Everton confirm release of Ashley Williams

Never showed the 'Captain's Qualities' he seemed to at Swansea either.

Sad to see Harry Charsley go, he looked to be next off the production line at one time but it seemed he just couldn't step up.

It's a tough business for all of these youngsters.

Unfortunately many of them are destined for the exit because they are sold false promises and are just there to make up the numbers for the very few who are primed and chosen for the step up.

However, we wanted to kick on. We wanted to play a back 4, move up the pitch and keep hold of the ball. This badly exposed his flaws, namely a lack of pace and a lack of ability on the ball.

I'm amazed he made it professionally as he couldn't kick a ball with either foot. But let's just cut our losses and move on. It just shows how crazy football is when a player who couldn't kick the ball with either foot ends up on £60,000 a week!

Just didn't work out after. Change of manager probably didn't help as he did ok in his first season. Second season was a disaster from the off after we signed Rooney and never recovered. Starting a season without a proper striker was just bonkers. (Koeman gets a lot of stick but that imo was the reason things went wrong fast and he had Rooney forced on him.)

Thats £70k/week freed up from the wage bill.

We've had and will have worse signings - at least he wasnt given a 5 year contract.

Let's hope we can get some business done and recoup some money, but I fear will be significant net loss to the club.

But onwards and to a good preseason.

Will we get a centre forward?

Every player today in the premier league should get on their knees and thank God for Sky TV and all the other TV stations.

I genuinely thought he was a really good signing at bargain fee, 31 at the time the same age as Distin when we signed him back in 2009 but Williams surprised me that he wasn't made of the same cloth that big Sylvain was.

All the best to him, I think he'll probably retire.

But good luck to him wherever he lands.

Not his fault, just like it wasnt Bolasie's fault, Rooneys fault, Schneiderlins fault or half the signings we've had since Moshiri came to town.

And it wasn't his fault he was a foolish buy.

Unfortunately, he rarely re-produced those performances for us, and if anything became progressively worse, where he was becoming a liability.

Maybe as Dave Abrahams alluded to, he had hit the big payday, the Set for Life winner without even purchasing a Ticket.

He did however produce a few decent games so it was not all bad, I wish him well for the future. As with most players who turn out to be a let down, or become an object of dislike among the fans, it wasn't him who came knocking on our door begging to be signed.

Let's hope we are now on the right track, and signings of this ilk are well condemned to the past.

I almost missed the Euro games being on as I was on the BBC sport page which was just all about the women's world cup. Not being funny like but the England v Scotland game (this is being hosted in France) is possibly going to be a "sell out" at a 35,000 seat assuming FIFA shift 20,000 plus tickets as the Scottish FA and English FA sold only 2,025 tickets between them. This is with first round tickets costing as little as 9 Euros. But we have to pretend it is completely normal to give this tournament higher billing on the BBC than the men's European Championships. Oh and there have been about four different articles and opinion pieces explaining how the women should be paid the same as the men. Isn't there a correlation between wages and income? e.g. you can't sell tickets at 8 Euros a pop so there isn't money to pay you 100k a week.

Can you tell me were or when I blamed Moshiri ??

I simply meant before Moshiri we didn't have two bob to rub together, so transfers were almost always a gamble as we paid buttons for our players, but since Moshiri we have actually had money to spend, but we haven't often enough spent his money wisely.

Look again at my comments and you will see I never once blamed Moshiri.

The demand for top-level men's football is massive, and the money in the men's game is commensurate with that. The BBC can fantasise as much as it wants, but it doesn't change the fact that the demand for women's football is nowhere near that of the men's, and the money in the game is correspondingly minuscule by comparison.

The BBC is simply full of bullshit and fantasising, projecting an image of women's football that's well out-of-kilter with reality. No surprise though, since they continually pump out propagandist shite on many subjects.

In fact, his stats were very good that first year despite his problems. We failed to carry out due diligence and I wonder what our medics were up to in failing to identify a battle-scarred body. We have form for that sort of thing.

Even so, that goal against Arsenal on a thunderous night.

I hope Yerry has a ToffeeWeb account.

