Everton Summer Transfer Thread - 2022

[Sona]

Thinking what’s the best 11 now?

Pickford, Patterson, Coady, Tarkowski, Mykolenko, Gana, Onana, Iwobi, Gordon, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Gray / Maupay?

Good to have options now with players competing for places each week, rather than walking straight into the team.

I’d say this eleven (with first choice subs in brackets):

GK: Pickford
RB: Patterson
LB: Mykolenko (Vinagre)
RCB: Coady
LCB: Tarkowski
DM: Gueye
CM: Onana
CM: Iwobi (Garner)
RW: Gray (McNeil)
LW: Gordon
ST: Calvert-Lewin (Maupay)

Plus one further space for CB options (Mina, & Holgate then Godfrey when he comes back)

 

[billyblue80]

Gray or Maupay?

Depends on the game sometimes Maupay for Dom

 

[Jebus_lives]

Brainthwaite from Barca is available on a free

Niasse is available

 

[Brett Angell Delight]

12th is a big jump. Only Bournemouth is definitely worse than us. I am a buyer on Leicester and Wolves downturns, I don't believe in Forest yet, Saints aren't great but I also can see a world where we're below all of them. 17th for me is great, have another strong summer next year and we can aim higher.

I’d split the difference and say 13-15th.

Bournemouth will go, and I think the Forest experiment will blow up, too. I wouldn’t discount Fulham having had a false start but that’s probably a bit of recency bias in terms of their PL performances talking.

Leicester look rudderless and they don’t dem to be able to rely on Vardy to get them out of it anymore. Their talents will probably take relegation so they all get cut price Prem moves.

Wolves and Saints could go either way. I think Brentford might be the headpatters’ favourites this year. Lots of goals and excitement in their games but they’ll fall short on points like Blackpool back in the day.

We’ll see a lot of 1-0, 0-1, 0-0 and 1-1s this year but I think we’ll be just about afloat come Jan, after which we’ll go on a bit of a tear when the new boys aren’t so new anymore and hopefully secure safety by April rather than mid-May.

 

[Legend Barry Horne]

Genuinely don’t get the optimism. We lose the next two and we are firmly in the bottom three with an absolutely god awful forward line. Pressure is on.

Things are much better. Having a dodgy defence is the worst thing and that has been shored up somewhat

If Gana is anything like he was that should also make a big difference

Not the additional forward we’d have wanted but should be more solid

The forwards we have will need to step up - Gordon and Gray already have a couple of goals each. Maupay has scored goals for the last few seasons

Also he’s added a few people with leadership and character

 

[Wizard]

They upgraded defense in the back and midfield. That is good. But they struggle to finish scoring opportunities and don't provide enough pressure on offense to make the opposition hesitant to attack the Everton goal. They barely avoided relegation last year and hard to see this team not being in trouble all season. 40 points means you have to win 10-11 games. They have zero so far through 5 games and have 2 games against Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal and Man City to go. I expect no more than 1 win in those 8 and it could be none. That means they pretty much have to win a 4 of 10 of the rest and tie a couple more to survive. It looks scary from here.

We have weirdly done okay against the “big 6” recently. Not amazingly granted but probably outperformed what we should. Our issue is throwing away points against our actual rivals. And I think with the strengthened defence and midfield we will be a lot better at taking those points this season

 

[Brett Angell Delight]

Aston Villa remind me of of 2017-2018 Everton with an even worse manager in Gerrard and no obvious replacements available.
Also Coutinho is cooked.

Unfortunately for us I think Gerrard isn’t long for that job, and once they get someone new in they’ll get enough of a bounce to get clear, like Newcastle did last year. We actually could have done with them fluking a few more points and having their meltdown a bit later.

 

[wainy]

Things are much better. Having a dodgy defence is the worst thing and that has been shored up somewhat

If Gana is anything like he was that should also make a big difference

Not the additional forward we’d have wanted but should be more solid

The forwards we have will need to step up - Gordon and Gray have a couple of goals each. Maupay has scored goals for the last few seasons

I don’t get everyone saying we have shored the defence up. We haven’t kept a clean sheet yet and haven’t played anyone decent bar Chelsea. Grey looks every inch a million pound player and the pressure on Gordon to deliver will be enormous.

