Chelsea land Samuels-Smith from Everton

I can't wait for the day when Bill Parasite walks away for good.

I think the Saudis will be making a new play for that sooner, rather than later and I just want these clubs out of the Premier League now.

The disparity between a handful of clubs and the rest has never been bigger. We're never gonna catch them, even when the new stadium opens, so let them get on with it and the other clubs can restructure a new Premier League.

We're a fire sale.

I'm feeling like there is an overall strategy to sell off anything of value and not reinvest back into the playing staff.

From a supporter perspective, it's a disaster. They've given up.

What exactly is the point of the new stadium?

If bigger clubs keep preying on our youngsters amidst turmoil (thank you but no thanks, Liar Bill!), we might as well take the initiatives and negotiate the best deal with them.

In this case, for example, Chelsea could simply sign Samuels-Smith to a contract outright and coast through the long & dragged out process of having a Tribunal deciding the "compensation amount": without a transparent formula, that amount could be as much as a low 7-digit sum or as low as the £400k pittance we got for Issac Price. Instead of leaving it to "chance", Thelwell & his team might have negotiated proactively with Chelsea for the reported amount.

I would imagine the up-front amount in the deal would not be much, but it is always good to have the add-ons that can pay dividends down the road (like the secret Santa that was the John Stones Champions League-Winning Dividend).

Tipping my hat to Thelwell & his team behind the scene on this deal for proper Asset Management.

A very late entrance to the "Youngster Trading" business IMHO, but better late than never!

And yes, I also think the Saudis will try for a Super League sooner rather than later.

The only other way to make it fairer is a salary cap + draft, but the Premier League will never agree.

All of us ruminating about board members, none of it matters because we have no money and can't compete in the transfer market.

And yes, we can also talk about finding diamonds in the rough, better coaching, etc (I think it's called Moneyball) but it will eventually catch up with you when your competitors spend £100M+ every transfer window.

All we can do is focus on the bottom-half teams. They're all in a similar situation to us. We just have to make sure we beat them at the no-money game.

If the latter, is there any chance there’s a sell-on fee or add-ons if he meets certain markers? I’ve heard it mentioned before, but is there actual history of clauses being inserted where teams selling have the option to buy back at a later date?

All in all, not much we can do here to keep him when he’s far better off going to Chelsea than staying with us, as long as we can’t promise him first-team football. Sounds like there’s a good chance he surpasses Mykolenko in a few years, but clearly he’s not there quite yet.

And the John Stones Champions League winning bonus can cover Dyche's £3M bonus for keeping us up! #Winning

The bigger issue though is why we're seeing no headlines about the 16-year-old wonder kids we're nicking from others?

Once again, far too “nice” as a club.

Samuels-Smith was my back-up to Mykolenko. If he goes, we have no natural left-back!

We have 5 right-backs, so we're fine there, one of which, Ryan Astley, has played left-back… and that's it; he's a centre-back and sometimes plays right-back for the U21s!

Blind leading the blind… as per fucking usual.

I know that business acumen and Everton in the same sentence will probably make a few spit out their cornflakes and break out into laughter, but reading some of the depressive comments above, maybe some light entertainment is needed.

The general rule of thumb is that you don't ever know if these young players will come good. He is obviously highly rated, but so was Ross Barkley and Jack Rodwell.

Let's see what rabbits the manager can pull out of the magician's hat.

The club are very good at sending me emails offering me deals and packages right now. Just focus on getting the team right and supporting the manager.

Give the stadium to Lucifer's children? I spat my coffee out at that one.

More of a career break where he is? Or is it the fat wad of cash on offer?

Sorry, I promised I wouldn't post again on here until I had something positive to say about this former club of ours but I could be long dead before that happens.

But the counter is that it didn't do Kevin de Bruyne any harm and to a degree, Lukaku.

Mason Mount now at Manchester United after a £50M plus move.

There will be other examples. Going back, players like Scott Parker, who I felt left Charlton too early to bench warm. He still had a decent career though.

So it could be a good move for him longer term?

Or he could stay at Everton and becomes the next Tom Davies et al.

That's no criticism of Davies. He's been subject to what a lot of young Everton players have been over recent years. Uncertainty, pressurised relegation scenarios with the weight of expectation and continuously changing managers.