Your post (to me anyway) implied Moshiri was to blame by saying the poor purchases happened under his watch. Surely you can see how that can be interpreted?

If you meant Koeman, Allardyce, and of course Walsh was to blame, then we are in agreement as they were the men who identified these players.

Moshiri gave them enough rope to hang themselves... unfortunately, it was expensive rope.

He was past his best and his lack of pace was his major problem. I also enjoyed it when he bollocked Lukaku.

Good luck, Ash.

When assessing how much we will lose in offloading some of these players, we must bear in mind what we have or will gain in selling others. Lukaku and Stones generated huge profits, Barkley a decent one, and Gana, Pickford, Richarlison, Calvert-Lewis, Lookman, Onyekuru, Digne, Davies, Bernard would all generate very significant profits if they were sold (which hopefully they won't be!!!).

He stood out in a poor Swansea team (well I'd heard of him anyway) as a no-nonsense body-on-the-line defender. I think it's why Koeman bought him. Anyway, nowhere near good enough for us.

Dave @53 makes a sensible point about profit and losses but I still feel we got had off with Barkley's transfer fee, 㾻 million wasn't it?

I know the transfer was protracted by Barkley's inability to know what he wanted (apparently) but still Barkley is an enigma at Chelsea.

Did we get taken to the cleaners? He was and is still getting picked by England, I think he had only 1 year left on his contract like Hazard 䀆-120 million and Eriksson who Spurs want 𧴜 million +, Barkley isn't at the level of these two but is /was his value that inferior?

And now Koeman complains he was not given time to show what he could do!

But it's all speculation, and nobody really knows what's gone on behind closed doors at Everton. My take on it (for what it's worth) is that it looks a fuck-up on the part of the Everton hierarchy.

I see your point mate, but Moshiri is the best thing that's happened to the club in decades, I genuinely didn't mean he himself had squandered the money, more that during his time our transfers have been expensive ones were as before the biggest failures usual cost us buttons as we had no money to spend.

Koeman, Walsh and Sam are the fellas who wasted it.

Before Moshiri and the above manager Martinez for all his obvious flaws spent quite well.

Just cross wires here bud, I probably should of explained myself better 👍

Should he go, and at the moment I can't see Silva or Brands sanctioning any deal, that would leave us with Michael Keane as our only recognised centre back. With Williams and Jags already shown the door, Zouma (for the moment returned to Chelsea) and now talk of Mina wanting out, the centre-back position is once again looking like in need of desperate reinforcements.

If we can get Zouma back, and at the moment it's a big IF, we will have three quality CB's, with good back up in Holgate and Feeney.

Along with Schnides two of our worst '1st team ready' purchases.

Can't blame players for taking it but there are several people at the club that should have prevented it or at least quickly realised how poor they are.

His actions in the melee against Lyon brought himself and the club into disrepute. From that point on, I looked forward to the day he was no longer on our payroll.

I feel like Ashley had a mentality problem in his second season with us. Any time we conceded a poor goal (which was often) he would wrap his shirt over his face. I am not a psychologist but to me it seemed like he was embarrassed and wanted the ground to swallow him up. As a national captain, I would have preferred him to give a rollicking to the culprit and gee up the team to make up for the mistake. Some of his stupid cards also looked to me like he was hoping to get sent off just to get out of the situation. It may be that his knees had gone and he was only too aware of that and didn't much enjoy being heckled by 40,000 people week after week. It might also be that he was in some kind of a depression. But either way, his body language was terrible and he didn't resemble the leader we had seen for Wales and Swansea in the past.

He was the captain of his country but when we really needed leadership he allowed himself to be sent off twice and continually shrugged his shoulders while saying nothing to younger defenders as we got tanked in games.

I was desperate for us to sign him as I thought he would be the hard man we needed in the team, boy was I wrong.

As much as I respect other peoples opinions I can never go along with the "he gave us everything he had" line.

He may have been carrying injuries and we know he had to cover for a half fit Keane but he totally stunk Goodison out.

Last seen in Swansea town centre pulling a rag & bone man's cart...