Attention drawn to Maxwel Cornet's relegation clause

Blow the other one.

Too keen to blow his own trumpet.

Thought he was a bit flaky myself.

Tarkowski, now Cornet, it’s a double scoop !

The relegation clause 17.5m seems realistic, but is he really worth much more than that anyway?

Right now at the Daily Star it's possible some old hack is considering - "Cornet clause could give Frankie the horn!"

I think the validity of this story is wafer thin to be honest. He's a good player though and he scored a couple of ice screamers last season.
I can imagine the song for next season if we got him.

"Just one cornettooooooooooooooh!"

Ha.. ha.. Eugene, you really ought to consider a career in advertising, if you are not already in the field. Tony, (4), I too don’t think he is all that good. I have seen him miss some absolute sitters which might have made the difference between Burnley getting relegated and staying up.

Pacy, scores goals, left footed. For me he's an upgrade on Grey, Townsend - whilst Iwobi has shown he's better in central midfield as a three.

Too inconsistent for me even over 90 minutes. A poor mans St Maximim.
Not fit to lace Richy's boots.

Scored some nice goals last season but he he doesn't improve us enough to warrant the price tag. He's not even a striker but Dyche didn't trust him to play wide left or LB.

Small and easily brushed off the ball, he's not what we need.

Reputable Times reporter linking us with Levi Colwill. Came through Chelsea's academy.

Young, powerful left-footed centre half by all accounts. Anyone know much about him?

"Levi is open to move to Everton, with Frank Lampard being the motivation. Undecided whether this would be permanent or loan."

Team gets relegated, so team who barely stayed up thinks its a good idea to buy their players as that's clearly going to turn us around and get us back fighting for the title.

Hopefully this is filed under dodgy rumour, and we can move on!

Andrew #12,

Just because a team is relegated doesn't mean all of their players aren't good enough for the Premier League – think Jordan Pickford, Phil Jagielka etc.

"Get us back fighting for the title"... mmmmm

Didn't we buy Gueye from Aston Villa when they were relegated?

My hope is that, whoever we sign isn't “linked” by the media or reportedly “on our radar”. Maybe players I've barely or never heard of. Time for our scouting and use of analytics to prove their value.

Only buy those players who haven't had the opportunity yet to prove themselves at the highest level but can hopefully step up. Yes, there's risk involved but there's very expensive risk in signing Premier League and Champions League cast-offs.

Brendan,

Just to add to that, if Everton had got relegated, would we not be interested in Pickford, Calvert-Lewin, Gordon and Richarlison.

At the third time of asking, we need this new DOF to be inspiring and not the usual media lazy links. Offload quickly as possible then get a proper CEO who understands money and how to be creative with proper contacts and we may get somewhere.

9 goals from midfield for a shit team.

Not far off Richarlison's 10. No harm in having both?

Think he has to be given the 99 shirt!

Hey, this time a week ago, we were stuffed!

Allen (14) - yes, and at the time there was a lot of hand-wringing on here about how if Gueye was any good, why was he on a team that just got relegated.

In addition to Gueye and Pickford, we also got Godfrey from Norwich after they were went down.

Andy#19
Briliant🤣🤣🤣

Peter #20, we were well and truly down and out. Then…. approx 60 minutes, we were in heaven!

We did, Allen.

Brian, keep asking. We need this DoF to be able to do his job and support the manager. But a manager, not several in quick succession with different ideas, a few who don't work to that model and interference from where Lampard was stood at the end of the Palace game absorbing.

Let these 2 work together and we can judge them on that.

Filing this one under "it's that time of year".

So basically he's £17M, with hundreds and thousands on top.

Andy #19, knowing our luck he would turn out being a bit flaky…

A scoop!

Good, pacy versatile player who will score / create. And a left footer too, which is helpful as we don't have many.

The fee is still quite steep seeing as it's not an essential signing.

And he's not in the same league as Richarlison despite a good goal haul this season.

For me, I'd stick to Cornettos.

But it's very early days in the market so who knows who's in, who's staying being in contract,t and who's gone.

UTFT!

Scoring a goal every other game (based on per 90mins), playing for a team as shit as Burnley, who as a team averaged less than a goal a game, is actually quite sensational.

Haven't seen enough of him to form a solid opinion, but come on. He scored actual goals. Some really nice ones too. For Burnley!.

Ice cream at some of these transfer rumours.

