Everton wait on Mirallas and Stones injuries

Sad if not to be expected update on what we all knew we're both serious injuries at the time.

Two big players and more importantly two of our best performers so far this season and we are going to miss both men equally.

The prospect of seeing Distin back partnering Jags with Howard behind them is enough to make me think Halloween has come early.

Add to the news "baby" Oviedo is out recuperating for another three weeks then it's just all the more depressing.

It's going to be one long hard slog until Christmas or the January transfer window.

Let us hope that there are no more injuries to our players on international duty.

I couldn't agree more.

I found out only in August that since Martinez has been manager he has only brought ONE defender to the club... Alcaraz.

He let Heitinga and Duffy go.

We are now faced with our worst injury crisis for some time and I would now like to see some evidence of what Martinez has continued to state since he's been here, which is promoting some promising young players to the first team squad.

He has done so with Browning, we may well need to see more of him in the near future, but we may need to promote a few more.

The reality of Alcaraz playing a handful of games in succession without having some kind of bodily reaction is very remote, Ajay.

We have at present three available first team centre-halves, we don't have a single creative central midfielder fit and we have one goalkeeper (Mr USA) who is currently off his head but knows because Robles has been so bad that he's untouchable and will not be dropped unless he breaks both his arms.

These injuries are truly sickening. I could accept the Barkley one. Every club seems to have that one who doesn't make it out of pre-season. But these were probably our two best players and for them both to be out for a substantial length of time is just gut wrenching.

it seems to be a curse, its never the fringe players out for any length of time, or even the older cloggers like Distin and Barry, nor is it ever our calamitous goalkeeper. It's never in areas were we have good cover either. Oviedo, Gibson and Besic are kicking their heels whilst McCarthy Barry and Baines are nearly always ever present.

No its always whoever are the key players at that moment in time. 2009 Arteta, Jagielka and Yakubu all with cruciates, bye bye FA Cup. 2012-13 Gibson and Mirallas missing for huge chunks of the season, 2013-14 Lukaku, Pienaar, Gibson missing a lot of the season. This season it's the same story. Whereas you see other sides like Liverpool Tottenham Chelsea City who do have injuries but never to a collection of key players at the same time. How would City fare if Kompany Silva Toure and Aguero all were out for two months? Chelsea if it was Terry, Fabregas, Costa. Liverpool with Henderson Sterling Sturridge.

It's the same story every single season, we're either sharing the same rubbish medical team Arsenal have, we buy injury prone players because we always look cheap, or we are just rank unlucky. I'm going with the latter as usual with Everton.

If anything is to come out of this, it's blooding youngsters to strengthen the core squad. I'd be disappointed if he goes down the Alcaraz, Hibbert or Distin route.

That's probably what the rest are saying about us, mate. It's the opposite of when you are on a decent run, teams are more wary and give you some respect. Whereas, the poor run we've been on deflates any confidence, and the opposition think, we've got nothing to fear here let's go for it, while they've got injuries aplenty.

This is where you need a squad who are prepared to give in effort what they may lack in other areas, but the ones who have been given the opportunity, just seem to go through the motions.

It's ironic too, that all the injuries are to key players.

On a serious note, it would be a good time to put some of these younger players in. So many players don't get a chance to show their potential and then move on elsewhere. It could be that they aren't good enough for Prem League...

Sadly with it being such a results driven business, I guess we will never know if some of these U21s can play a bit.

All the fun of being an Evertonian in the Premier League era - we rarely go a full season without picking up a serious injury or two but this year has been truly awful as to the key players we have lost for substantial parts of the year.

Martinez is such a politician, it seems. Wants people to really like him but seems to be making such dumb personnel moves in relation to his vision of the club. We’d be so much further along if he just stuck to coaching and had a better evaluator of talent on the staff.

Think I better start looking for another way to amuse myself.

With the long term injuries to a growing list of key players, the future, in the short term at least, doesn’t look so good. With us showing the form we have lately, topped off with an injury depleted squad, there will be no easy matches.

Atsu has to come in for Mirallas and be given enough games to prosper. Big Rom back in the middle and Besic and McCarthy playing in central midfield with Eto'o or Naismith. Osman, Pienaar, Oviedo, Hibbert and McGeady off the bench. Coleman should be close to a comeback but we won't see Stones or Mirallas until next year. We have the players, they just need to turn it up a notch or two.

The pedestrian football is as bad as under Moyes. We've seen glimpses of the good stuff so it's only a matter of time and a few more games to get this season up and running. It does seem that we get punished for every mistake, whether it's a flapping keeper or careless back heel. Again the signs are there so lets not panic just yet – we are only 5 points off the top 4 and still have 30+ games to play.

However, I was not expecting to finish as high this season as we did last, given that every team which finished around us spent more money, and the fact that teams like Man Utd and Spurs had poor seasons last time around, and were unlikely to repeat that performance given adequate funding and a new man in charge.

