Gueye into Afcon final as Onyekuru and Nigeria crash out

Algeria would love nothing better than to win this in Egypt — apart maybe from winning in Morocco. Think Argentina winning in Brazil. Onyeruku can forget about his work permit.

Everton should at least be making an application for a work permit on the basis of a special talent given he is part of a squad that made the semi-finals of the Afcon Cup. If not, is it time to give up on him altogether?

Watched most of the Senegal v Tunisia match, Gana for once was like Schneiderlin, I struggled for most of the match to spot him and he was not as involved as usual. Having said that it was a poor display by Senegal all round and they rode their luck on more than one occasion.

The ref was poor, and failed to establish any control early on, the match got ugly at times as a result, with some warranted yellow's and sometimes red's going unawarded.

I can understand Gana disappearing in games once in awhile. He must be exhausted with the way we know he plays. He has played all these games over the summer in Egypt! It will be 37 degrees Celsius during the day on Friday. He will need a long rest when he comes back. It will probably take a few games once he starts playing to regain form. Hopefully it’s for us.

Also, it will be 41 and 43 degrees Celsius in Egypt tomorrow and Wednesday. Any comparison to Schneiderlin are completely and totally unwarranted. I’d like to see how Schneiderlin would hold up with a few weeks of training in Africa and a month long tournament in Egypt. Comparisons to Schneidelin should be banned :).

Gana is a world class elite team player. He is the only player we have who can play for the Bayerns, Real Madrids, Cities, PSGs etc.

I've always found afcon a very hard watch. However having said that the top 3 premier league scorers last season are all African.

‘Gana is a world class elite team player. He is the only player we have who can play for the Bayerns, Real Madrids, Cities, PSGs etc.’
Is this the new paradigm? Then we shouldn’t have any problem getting £60-80 million for him with those clubs lining up for his services. Strange that so far only PSG actually seem interested.
Make no mistake; he is extremely good at what he does best, but he is not a complete, faultless player. If PSG (and others) really are keen then we should hold out for a large fee, but if PSG are no longer prepared to stump up a significant sum then we can assume that Ander Herrera is competent enough to do the job they wanted Gana to do. That is damning with faint praise in my opinion.
I am not wishing him gone by any means but I am firmly of the opinion that he is replaceable and unearthing the next Gana Gueye is exactly the sort of thing that Marcel Brands is being paid to do.

Good succinct points well made Si

If we have any ambition at all, we have to keep our best players. If he's one of them, we have to keep him. It's as simple as that.

It's got to be all about the best for Everton FC, not the players who are lucky to play for us.

Paul, or replace him with equal or better quality? You can't keep a player if he wants to leave and it may be that he agreed to stay last season in return for Everton releasing him this season. Very sad but exceptional business which doesn't in any way mean that we have to sell to survive.

Si - I am not sure at all why you highlighted my post. My argument is that Ghana is such a great player he should never be compared to Schneiderlin. And I hope Gana stays.

The only thing I will add is I agree with what you wrote. It’s just common sense. Although I’m not sure that it has anything to do with what I said.

Michael, sorry for the delayed response. The reason I highlighted that phrase wasn’t that I wanted to call you out personally. To me it seemed like a good example of the slightly overblown statements about Gana that have been posted recently.
Firstly, I don’t think he is the only player we have who is at that level (which I would say is approaching elite level) as I would personally include Digne right now and speculate that Richarlison, Gomes, Bernard and perhaps even Mina (who are all still young enough) could be if they can consistently produce their best.
It is consistently producing very good (but not necessarily brilliant) performances that has pushed Gana onto the radar of one (and so far only one) of those clubs on your list. I don’t think you can overlook Gana’s playing time in France as being a factor for why PSG might think he could settle in there seamlessly as well.
I agree that Gana probably has a few prime years left in the bag as well (otherwise PSG wouldn’t be interested) but don’t agree with the sentiment that he is irreplaceable which is what some - not necessarily you - are posting. We have to recognise that PSG are one of the clubs that can genuinely afford to indulge in bloated transfer fees to buy players who will give them 2-3 years service and then have a greatly reduced sell on fees. We are not one of those clubs and we have to hope that Brands is good enough to have a suitable rough diamond lined up if PSG are still really interested and Gana wants his swan song on the biggest stage he can aspire to.

Oh, I would probably add Seamus (on most of his performances) and Pickford (on his best) as players who would be extremely valuable to practically any club.

I’ll give you Digne as a possibility for sure. Thanks for the clarification.

Personally I hope Senegal win. Algeria are like the Jack Charlton Irish team taking advantage of rules allowing players to qualify based on parents and grandparents. Senegal had a tough draw for the World Cup and had some bad luck. Smaller population, lower GDP. When I don’t have a horse in the race I always back the underdog

Kieran, without having done my research, is that not true of Senegal as well? I believe both sides have many players who were born, raised and learnt football in France, no?

Quick research:

Senegal: 23 players, 13 born in Senegal, 9 in France, 1 in Spain.

Kieran @ 14. Judging by your surname, you’d qualify for Ireland yourself. Look no further than the English cricket team and their captain Eoin Morgan. Don't even thing he has an English grandparent.

Gerry, do your research. Morgan has an English Mother and has held a British passport since birth.

Gerry. He is not the captain o the English Cricket Team. You may think this is half splitting but he is captain of the England limited overs cricket team. When it comes to the test matches against Australia in afew weeks he won't even be in the team.

Oh, and his mum is English. But closer than a grandparent don't you think?

I fully accept my error. I have to admit that I know nothing about cricket but the newspapers here were lauding him for being captain and leading his team to a famous victory.