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Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
Needs to work on his technique when facing up to a full back and seeking to knock it past him and get to the byline from a static position.
That aside, he's growing by the week imo, love him
That aside, he's growing by the week imo, love him
What an addition to the squad.
Name me a better signing last summer and then consider the transfer fee.
Unbeliveable business.
Name me a better signing last summer and then consider the transfer fee.
Unbeliveable business.
Please could someone with a Times subscription post anything interesting in this article, cheers.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/sport/football/Premiership/article1626554.ece
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/sport/football/Premiership/article1626554.ece
Just saw a replay, hes a diving lil bish.
Shipped
Player Valuation: £2.5m
Just watched the replay of the incident after I arrived home and I am going to defend Gerald here.
He was definitely fouled......albeit just outside the box.
He carried on for a half a stride by which time he was in the box and realised he wasn't going to get the ball.
So he went down......quite correctly, in the hope that the foul on him would be punished.
It wasn't.....and he picks up a yellow card from a referee who missed a foul and should have been giving us a free kick.
But he just brilliant today........Gerry is heading toward becoming an all time Everton great
He was definitely fouled......albeit just outside the box.
He carried on for a half a stride by which time he was in the box and realised he wasn't going to get the ball.
So he went down......quite correctly, in the hope that the foul on him would be punished.
It wasn't.....and he picks up a yellow card from a referee who missed a foul and should have been giving us a free kick.
But he just brilliant today........Gerry is heading toward becoming an all time Everton great
It was like Tiger Woods blasting one one from the fairway on to the green and the backspin slowing it up to get the ball in a perfect position.
roydo
in memoriam - 1965-2024
PM me your address, and will pop it on a plane LL. Read it earlier, and its a good one.
@LinekersLegs
....creativity and can pick a pass.
NoSlipSteve
Player Valuation: £150k
Del's feed to Rom on his breakaway goal was sublime, curling around the defender and catching Rom mid-stride. It's a pass that Ross could improve on, he left several short today.
The best part of that goal is the crowd.
If you listen carefully, you can separate those who haven't had 20 years plus of Everton screwing up (the ones who cheer when Lukaku rounds the 'keeper knowing its' a goal) from those who wanted to make sure it hit the net first haha
Coffee and TV
Player Valuation: £25m
Deulofeu: From Messi to Merseyside
Former Barcelona prodigy is finally starting to fire and aims to topple Sunderland today
AT LA MASIA, Barcelona’s gilded academy, Gerard Deulofeu was the sure thing, the next big thing. He was Ronaldinho with pace. The kid with a boot deal by the time he was 12 and a £30m buyout clause when he graduated from Barcelona’s B team. Rafinha, his age group’s other prodigy, said it was Deulofeu who would go on, one day, and win the Ballon d’Or.
Now, at 21, Deulofeu is a cut-price (£4.3m) signing whose best moments this season have been in the Capital One Cup. But he’s also, still, a young footballer of unnatural gifts — and rock-solid in his conviction that 2015-16 will be when potential turns to productiveness and ends with him an established Premier League star. “I want to be one of the first on the team sheet. 100% that’s my ambition. I want to play all the games,” he says. “That’s what I’m working for every day.”
There’s a Deulofeu conundrum that ultimately defeated Barça and caused Unai Emery deep frustration at Sevilla. “Put him out there, one on one, and . . . pfff. But make him play football with his teammates, on a big pitch, and it’s hard,” Emery said. He took Deulofeu on loan for 2014-15 but grew so exasperated he used him only once in the final three months of the season. “He doesn’t have the maturity or capacity for self-sacrifice,” Emery concluded.
When a leading manager makes that kind of remark it can follow a footballer around (see Mario Balotelli and the “unmanageable” tag that Jose Mourinho gave him). But Roberto Martinez — glass half-full with every player — believes he and Deulofeu, together, are solving the puzzle of making an anarchic talent just conformist enough to be team-worthy.
Deulofeu believes it too, and pushed to sign for Everton permanently after a happy loan in 2013-14. “The reason I’m here is I had a great time previously. The manager has shown a lot of faith in me. I think I definitely need to keep improving the defensive aspect of my play but already, if you look at it compared to when I arrived, it is night and day,” he says.
“I’m a special player, I look to do different things — but I also have to follow the instructions of the manager. That’s important to me.”