Yes, currently we're terrible. However, we're still more than capable of improving and getting up to the 6th, 7th or 8th spots. I would love us to be challenging for higher than that, but I'm not sure it's realistic.

We still have the FA Cup and the Europa League to play for, and we're not doing too badly in the latter in a group that's arguably the hardest one out there.

Reasons to be cheerful?

I think Martinez spent far too much time and money on Lukaku this summer, he has completely overlooked our shortcomings in the centre-midfield creativity area. Ossie can only contribute as an impact sub, leaving Barkey and Mirallas as our 90-min true game-changers.

The remaining monies went on Besic, who clearly has something, and if we did pay ٢m on Galloway, he should be used right now as a back up centre-half, where he's played before – but I see we are playing him at left back in U21s!!!

Looking at this season, Lukaku and Barry looked to be progressive moves but both have started poorly (although maybe a bit harsh on Barry). Besic needs time but hasn't hit the ground running, and he looks to have already lost faith in Atsu. Eto'o needs a run to be fair.

That only really leaves McCarthy as his one successful permanent signing. However, as fantastic as he is without the ball, he needs to take a lot more responsibility with it. Every time I see him choose a backwards or sideways pass when he has an opportunity to really drive at the opposition, I really wonder if he can be the player we need him to be.

Don't get me wrong; I am hopeful some of these players will come good but I don't think half of them will, and during and injury crisis it shows in results. My big worry is what will Everton look like after a couple more recruitment drives and the excellent players Martinez inherited are either too old or have moved on? At that point, we will have a team entirely made up of Martinez signings. If his current success ratio for recruitment doesn't improve, we will be in big trouble.

This technique is used to prevent me dwelling on the absolute dross we have seen so far and will spare my fellow TWers from further utterings regarding my fears over Roberto.

A nine game build up should be more than enough. The season starts in ten days time!

Pre-season was a total disaster, lack of prep and poor tactical nous has gotten us where we are, not luck (or stated lack of it) and the condition of the players which must be contributing to our ever growing injury list.

In a way, I'd prefer him in a match in which we would expect to do more defending, against a top 4 team when we will be a tad more cautious, rather than against someone like Villa who will look to catch us on the break with pace.

Either way, it sounds like Distin is out in the cold so I think we can expect to see a lot more of Alcaraz in the next few weeks... unless Martinez has the balls to play Browning (or even Galloway?) at CB – which I think is unlikely given how seldom he has thrown young players in.

In last season's pre-season he was putting emphasis on ball work, less on running and other non-ball related exercise, and he stated that it had been scientifically proven that the players were actually fitter on all the tests, than previously.

On this term's evidence, should we now go back to the old system or wasn't he able to do enough ball work due to the World Cup?

Also, it is interesting to see that Oviedo, who has had to do long gym sessions to strengthen his leg, seems to be as sharp as anyone, without match practice!

Martinez was rotating after five games. We're the only team still with tired World Cup players. Courtois, Fabregas, Schurrle – all fine. Howard, Jagielka, Lukaku – all run down and drained. We've also now lost every game we've rotated in, and injured most of the first team we tried to protect.

I can guarantee you if we met Chelsea in the Cup Final, all of their first 11 will be fit despite zero rotation all season. We'll have half a team out and be knackered after 60 minutes despite chucking a load of points away early season to keep everyone fresh.

Rotation is a myth. These top teams have big squads but they only use them to cover injuries. We can't cover injuries because we pick up loads by rotating.

Best player last season? McCarthy? Played nearly every game. Barry? Played nearly every game. Coleman? Played nearly every game. Players prefer to play more regularly; this resting nonsense is just breaking up their rhythm. Diego Costa is even managing three games in a week with a dodgy hamstring yet our first team, despite having no pre-season, needed a two-week rest before a derby that they still looked knackered in against a Liverpool side who had done 150 mins a couple of days earlier.

Our fitness work, approach to injury prevention, pre-season preparation, has been and remains a joke for a side supposedly one of the best in the Premier League.

We take 2 months to hit our stride every season, struggle over Christmas, and then fall off a cliff in the last month or so. We have more injuries than anyone and now we seem to have to rotate every week. Absolute joke.

How the hell can they be tired after a few games? It's crazy.

If Martinez was on a scouting mission, what do all his scouts do? Surely they should be at the World Cup, searching for new players? Also, I know Martinez was doing TV but for how long?

Finally, most of our World Cup players started pre-season a week before the season kicked off. Fuck me, that's 5-6 weeks after the World Cup final, none of which our players were in, so why the long break?

My wife is a chemotherapy nurse at Clatterbridge hospital and Claire House is next door, the Hospice for terminally-ill children.

I'll donate my 㿞 quid to them mate, added pressure for Roberto as I will not be happy if I don't have to pay up.

Cheers mate. Dave.

Distin isn't "out in the cold" – the NSNO story is way off the mark.

I'm fully expecting him and Jags to start next game up, unless our injury curse continues over the international games.