Does anyone know what's happening with Tom? He still seems to be a free agent.

I hope foundations are being laid in the background, but for now, it is about the here and now.

Ethan Ampadu (CB/MF),
Malang Sarr (CB/LB),
Chukwuemeka (MF),
Lewis Hall (MF),
Broja (CF),
Hudson-Odoi (Winger).

One on sale and one on loan would strengthen the squad immediately. Say Ampadu (loan with an option to buy) and Hudson-Odoi (direct purchase on drip payments)?

If things are that bad, then brace yourself for being an average-to-shit team over the next few years.

Only way to beat it is to be a wolf elsewhere ourselves.

We've now lost Small, Nkounkou, Samuels-Smith, and ironically we will be likely looking for a reserve or proper challenger for left-back this window.

Is it solely down to money? Hypotheticals: We've offered £5k pw, Chelsea have offered £10k pw? Maybe, but it's guesswork. What would you do in such a scenario if your future was highly uncertain, especially adding injury possibilities into the equation. Would you go to Chelsea and an extra £750k over the 3 years?

Ajay gets it right, get our foot in the door now for a loan-to-buy deal. Our recruitment has to be stronger on every level and use every bit of leverage we have got, however tenuous.

Selling tomorrow, to cover the outright failure of yesterday. Gavin's right, £5.5M for Stones and this doesn't even cover Alli, Carlo's court case and Dyche's survival bonus.

They tried managed decline in the '80s. Bill Kenwright & Farhad Moshiri have executed it textbook, I will say.

Any club will sell any player usually, depending on the size of the fee and contract situation, with only one or two exceptions.

We have sold Rooney, Lukaku, Stones, Rodwell, Barkley and many more over recent years and other clubs have done the same. It's the way football has developed into such a global, big-money business.

Selling a young player now who may or not make the grade in the future is not the immediate problem. Our problem is the here and now. Just let's hope our negotiators can pull some rabbits out of the hat in the next few weeks…

We are so thin on the ground for a first team squad players, with players out of contract and others likely to be loaned out or sold.

The last two seasons have been warnings to us of losing our Premier League status. We have to change some of the players who we know are not good enough in our team, or else it is more of the same for 2023-24 — but get a move on, getting the targets in!!

At Chelsea, he's already got an outstanding 19-year-old left-back ahead of him in Lewis Hall, along with 20-year-old left-footed centre-back, Levi Colwill. There's probably a lot more depth in the lower age groups too. So his destiny appears to be a series of loans before he'd get a sniff of the first team.

This is similar to the situation Emilio Lawrence now finds himself in having left us for Manchester City last summer. At Everton, he might now be approaching the first-team squad reckoning – at Man City, he's absolutely miles away.

In some respects, this is the key advantage we have over these super-rich clubs – we can actually provide a much quicker route to the first team, and a genuine shot at the first team for players like McNeil and Garner (not good enough for Man Utd) and the likes of Doyle, Harwood-Bellis and McAtee (unlikely to ever cement a place in the line up at Man City).

This is precisely why Sancho, Bynoe-Gittens and Bellingham all left England for Germany – to fast-track their way into first-team reckoning rather than a series of loans and youth football.

Oh well… as others have said, this is what we did to Newcastle re Lewis Gibson and West Brom re Thierry Small. Maybe we can use the money to find the next Stones, Calvert-Lewin or Branthwaite from somewhere lower down the leagues...

Reading these reports is terrible news. It's getting worse by the day. I think I'll give ToffeeWeb a break for the foreseeable. It's seriously hacking me off on a daily basis.

I'll hear about Onana and Pickford being sold on Sky Sports in a few weeks time. Bye for now, as they say, nothing to see here…

1. He probably witnesses the dogs abuse that we give to any youngster brave enough to try and make it to the first team and has thought “Why the fuck would I want to play for those fans?”

2. Since Moshiri has arrived, we have no path to the first team for youngsters. Instead, we spend stupid wages on mediocre players who are no better than what we already have.

If that's the reason for selling, then the Academy is simply seen as a cash-cow and not as a possible elevator to our first team, which would be pretty depressing.

However, if Dupont in #7 is right, then we're simply cashing in as best we can on a player who Everton know is destined for Chelsea one way or another.

