problem was and they expected it could reoccur:

"Moyes has revealed that the thigh problem which sidelined Gibson, 25, has the potential to reoccur due to a bone fragment in his tendon".

"'He's going to have an ongoing problem because he's got a bit of a growth into a tendon in his thigh, where there's a bit of bone growing. All we can hope is that it doesn't reoccur,' revealed Moyes."

It's an issue that needs to be addressed with surgery but they were hoping to get him through the season. Maybe this month off will work, maybe not. Not sure how in the world him having a bone growth in a tendon that he keeps trying to play through makes him anything like Van der Meyde.

The next calculated risk is to play him when he gets better or put him under the knife, the first could earn us points but cause longer term problems, the latter could lose us points in his absence but gain a healthier player..

That was explained a month ago. I think a month is enough time for you to get the facts together instead of making a stupid comparison to Van der Meyde.

How much did they cost Peter, and how much are they worth now in value or cost of replacement?

Krøoldrup did not have an aversion to heading the ball. Anyone who saw him play for Fiorentina after we sold him (at a loss) will have seen a competent ball-playing CB who was quite comfortable heading the ball. His biggest problem was he wasn't fully fit when we signed him, and by the time he was we were out of both European competitions and needed to cut costs. I'd love to know where that myth emerged from, but my guessing it would lead back to some source at the club.

Van der Meyde and Drenthe were different, both had proven ability but also well documented "off the field" problems. Moyes is known to be pretty meticulous about his scouting, and either he or his deputies messed up and either didn't get to the bottom of the problems or they thought they could turn them around.

Much of our "signing strategy" is based on our budget. Moyes's cautious and calculated approach (or as some call it "dithering") is also based on our budget.

But at least now we're no longer depending on our club sponsors to sign players for us, so be grateful for small mercies.

You must be tying a noose every day with that outlook.

As for Drenthe... Moyes did do his homework on him. We knew he was an exceptional talent and a loose cannon.

Moyes gave him a chance. When he started acting up he got rid.

Van der Meyde was different. According to his book his problems only started in Liverpool. He'd never touched the stuff till we signed him. I'm sure Moyes would have got rid straight away but how, without making huge losses? Instead he persisted to try get the best from the player in between disciplining him for various misdemeanours.

How anyone can criticise Moyes's signings is beyond me. Sure, they've not been perfect but compared to every other manager in the league, his transfer dealings have been fantastic.

Can you tell your lad - this is not about money, if it about chasing a dream (hopefully his as well as yours).

Forget Spurs, forget Arsenal and you can forget Merseyside "B" (especially if you ever want me to talk to you ever again), but son, call Moyes and get yourself over there and make me the proudest dad in Germany.

He missed 8 games in two seasons for Olympiacos. Thats 8 out of 60 league games. Plus he played cup games.

I'm not sure about Gibson. We should forget about him until he is fully fit. Not rush him back.

One thing I am sure about. Peter Barry is one miserable get.

Anyway one of the lad's parents signed in to give a bit more background to him, and the back-pedalling would've given Wiggo a run for his money at the Olympics.

Given there's been little for you (and people of your ilk) to whine about this season, you decide to start the new year fabricating a moan about transfer policy instead.

The glaringly-obvious response is of course to raise you Baines, Jagielka, Arteta, Lescott, Cahill, Howard, Jelavic.

Also; Fellaini is having his best season in a Blue shirt.

All Moyes's signings.

Gibson is one of the most under-rated midfielders in this league... he was likely sold, not because of ability, but because of his injury record. Maybe he will be a player we will have to nurse through seasons during his Everton career... or maybe he will get over his injury problems as many in the past have done (most notably RVP recently). But given the contribution he makes, and the money we spent, I'm extremely glad we brought him.

And Mirallas isn't a sicknote... he got a hamstring injury, we played him too soon, and it re-occurred. It happens to quick players... if you want a Lennon, Bale, Walcott, Robben etc... you take hamstring injuries. Mirallas will have a big say in our season yet.

What you say does make a lot of sense, but like the old saying goes, you cannot have an omelette without breaking eggs. I personally just think that if the op "can" be done then surely it would be best to write him off for the rest of the season while the problem gets sorted out once and for all, there's no real point in him coming back in 4 weeks time, play 3-5 games then the injury re-surfaces and is again out through the same injury. If its sorted out now we'll have him back fit and ready for a full season come August. But I'm certainly no doctor, it just seems to make sense to do it that way.

Ahh, ours is but to dream of such luck and passion!!!

You should have added the following to your list:

Peter Barry - clearly knows nothing about football, has never been to a game in his life and has never stepped foot inside Goodison Park.

Fucking pathetic comments you made there I have to say.

About the actual article itself, whilst it is rather shite that Gibson will miss the next five games or so, the Chelsea performance should be something to hopefully inspire the team - four/five first teamers missing and we were very unlucky not to win by two or three against a top team on top form. Lady luck was not on our side, but as Frank Lampard said in his post match interview, you create your own luck. Hopefully the blues can take this on board and start turning the shots hitting posts / hopeful penalty claims in goals / stonewallers respectively.