A window that would have been great if we added some attackers is anything but now for me. A couple of injuries in the forward line and we are left with nothing.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Yeah, here and there. Shocking how few goals there are in this squad.

It wasn't much better last year, truth be told. As I said in reply to GOT earlier, it's these three things: above average chance finishing, get a bunch of set piece goals, stay reasonably healthy (especially DCL). Get two and we're up. Get one and it's chancy. Get none and we're dead. We'll ship north of 40, so we're bottom half due to the likely goal tally. The only question is where.

 

[Wizard]

Unfortunately for us I think Gerrard isn’t long for that job, and once they get someone new in they’ll get enough of a bounce to get clear, like Newcastle did last year. We actually could have done with them fluking a few more points and having their meltdown a bit later.

This assumes they get a good replacement

 

[marnie]

It wasn't much better last year, truth be told. As I said in reply to GOT earlier, it's these three things: above average chance finishing, get a bunch of set piece goals, stay reasonably healthy (especially Dominic Calvert-Lewin). Get two and we're up. Get one and it's chancy. Get none and we're dead. We'll ship north of 40, so we're bottom half due to the likely goal tally. The only question is where.

Not many teams are walking through our new midfield anymore though.

 

[billyblue80]

I don’t get everyone saying we have shored the defence up. We haven’t kept a clean sheet yet and haven’t played anyone decent bar Chelsea. Grey looks every inch a million pound player and the pressure on Gordon to deliver will be enormous.

A window that would have been great if we added some attackers is anything but now for me. A couple of injuries in the forward line and we are left with nothing.

We've only conceded once in four of the matches though that's not bad when we have faced Chelsea and two tough aways. Need to start taking our chances to win

 

[Legend Barry Horne]

I don’t get everyone saying we have shored the defence up. We haven’t kept a clean sheet yet and haven’t played anyone decent bar Chelsea. Grey looks every inch a million pound player and the pressure on Gordon to deliver will be enormous.

A window that would have been great if we added some attackers is anything but now for me. A couple of injuries in the forward line and we are left with nothing.

I guess it’s that we’ve lost just Kenny in defence vs last season, but gained Coady, Tarkowski and Vinagre

So it’s shored up in terms of numbers

Plus, the defence has been dogged with injuries. Coady and Tarkowski have very good injury records

They’re both also experienced and leaders by nature, which we’ve been lacking

Patterson has also been coming through well lately, perhaps better than expected

 

[Brett Angell Delight]

I don’t get everyone saying we have shored the defence up. We haven’t kept a clean sheet yet and haven’t played anyone decent bar Chelsea. Grey looks every inch a million pound player and the pressure on Gordon to deliver will be enormous.

A window that would have been great if we added some attackers is anything but now for me. A couple of injuries in the forward line and we are left with nothing.

We shut Chelsea out barring a silly challenge for a pen, JP howler gifted Forest their only goal and Brentford and Leeds I think we had so little belief in our ability to kill the game that we started sitting on the lead far too early and were punished.

Now we have a midfield that hopefully won’t shirk challenges and be overrun like in those games, you’d hope we don’t collapse in on ourselves the same way and those 1-1s become 1-0s to us. In any rebuild like this, the “hard to beat” stage always comes first so there’ll be a lot of snoozers, but fingers crossed this regime does well enough to earn a sustained crack at a proper rebuild.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I don’t get everyone saying we have shored the defence up. We haven’t kept a clean sheet yet and haven’t played anyone decent bar Chelsea. Grey looks every inch a million pound player and the pressure on Gordon to deliver will be enormous.

A window that would have been great if we added some attackers is anything but now for me. A couple of injuries in the forward line and we are left with nothing.

We already have two out up top, which is why we're thin. We looked soft against the bottom half sides using the wrong formation, which we did because we were papering over cracks in midfield. We should be able to see out a second half now some of the time.

Not many teams are walking through our new midfield anymore though.

Right, the target for shipping them seems to be around 50, given the signings. Which would be a big improvement, and gives us a shot to post enough clean sheets to pick up enough wins.