(What are you saying? Haven't you seen Gregory's Girl?)

1. This is a youth player that I bet hardly any of you had ever heard of before, but now suddenly he's the future of our club... sigh.

2. What are the actual chances of these players making the grade at Premier League level? Vanishingly small is the answer. Most get quietly let go, or sold for nominal fees.

Where's the outrage for Sebastien Quirk going to Accrington, or Nathan Broadhead to Ipswich, or those that just got let go from the U18s or U21s??? How many of these players are still here? Does anyone even know?

https://ToffeeWeb.com/season/22-23/under18s.php#Apps
https://ToffeeWeb.com/season/22-23/under23s.php#Apps

3. Academies buy, sell and appropriate or lose players all the time. Even Chelsea with their stockpile approach can't keep them all and have to let some go. (They also let Salah and De Bruyne go, mind you!)

4. Yes it would be great to bring more through, à la Saints (although they are now in the Championship) or Man Utd, or even our neighbours at times.

We should give more young players a chance definitely and grow these 'assets' but Premier League football gets ever more competitive and the demand for instant results ever harder and it is almost always a risk that requires patience (something our fans aren't big on – the Goodison crowd will typically start whistling after a second or third misplaced pass in my experience...).

We've not really had a great track record recently (not that we're alone in that amongst most Premier League clubs), Simms obviously 'sort of' stepped up and Anthony Gordon was one notable success story, although I'm still on the fence as to how good he actually is; I don't feel bad at all right now about getting £40M for him – that was great business.

5. A large part of the football business is the trading game, one we've recently been pretty poor at. This deal represents a good return on a youth player and is exactly the sort of quiet sensible business that to me is not another sign of a club in decline – apparently solely due to the Chairman (yawn) because no-one else has any agency, right?

No, this and many of the other moves we've made recently is actually a sign of the club starting (finally) to act sensibly. It's not just about selling everyone for the sake of it, it's about making a return, no matter how small. Football is a game, a sport, a passion for us, but it is also a business and if the business doesn't work, the rest can't exist.

Nkounkou bought for £250k, sold for £1.7M; Broadhead brought through the academy and sold for £1.5M – these may not be as impactful as £40M Gordon sales, but if the club can survive without them, they are good business.

The mass release of players that are just 'there' drawing salaries but adding nothing much to the first team is very welcome this summer. Davies going was a case in point – the boy had shown some early promise, but in general he just wasn't really good enough to merit a starting spot, so it's hardly a disaster he's moved on.

Obviously we do need a team and a squad. I guess 22 at least, but we also know Dyche actively likes a smaller, tighter group (as Moyes did also), so I'm not bothered about being a bit more compact provided we can fill the most important holes.

I also won't be bothered if we can make a big return on Gray – bought for £1.7M, sell for £15-20M for a player who's returned 12 goals and 6 assists in 2 seasons (all competitions) is good business. I'd equally be happy if he stays, of course.

Selling Onana on for £10-20M more than the £30M we paid for him would be good business too.

Buying young players like Garner and Patterson at reasonable prices was good business, Dwight McNeil also, at only 23, is looking a very astute signing.

Maupay less so, but at least it was a punt on a 26-year-old, not paying over the odds for someone with no resale. We'll likely lose money and I would never have made that deal, but I sort of understand the logic, there really aren't a lot of Premier League quality strikers doing the rounds (not that he's one of them!).

If we can get £5-10M for Simms, if we don't believe he's good enough, that's actually probably a decent deal. Sure it's not the same crazy money that the RS get for their cast-offs, but it's a return and he's only scored one goal for us (admittedly without much opportunity).

And it's not like we don't have any youth players. Even if Simms sells, Branthwaite looks like he'll get a chance, Cannon may well get some time on the ball next season, and we have a stack of academy players signing professional contracts.

Maybe this kid is a talent but his agent isn't doing the player any favours, he will have a lot of very talented kids ahead of him and will likely never get near their first team.

Obviously the agent will get his cut moving the player on and no doubt the lad will be getting a lot bigger salary than he gets with Everton.

If he is as good as he and his agent think he is, he would have been better staying and try and get into the first team, which would progress his career faster than playing in the U21s at Chelsea.

