And Begovic makes it two new players for Benitez

I hope that Brands has got a decent club lined up for Virginia to be loaned out to, mind.

I saw the picture his wife put on twitter of her in an Everton shirt and the horse with an Everton scarf round his neck to be honest I would get more excited to see her and the horse at Goodison than her husband. Probably cant believe their luck, they thought where do we go when our contract finishes at Bournemouth, when his agent rings and says Everton want to sign you, he probably thought bugger going all the way to Chile.

Meh.

I fear we're looking decidedly mid table moving forward. I don't see James being with us either, not that it's any great loss as he's superb for the first ten games and then continually injured the rest of the season (seems that way, anyhow).

I've seen a lot of comments on various threads saying something along the lines of Rafa is going to have to turn around our fortunes with the squad we basically have.

If he can do that, it'll be a miracle. And he'll win my respect. Until that time, I'll never be happy with this appointment, and I see owners simply solidifying their position in the table until the monumental financial hurdle of the new stadium is cleared.

I fear we are in for a few seasons of meh.

Meh.

I've made my reservations for Orlando, bought tickets, and we're all set to go. I'm really not excited about it. I should be, as I don't get to see Everton play live. It should be counting down the days like a Kid during the Christmas Season. It just isn't. The only thing I'm looking forward to is meeting TWers - which will be fabulous if it happens. But the football and the squad and the manager? Meh.

I've never been this uninspired about Everton. Life is cyclical. Surely my mood will improve?

One of my favourite players during my 60 years as a fan was Nigel Martyn. He was about 36 when he joined us and made a big difference to that 2003 team.

Welcome, all the best of luck, don't mess up.

Next.. hopefully a top quality midfielder.

Ps Nigel was one of the best and most underrated keepers in the Premier league. Solid, dependable, no fuss, no mistakes and a top shot stppper.

Keep strengthening the squad, but come on, put two fingers up to FFP Mr Moshiri, and give us a couple that get us hopeful and full of expectation. It's hope right?

That goes for the other signing in Andros Townsend, many on here not being impressed, but I think he could turn out to be another Paul Power, where people expressed similar doubts and he soon had them thinking differently. Give the man a chance before slating him.

It looks as if the others will all come off, Dumfries, Nunes, Bailey and Gray, we will have a hard working side capable of upsetting a few, just hope it is not us the fans being upset, but I don't think so.

I’ve heard that Benitez, is going to get money to spend, so I just hope he spends it wisely, and also hope that Brands can offload a few, which won’t be easy, because of the massive contracts he’s helped to give, to a few average and very inconsistent players.

Okay, so we have a better standard of keeper in Pickford now, despite his faults (but he is still young for a keeper so will get better).

But as with Nigel Martyn and what I said about the Townsend signing, we can, and should now, only judge Begovic on what he does, or doesn't do as an Everton player.

The optimist in me can't believe there isn't money and there won't be more high profile signings. This is getting easy business out of the way early and adding depth. The more complex ones will take longer.

I have to disagree with you there. Martyn was the best I’ve seen since Southall, and on a par with Gordon West. Pretty good company.

Tim Howard was not.

Possibly unimpressed with Cliff Finch, who stood in for Peter Johnson and gave him directions to Leeds.

Great keeper. Moyes reckoned he was his best signing from memory.

Chris, Albert Dunlop was in goal when I started going the match and since then, in my opinion, Southall, West, Martin and Howard have been our best keepers. In that order. Howard, unfortunately, was still played after he’d peaked leaving some people with the unfair opinion that he wasn’t a good keeper. He was. Apart from the three keepers I named (and Pickford) can you name a better keeper?

Makes a lot of sense in the world of FFP. And then hopefully a couple in to improve the first XI and provide some optimism before the 14th.

It was Jimmy O’Neil when I started. Then Dunlop.

Thinking back, we’ve not really been that well blessed with top class keepers over the years., but we’ve been compensated by the best keepers we’ve had playing for a decade or more.

I take your point about Tim Howard, Ray, and I would agree he is the fourth best I’ve seen, but for me he lags a bit behind the other 3.

Not to worry. A couple of years down, we got Steve Simonsen from Tranmere.

Call me a cynic and I know it was within the rules at the time, but that transfer was effectively money laundering. Johnson took £3M (not insignificant back then) from one, richer, bigger asset and placed it into his smaller, less profitable asset, not long before he pulled the plug and sold out to Bill.

But we got the next young up and coming young England keeper right? We can call Moshiri naive and ill-advised for the way he has spent, but that was ruthless business and exploitation of a system that allowed him to do it by Johnson in my view. Caveat, it's an unqualified and non-informed perceptive view!

Mind you it’s the most exercise it will get today!

What about Lawson? Record fee at the time.

I agree Tim did well for us, and I agree he was kept too long. I think after that World Cup (?) he was poor, plus I think he was believing in his own publicity a bit, and had other distractions too, with a fair few transatlantic trips that season.

But yes, the 4th best, over a period with hopefully Pickford set to overtake him.

Pickford reminds me of West in many ways.

I’ll come back tomorrow…

He cost us £3.3m which was a record price for a goalkeeper at the time.

I vaguely remember David Lawson, but my first real memory was George Wood who I loved, but probably just because he was Everton's keeper. At that stage of life, I had no ability to rate him on ability. Likewise, I thought Jim Arnold was decent.

Tim Howard is 3rd in my lifetime after Southall and Martyn. I always thought his main flaw was decisiveness, particularly about when to come off his line. But he was a really good keeper.

Outside shout, but I always liked Thomas Myhre. Not the best but steady. Not sure if many would agree with that.

Pickford, if, as he has shown, can relax and calm down, can go on to be a top keeper. And in the context of a keeper, he's still very young so has time to develop and do that.

Jim became Seamus when picked for Ireland I think. He got picked because his granddad once had a pint of Guinness!

I’m told Jimmy became Roger, because he thought it sounded like Rajah when the Maharishi said it. I’ve never seen anything to corroborate that, but given the times and tide, it could be true.

Danny, I think it was Billy Bingham signed Lawson, but could be mistaken. He was a poor manager but a good player for us. He was signed after Micky Lill and Tommy Ring were both lost to bad injuries.

Joe Harper used to call him Billy Liar

A good question. I don’t know, but I guess they got planning permission for the existing plan, so maybe they do. It’ll be interesting how it looks finally.

Link

4-0 Everton

New Signing

I imagine that’ll be that until we get a bit of clarity regarding Bernard (imminently it appears) and James, Iwobi, Delph.

I think we’ll be getting a striker in considering our only two won’t be ready for the Southampton game.

I read the interview on a site with loads of ads breaking up the text. When he talks about Everton helping him get into the England squad I misread it, partly because new ads kept appearing between lines of text.

I’ll just remain underwhelmed instead!