We're going to be relying on our FBs even more to get some goals and assists in the next couple of months. We can only hope that the likes of McGeady and Atsu can step up and Barkley is raring to go come the 18th.

A few days to get some of the war wounded back but we're going to have to just grind out some results in the coming weeks.

The 6-7 players we really needed and were promised by the club never materialised. We bought Rom on the never-never so it is not like they blew all the money from Fellaini, Anichebe and Jelavic, something close to 㿔M.

So, with only Besic (٢M) and Barry (٠M) coming in for real cash, as well as McCarthy (㾹M) and McGeady (٠M), we should have at least 㿀M spare to add to the additional TV money and the top 5 finish.

So the club should be sitting on around 㿊M to reinforce the side come the next window. The only thing that would scupper this is if the club are using that capital to prop up the operating expenses and running at a loss. If this is the case, the whole board of management should be sacked as running any business at a loss is not viable. It's no fucking wonder Everton are the paupers of the Premier League.

Unless you're an oil baron or a filthy rich sheikh, ownership of football clubs should be by the issue of shares. I reckon Everton would have a market capitalisation of some 𧺬M and issue a million shares at 50p.

It goes back to the other point as well that our squad does not have enough in depth quality to carry out a rotation policy. The summer transfer window was very underwhelming.

Absolute sickener for the lad

Am not enjoying this season at all.

Too early I know, but I feel like I am ready to write this season off already

We wonÂ’t go down but we will finish low enough to convince our younger stars to think long and hard about jumping ship.

We won't see him back in action before the end of January now at the earliest.

Someone please just scrub this season off the record book now.

He has a decent chance of becoming a first team player – just don’t rush him.

I'm a fan of RM; but FFS there's nothing perfect about losing our best central defender for up to 4 months of the season.

I don't see anything to be positive about at all Roberto. We'll be lucky to see Stones back before February/March if at all. Kevin should be back November/December.

It's up to the rest of the lads now to buckle down and show what they are made of and win some games. I remember what Baby Bryan said after his leg break-"If you get beat you don't throw in the towel, you work harder still and use the towel to wipe the sweat off your face" That's what needed true grit and a bit of fighting spirit.

I still expect them to win a cup this season and finish in the top half. But I also think Labour to be in No 10 soon so what do I know.

All bits of anatomy crossed folks against any more injuries in the Internationals!

The truth is the truth after all and no amount of sugar coated words can mask that. There is a big question mark about Roberto so far this season and I am also beginning to tire of the constant barrage of positivity as it seems totally out of place.

On the injury news, it is a huge blow to the club and its supporters but hopefully we can muddle our way to a few points before our season starts in January 2015.

Robert Snodgrass (Norwich, ٦m),
Jake Livermore (Tottenham, ٤m),
Michael Dawson (Tottenham, ٤m), Mohamed Diame (West Ham, ١.5m),
Harry Maguire (Sheffield United, ٠.5m), Andrew Robertson (Dundee United, ٠.85m), Brian Lenihan (Cork City, undisclosed),
Tom Ince (Blackpool, free),
Gaston Ramirez (Southampton, loan),
Hatem ben Arfa (Newcastle, loan),
Abel Hernandez (Palermo, 㾶m),
Mohamed Diame (West Ham, ١.5m)

I understand your point (from a financial point of view) nicholas, but I don't think any of them would improve our team.

Another 3-4 week's in training and getting "match sharpness "

Your looking at probably February before he's back on a football pitch again..

In that time we will have probably had a long term injury to Distin or Jagielka and Alcaraz will have been ruled out for 2 months to 2 years with muscle fatigue.

What a season.

Hernandez also scoring since he joined them....Tom Ince wouldn't have been a bad signing either on a free....

If you read the full article the 10-14 weeks is the time before he can play again, but we have heard that before.

Chins up folks I want some of what Pat Nevin is on he still thinks the team can make the top 4!

Hull needed to bring in 10 players because they weren't as good as us. We needed to bring in a few so that we had a squad good enough to play twice a week at a high level. Apart from the back-up right back, we got what we needed.

You might argue that the players we signed weren't good enough, but that's a separate point. We have two players for every position and then some. The problem is that we seem to have seven or eight injured or unavailable all at once. Hull managed to get themselves knocked out of the Europa League, we're top of our group.

Simply signing loads of new players is not a universal fix it. You're far better off maintaining stability, improving the players you've got and developing their teamwork and interaction. We've shown this consistently over the last ten years. One frustrating start to the season doesn't mean we should suddenly become Tottenham.

On the issue of improving the team, having to rely on U21s/Hibbert etc when we get a few injuries hardly fills me/most of us (judging by comments on here) with joy. In fact, the squad is so short of true quality we got our fucking arses handed to us by Swansea in the League Cup.

Bizarrely, under the previous regime we used to play our best football when our backs were to the wall.

Add this to our limited squad size/depth & tight fixture schedule and it leaves RM with a bit to do to get EFC through this season...