They cited it was cheaper to pick the youth players up when released by the top teams' academies than coach and train kids themselves. The ones released had been coached and trained to a level far above what Brentford and Huddersfield could ever afford or a standard they could not achieve.

But he'll go to Chelsea, get sent on loan somewhere soon, and probably be sold by them in a few years for twice or three times the money. Unless he's seriously talented and gets a shot there.

What Chelsea is doing right now probably needs to be shut down by the Premier League. They are using their financial advantage to stockpile young talents from all over the world and will make decent money on most of them and big money on some of them. It's something of a P&S loophole and I think every club should be limited in how many players it can send on loan and how many players they can have in their senior or academy squads.

As for Everton, at least we are getting a fee. £4M is decent for a player yet to play a single senior minute and more than we got for Small, Price or Lawrence.

Selling a youth player who isn't keen to stay before his contract runs out is sensible. Agents or family members will be whispering in his ear and we can't do more than offer a decent contract and a clear pathway, which he has as we only have one (fairly mediocre) senior left-back at the club.

With Gordon going for £40M and Simms potentially leaving for £6M+, that's £50M+ the academy will make this year. That's good going and very helpful for our P&S figures as it's all profit.

Set our stall and become the team that gives youth a chance. The best performance in Under-21s earns a place on the bench for the next Premier League match. If in a position to give game time, bring them on for 5 minutes.

Surely the prospect of making a matchday squad would give the youngsters the motivation to perform to the highest possible standards and inspire other young players to join the club. They will see a pathway to the first-team squad.

This is quite depressing.

What makes you think a 17-year-old would have had a decent chance of playing on the pitch at Everton?

Dyche seems reluctant to try youngsters and just as reluctant to blood unproven players.

Whether he ‘should' have had a chance this season is a different question but I don't believe he would have played significant minutes for Everton in 2023-24 season at all.

The one thing that maybe has some scratching their heads is that we urgently need a left-back, but maybe, even if he will make it, he's some way off that stage and right now, we need a ready-to-go left-back.

We are better off extending or offering contracts to players with no resale value. One basket case of a club – no wonder fans are going ballistic and can't seem to see a light at the end of the tunnel. 🤷🤷

"Have we got any good juniors?"

"Yeah, there's a 17-year-old in the U21s."

"Can we sell him and what might we get?"

"Why?"

"So we can put the money toward buying someone. What's his name?"

"Antonee Robinson"

Or perhaps it's just an impression on ToffeeWeb.

If new signings don't come in the next 10 days, I might stick a bet on us finishing Bottom 3. I might as well profit from the misery.

I'm with you all the way, mate. It just gets worse, for £4million we should keep him. Then, if he's good, the "Big Teams" can pay North of £30 million next season.

Fucking sick of this embarrassing shambolic club. Bill and Farhad have damaged this club beyond repair.

Chelsea are signing 16-year-olds for £15 million, that's the price of 'potential' these days

This is akin to selling someone for £500k just a few years ago.

The club is well and truly broken and tbh, my level of caring is diminishing by the day.

This season is going to be miserable. And it's just over a month until it restarts.

Looking forward to the club releasing new photos of mediocre players sweating and a couple of new shots of the new kit and a link to buy though.

Supporting Everton is Dangerous for your Mental Health!

This is such a nothing deal for Everton and shows how broken we are. £4M is not going to allow us to reinvest in the squad and will barely cover 1 month's wages for the first team squad.

You either invest in youth and then sell early for decent amounts – eg, The Brighton model – and by 'early' I mean after 1-2 seasons when they have driven up their price. Or you buy mid-20s and sell at late-20s when they still have resale value.

I was looking forward to this kid breaking through.

Don't worry though, we can spend another £17M on Mykolenko mark 2, to replace him.

Bear in mind if that is the case, the club would not want that to be public, better to spin the 're-investment' line.

Chris rightly points out that a big part of football is that it is a trading game. You've got to buy and sell astutely, but still, like this one rip a bit of the soul out of the enjoyment of football for me. One of the biggest buzzes I get is seeing one of our kids make it to the first team and doing well.

I'm now pinning my hopes on Cannon, Branthwaite, and Mills (or any one of them!) stepping up and proving they can do the business in the Premier League.