Onwards and upwards blues - looking at the fixtures there should be no reason why we can't win every game in January.

Also don't know if anyone knows but what is the current situation with Mirallas? Before the Chelsea game I read he might have an outside chance of playing - am I right to assume he is not far off returning then?

Yeah, its called cheating!! Making your own luck invariably means breaking conventional rules, in Chelsea's case the refs always turn games in their favour by giving them all the decisions for a ten-minute spell, not booking the dirty fouls and ignoring blatant free-kicks whilst giving them every opportunity to turn the game in their favour. It would be great to get new refs into the Premier League who only want to officiate correctly instead of showing the total bias toward the sky darlings, every week of every season.

Howard Webb wasn't perfect but he wasn't bad either. Certainly not to the extent that he cost us the game - two lapses of concentration and a failure to take our chances is where the blame lies.

Lot of character shown in the game but I thought we eventually ran out of steam in midfield. Trying to work everything through short range passes against an athletic team is very hard work. Without Gibson pinging the ball around we lose one of the dimensions from our central midfield.

We will still prevail against some teams but it is going to be that much harder against the sides with quality throughout.

* tumbleweed rolling across web page waiting for reply

Every single post from Mr Barry is negative, especially towards the dour Davy. I cannot see why he bothers; if he feels so negative, why not turn it off or come up with an alternative, positive option.

To end, I know and you know, it is about opinions, we agree/disagree about issues, and I feel we are all able to contribute... But back to my point: I just do not understand the moaning whiners who come on here with nothing ever to say that is good about the club that we all support.

It is a freedom of speech thing. I may not agree with what Peter Barry writes but I support his right to write it and post it. The rest of us are free to disagree and respond or to simply ignore anything we think is not worthy of commenting on.

Many of us have been on here a while now: how is that some still fail to recognize — never mind accept — the diversity that exists within the Everton fanbase?

Ian comes from the subgroup that not only takes and gives a positive view on all things Everton, but demands positivity from all, and cannot accept any so-called 'negative' comments. Peter Barry comes from a different group that has high expectations, calls things as he sees them, and sees no need to sugar-coat his assessments.

The telling thing to me is that Ian requires Peter to conform to Ian's perspective but not vice versa. The positive people seem to do that. As someone who leans toward the other group (I would call it 'realist' rather than 'negative'), I find that really annoying. I mean why should Peter have to write things to please Ian's positive viewpoint? We don't tell you to stop posting what is (to us) your ridiculous positive stuff. So give a little, alright?

Yes, I actually get that Peter loves everton and is obviously more frustrated than the rest of us. However, a realist to me understands that injuries happen, that if you sign players not wanted by other clubs for next to nothing then they usually have something wrong with them. That like formula 1, the big teams usually win in the end as they have the money to buy fitter, more skilful and stronger players.

We all love everton, it's a buzz when they win, gutting when they lose, destroying when crap happens, with only a modest flicker of hope when a positive lands. I'd hope we all get that buzz, if not what's the point?

Of course people are entitled to negative or positive views of the situation but to gain credibility those leanings should ideally be accompanied by some sort of balance and adherence to the facts of the matter. Peter Barry in my experience shows little of either of these and prefers to be provocative, which of course he is entitled to do but then so are the people who point out that they think he is speaking rubbish.

It is also an unvarnished truism that Moyes has also made several outstanding signings.

If you prefer to posit such a sceptical view instead, then that's your bag; but surely we can all agree that Baines, Jags, Arteta, Lescott & Felli (at the very least) all represent great business by the gaffer?

(It was a wind-up, wasn't it?)

Sometimes, your comments make me smile. I have never really thought of you as a "realist" as you put it, but if that is your take on things then you are entitled to your opinion, just as much as any and all who dare to post on these boards. It is the best everton site out there, that of course is my opinion!!!

No, Peter, people (like me) come on here, not because they get " so riled up by my post is that deep in their heart of hearts they know that what I said was the absolute unvarnished truth", No, they come on here astonished that anyone can be such a perpetually miserable get who will go to any lengths to find a stick with which to beat Moyes. I've literally got in 15 minutes ago from New Year in Somerset. There was a traffic jam near Wells. It's the fault of that twat Moyes, not telling my Tom Tom. MOYES OUT!
FFS, mate, get a grip.

I would like to think my contributions are positive, yet also realistic. I am sure everyone on here could tell us all about their problems in life, we all have them and I come on here seeking views of all and sundry. If others are not so positive, then, hey Ho, that is up to them and certainly not my position to change the views other than maybe by debate in a friendly respectful manner, which I would hope I do.

Perhaps my frustrations, and it looks like a few others share them, are with the same suspects who come on here with the same old tired whines.

Still, thanks for letting me say my piece and I hope no offence is taken to anyone.

Cheers, Ian