Lot of negativity here which surprised me tbh. £17M for a 25-year-old decent player these days isn't a huge fee frankly.

He's only spent one season in the prem and Burnley isn't exactly the place where you're going to get a lot of chances. 9 goals in 26 games is not to be sniffed at – in perspective, Richarlison got 10 and our next best was 5.

Just looked up his stats. He was a solid first-team regular for Lyon for 5 years and played for all the French youth teams from U16 to U21 before choosing Ivory Coast (unsurprisingly given then French squad).

I think he'd be a decent signing at that price personally. Young (25), with pace and knows where the goal is. He'll get more chances with us than he did at Burnley.

Did pretty well this season for Burnley. But the season before he scored 2 goals for a decent Lyon team over 2500 minutes.

I dunno if I see him as being a notable upgrade on Gray. Both are great in patches but prone to inconsistency.

Money will be tight this summer and we need to be clever. Could see Cornet becoming another run of the mill bottom half winger though I could be wrong. Think we could do better.

It seems we have a lot of people who think we can shop at Harrods when we are only looking for the best that Matalan has to offer. The criteria has to be, does any potential signing improve what we have in the match day squad?

When we played Burnley, Cornet was one of the few players I feared would undo us. His record is good and at his age is still young enough to improve.

We need to have 2 players for each position and at the moment there is a place for a 6th attacking option. Ideally it would be a central striker as we have 3 out-and-out wide men in Gordon, Gray and Townsend, and only Calvert-Lewin as a Number 9, with Richarlison as a (very good) half and half.

But, in the absence of too many value options, Cornet has a bit of quality we could use.

I don't think it's that Martin, it's just an opinion on the player. Sam sums it up well.

If we're going to spend £17½M on a player, that's a big chunk of our imaginary budget for where Everton are going to be in the summer.

And if so, is he really that good? Is he a game-changer. I don't know to be honest, but I'm not convinced. I only saw him have a good game against a very poor Everton team.

Definitely sign Cornet. This team needs all the brass it can get.

Martin @34, you raise an interesting point.

I'm afraid that I've come to the conclusion that “Does he improve us?” is actually a very dangerous maxim to follow with transfers. It is probably exactly the maxim that landed us where we are.

Most players who cost £15M upwards will appear to have some useful qualities, will have something to offer but that does not necessarily mean they will be worth the expenditure.

Sigurdsson was a better set-piece taker than anyone we had.
Bolasie was a better dribbler than anyone we had.
Klaassen appeared to have better football IQ than anyone we had.
Walcott was faster than anyone we had.
Tosun was probably a better finisher than anyone we had.
Keane was better in the air than anyone we had.
Andre Gomes was more comfortable on the ball than anyone we had.
Delph was more experienced at winning things than anyone we had.

All of these players probably ‘improved us' in some way. But does that mean they were good signings? I'd strongly suggest not.

Our transfer approach needs to go deeper than that and consider the priorities of the team, the fit with playing style, the management of resources, the potential for sell-on value, the work ethic and psychology of the collective and the opportunity lost of other players.

Cornet is good. He probably would improve us. But I'm not sure he's the best way to spend £17½M given his slightly inconsistent history, the team's need elsewhere, and our limited budget. I may well be wrong on that but I'm certain that the belief he would improve us is not enough on its own to justify a transfer.

Some good names that are coming up:-

Johnson (Forest)
Eriksen (Free)
Tarkowski (Free)
Gallagher (Loan)

I'd take all 4 as improvements.

Don’t sell Richarlison and buy Cornet as his replacement or we will be in a worse situation next year.

Keep Richarlison at all costs and build a team around him for when we play at the new stadium.

If we were the cash rich club of 2 to 5 years ago, it'd be a no-brainer. With Richarlison likely off (or still wanting to be a cf) we only have Gordon and Gray as width, and neither is contributing enough goals yet.

However, as it was in January; midfielders who can protect the defence and take the ball off them is the priority number one and number two. A ‘keeps fit' version of Mina is priority number three. Once they are addressed, competition for Patterson to allow Coleman to focus on coaching please.

Only when the above is addressed should we even think about Cornet, Almiron and the like.

Brennan Johnson was a big part of the Lincoln City side that was 89 mins from the Championship(!). There's a lot of promise there.

He'd be a fantastic signing. We need more sources of goals, and have done for some time!

If we did buy him and got Tarkowski too, would that be a first BOGOF for the EPL ? I'll get my coat !!