If we'd turned down £4M and he went on to do nothing, some fans on here would slate the club for turning down a fee for a nothing player who eventually left for free.

This money might not be a great deal these days, but combined with the money we've got or are about to get for Cannon, Simms and Price will pay for either the academy or the obscene wages we still have to pay to Gomes, Dele, etc.

The Gordon money is obviously in a different league and not many clubs will receive that much for an academy player. At least not often.

Signings (loans, hire purchase) will be late or down to the deadline as we wait to who's still standing after the musical chairs transfer game is over. Meanwhile, the BMD bottomless pit gets deeper.

But we move on. £4 mill is better than the paltry tribunal fee we would have received, and I suspect Chelsea had their hand forced by interest from other clubs. Hopefully we have decent add-ons, % of future transfer fee etc.

It will be interesting to see how he develops. He's not a natural left-back, and lacks the forward attacking pace most clubs want of their full-backs these days. I could see him possibly playing as an inverted full-back, going into midfield much like Stones does.

The big unknown is how much he will grow physically in the next few years. He's only 17 of course but he'll need to grow more to make it as a Premier League centre-back.

So, if he wants to join Chelsea or any other club all Everton have is arguing the transfer fee or letting it go to arbitration who will decide the compensation fee.

If you have any or can find any positivity coming out of or rumoured about the club please post it here. We hate the negativity but that's all we've had for years. 🤷

I think that only because we don't have any other left-backs after Mykolenko! The Ukrainian can't play every minute next season, so I reckon there's a decent chance Samuels-Smith would have got some time in the cup games at least.

Dyche may not favour youngsters but will play them if they are good enough, as McNeil's emergence at Burnley showed.

Thierry Small has hardly set the world alight at St Mirren (except in collecting red cards) and are we really in a position to blood this kid during the annual relegation battle?

If it's any consolation, I think his younger brother Odin is still on our books.

On another thread yesterday there was some discussions about how we weren't competing with other clubs academy wise. I think it's impossible to compete with the likes of City and Chelsea, with their limitless wealth, who hoover up the best talent at an early age, sometimes with big fees and financial inducements, from home and abroad.

Their production lines are geared to loaning out and resales. I'm guessing it must help with Profit and Loss although God knows how Chelsea are compliant with their expenditure and lack of Champions League.

I understand there is a limit on the amount of loans – certainly inwards but the rules need tightening to prevent this stockpiling and loaning outwards. One year, Chelsea had 51 professionals! And a goalie who had been there 11 years but permanently out on loan.

The system stinks.

We can't shut down the Academy… mainly because all the many ex-players who "Get Everton" would be out of work!

He'll join their youth set-up, then will be loaned out for a few seasons until they decide whether to keep him or not.

He's taking a punt, because he's unlikely to play for Chelsea for the foreseeable future, if ever, but I don't blame him for that.

Edit: sorry, just saw Sam @37 and could probably have just said I agree with him!

He may come good or not, either way he's at least a couple of years away from the first team so if we can get a decent fee now then why not? We need to focus on the current team imo.

Also, the lad may have chosen to leave….

Let's wait and see who we do sign in the coming weeks, for the first team, given our Premier League future depends on it.

Dwight McNeil also, at only 23, is looking a very astute signing. Maupay less so, but at least it was a punt on a 26-year-old, not paying over the odds for someone with no resale.

I had no problem with your argument, up until that little gem

We'd have been in a far better place if Moshiri had spent half that amount and not blown our P&S capacity. We are now truly in a huge financial mess. Moshiri is a trained accountant apparently. Quite staggering.

Lose three games 'on the trot' and Moshiri will be lusting after fresh blood again.

And so will ToffeeWebbers!

You're right of course; however, the club have eroded almost all goodwill in the way that they've (mis-)handled the club in so many ways on so many occasions.

We've let so many youngsters go for free. We've just let Davies go on a free and surely could have tied him down earlier or commanded a £5-10M fee.

Iwobi is in his last year, so is Doucoucré; sell them or get them to commit for longer.

Look at how unattractive the club is to players we're trying to bring in (Bournemouth, Southampton and Nottingham Forest are factually more attractive to our January targets). Look at how unattractive the club is to the players internally.

So, whilst the players hold the power, the brand, the spirit, the (lack of) progress and momentum has made us deeply deeply unattractive.

If I didn't love Everton, I'd want to leave – can you blame the players?

While he was figuring it out, Frank bought Vinagre, never played him, and did not encourage Samuels-Smith to stay.

I wonder how much negative intensity there would be if we started with Frank as the problem creator?

Brentford are now having to reopen their Academy as it's now a Premier League requirement to have an Academy at least at Category 3 level by 2024-25 season.

It wouldn't have gone away entirely if Bill had been removed or stepped down, but his presence I fear is going to result in more and more of this stuff right into the season and that can't be good for the team, the club or the supporters, can it?

I've wondered if Kenwright's ongoing presence is because he has all the evidence of Usmanov's involvement and/or images of Moshiri in bed with a goat.

But there might be a simpler reason: we are skint. Kenwright works (allegedly) for free whereas the other previous high earners on the board well, eminently cuttable. When you're desperate, free labour looks attractive.

Hopefully we've got a sell-on clause. It bemused me that we are selling players who we should be hoovering up and providing first-team experience to and selling on at a huge profit.

Ishe Samuels-Smith has just turned 17, he is/was nowhere near being ready to be our starting left-back.

At England youth level, he's a very promising left-sided centre-back, again he's currently not physically developed enough to be anywhere near starting at centre-back for us.

We played him up an age at left-back for the U21s and he looked promising but he's not got the pace you'd expect of a modern full-back. Anything you've read about him being “the next Leighton Baines” is just daft. We've lost a very promising player but his going is not going to affect the first team next season.

And why wouldn't he have them playing well when he has the choice of the best talent with the only provisos being that they are English and of a certain age?

Everton don't have those restrictions and are still making a mess of it, money, eh?

We ain't signing on any established players with any quality, and are likely to be relegation fodder again. Hope is fucking important when you're watching shite.

We have a net spend over the last 5 years of £50M, and a squad that's skirted relegation twice.

Selling tomorrow to pay for yesterday's duds is getting fucking boring.

Marc @79. Apparently (no insider information), Carsley is content working at development level.

As I have said elsewhere and in conversation, it wouldn't surprise me to see him follow the Southgate route with England. Outside bet at least.

I doubt if he will ever play in the Premier League for them, so apart from money why did he sign?

Probably sent out on loan right away, like all the dozens of young players Chelsea steal away from clubs, never to be seen again. Bye-bye.

As I put on another thread, Everton's major problem is when they have injuries they use players that normally don't play in the injured player's position.

I fully agree that the club are responsible for the poor recruiting and selling, and I blame Moshiri for sitting on his yacht in Monaco allowing incompetent people to carry on.

Most clubs used to have what was once called a reserve team, but now mostly an Under-21 team as backup. They are supposed to play the same tactics and system as the first team so when long-term injuries occur they have practically the same positional player to replace him. I am not talking about subs during a game.

The problem with Everton, and I still blame Moshiri, is we keep changing managers so there is no stability in the playing style, and some of these younger players are getting that confused they don't now what foot to put their shoe on.

We can't afford the type of players that we need, so more encouragement should be given to younger players to show there is a future at the club, instead of looking elsewhere.

I 100% agree with you. All I see on here is papering over the cracks and feed the poor Everton supporters some academy news, or 39-year-old keepers and contracts. I know the lads who make this site are doing an incredible job and I love the site, but I'm seriously thinking of not looking on here until the seasons start, as all I get is upset and dejected.

I don't have Sky so what do I do, all we get off the BBC is fucking red shite this and red shite that, and oh Arnold.

Yes, totally agree it's a talented bunch he has at his disposal.
Maybe I was watching and thinking I wish we were this good.

In the funeral pyre, watch the flames go higher, as the weak get crushed and the strong grow stronger.

Who knows how this deal is going to end up? But the fact of the matter is that Everton need to really start concentrating on youth (once we overcome our immediate problems) but the instability of the Moshiri years seems to have destroyed any faith in having a pathway towards the first team for most of these younger players. Plus they will all be making a lot more money by leaving.

The whole idea is to maintain the rigid status quo although it will be interesting to see how they squeeze Newcastle in, now they're loaded with oil money (and we can pretend they weren't a yo-yo club now and they've always been challenging for titles, just like the last time).

The greedy Premier League hypocrites won't overlook that chance to enrich themselves further. Nor will the corporate sponsors (read lobby groups).

The Sky 6 – even fucking Spurs, the biggest joke of the lot – are a protected group, and the Premier League has by definition created its own cash-rich Super League which is why Barca et al wanted in.

In the Premier League's and Sky 6's eyes, everyone else can just fuck off and be grateful these bastards have chucked them a bone (so keep your mouths shut).

Our chance has been and gone — no thanks to Kenwright and the archaic management of the club for the past 25+ years. It won't come back. Moshiri coming in just amplified the extent of the mismanagement by giving the soft twat some money to piss up the wall on his train set.

Everton are little more than a parochial makeweight now and, if the powers that be had their way, we'd be closed down so that Liverpool could be just Liverpool, I'm absolutely sure of it.

Sean Dyche is the right man for us now, of that I feel sure. Quite what he makes of this shit show, however, is anyone's guess.

If we sold a young promising player for around £4M to raise funds, which I find hard to believe, considering we don't have a reserve left-back, excuse the expression: "We're Fucked"!

He is not ready to be our back-up solution for Mykolenko and I wonder if he will ever feature in Chelsea's first-team squad. Per their model, he will more likely be loaned out for development and then sold for a healthy profit.

We have never been stable enough to implement a similar approach unfortunately.

He is highly rated. I think Dyche as you say is the right fit for us at the moment, he will get the team in shape and organised.

Not sure he will feel that way in a week or two unless we get some players in before pre-season games start.

I sincerely hope another talented youngster, once wearing the EFC shirt with pride, will not turn into another Rodwell, Barkley, Jeffers & Co.

Meanwhile, while we sell all our most promising youngsters, there's nil, nada sweet FA happening with the first team to help improve the squad!! It seems like Groundhog Day again!

I can only hope that Thelwell has a nice little crop of additions to the squad to announce, that none of us know about. Ohhh it's the hope that kills you.

In an ideal world, the youth system provides two main purposes:

Generate players good enough for a first team squad that can compete.

Generate players that we can make money off.

Maybe you have seen more of this player than I have and believe he can be the next best thing. I personally haven't even seen him play, so can't comment too much.

I'm more concerned with who will be starting against Fulham right now as I will be there. And then we have Villa away after that.

Young players should take a look at how many young players have come through to be regularly in the first team at these clubs. NOT MANY!!
Out of the several they sign every year. Imo 21 -22 is the time a young player should think of these moves.
Will we hear of him again ? Maybe.
Or will he be lost in chelseas loan army ?

Not sure how long this lad had left on his contract (I'd read one year but not 100% sure).

However if he had indicated that he wasn't likely to sign a new one and leave in 12 months, Everton's choice was to either sell him for a decent fee or watch him leave at the end of his contract and receive a modest fee in respect of his development - certainly not the £4m being mentioned.
Without knowing the background or the terms of the deal it's difficult to criticise the club.

Okay, age and contracts can be a minefield around young players but as much as possible should be done to keep these kids at Everton. I'm not sure enough is being done when it seems one a season slips through the net.

With P&S Rules killing us amongst other things, producing players good enough for Premier League football should take priority. Having them walk away is and should be avoidable.

Well done.

Ishe Samuels-Smith was on a 2-year Scholar contract until 2024, but he turned 17 in June and was therefore eligible for a 3-year pro contract with any club if he chose not to accept our 3-year pro contract; this is what Thierry Small did.

There had been no indication that he was agitating for a move, although I don't know enough about that bit. But the opposite seems to be true.

There's an article by Paddy Boyland in The Athletic saying we are so strapped for cash we opened the doors to Chelsea regarding Samules-Smith after apparently turning down offers last season. This would have been before he signed his 2- year Scholarship.

It was heavily rumoured at the time that Samuels-Smith and Lawrence would leave; he chose to stay. The implications from the article is that any of our youngsters are up for sale as we need the money. If this is true, then the shortsightedness is unbelievable or maybe just another product of the awful mess our owner and Chairman have got us into.

Ironically it seems about 80% of Evertonians had either never heard of Samuels-Smith or never seen him play. The majority will therefore shrug their shoulders and take £4 mill for someone they've never heard of. We're in quite a mess.