At Barça, where Pep Guardiola gave him his debut at 17 but he played only five first-team games (all as substitute), that “defensive aspect” was the concern.
Emery felt Deulofeu wouldn’t adhere to his exacting tactical instructions. Martinez is less rigorous and Deulofeu seems to have grasped the crossroads he stands at. “It is finding the blend between doing special things but also being disciplined and playing for the team,” he says. “Nowadays quality is not enough. You have to have an all-round game and I am trying to develop that. I have to defend but when I’m defending also stay ready for when we attack and to combine with people like Ross [Barkley], who I always play well with.”
He smiles easily. Yet mention of Emery provokes a frown. “You should ask my teammates at Seville. They will tell you how I played and how much effort I put in,” he says. “It’s not really a subject that interests me now because I’m looking forward to what lies ahead with Everton.”
Interestingly, Martinez perceives a youngster now trying to play with discipline and wants to ensure he doesn’t go too far that way. After all, with Deufolfeu’s tricks yet ability to play the penetrating pass (why Barça youth coaches saw him as a No 10), and with his speed — “I’ve never seen a player so quick with the ball,” Martinez says — you put him on a pitch primarily to attack, not track back.
“The manager has said I’ve been playing very well on the defensive aspect but he wants me to score and get more assists,” says Deulofeu. What he’s been saying to Martinez is: “I want to play more minutes.”
Deulofeu does extra work in training on free kicks and shooting. Having scored 18 times in Spain’s second tier in his final season for Barcelona B, he believes he can become a source of goals for Everton. His low tally of starts (four) is because a pre-season injury slowed his beginning to the campaign, he believes.
The past week showed where he’s still at: hot and cold, good and bad, genius pocked with gaffes. Against Norwich, in the League Cup, he was a substitute but came on to dispatch Everton’s key, first penalty in the shootout. Against Arsenal, in the league, he beat Nacho Monreal with a breathtaking flick then spoilt things with a blatant dive.
In Spain, there’s hope he is finally maturing. Deulofeu has been given the responsibility of captaining Spain Under-21s and responded well. During his first Everton spell he had a flat near Liverpool’s Sefton Park but now lives in Cheshire, close to Stoke’s Bojan, Marc Muniesa and Joselu. Barça contemporaries, he and Muniesa used to share a taxi to training at La Masia. Bojan is another close friend thanks to shared Barça days. “I’m only 25 minutes away [from Finch Farm] and when I saw the house [he now has] I said, ‘Don’t show me any more, this is the house,’” he grins. “I spend time with the others when I can and it’s been great to link up with Bojan and Marc again.”
Do they meet for “botellon” parties like typical young Spaniards? “No,” he giggles and, having spoken through an interpreter, he breaks into English. “Those are for drinking a lot. We go to dinner, but by 12, back in the house.”
Bojan gives good advice: he was also a prodigy who had to leave Barça to develop. “Barcelona is very different to everywhere else. You feel you’re in your own world, your own bubble. There’s a big difference when you leave but doing so makes you learn in two ways.
“At Barcelona you’re taught to open the pitch, tiki-taka, keep the ball as much as possible and when you leave you learn more about how to play defensively. Leaving also makes you mentally stronger. I’ve adapted here because of my mental strength. There are players who are happy to sit on the bench at Barça but I was never one,” he says. “I was always looking to develop my career.”
Everton is “the ideal club. I feel comfy. I feel relaxed. It’s a club with a lot of history, that should be in the top six and fighting for the European positions. In the dressing room there’s a fantastic atmosphere and it’s not just the Spanish teammates, there’s the Argentine guys, the Belgians and, of course, the English lads.” He’s learnt to keep an eye on James McCarthy and Seamus Coleman, ringleaders of the practical jokes at Goodison.
The success of Martinez’s Everton may hinge on how effective he proves at making team players of three young mavericks: Ross Barkley, Romelu Lukaku and Deulofeu. We are talking at Everton’s Finch Farm training ground about speed and who the club’s fastest player might be. “I think Geri is the most quick, eh?” says Deulofeu. “Maybe after this there will be a race and I will lose, but I don’t think so. Seamus is quick and maybe Rom [Lukaku] and Ross are the next. But, with the ball, I’m most quick. And without the ball . . . most quick!”
Shipped
Player Valuation: £2.5m
Lol the French commentator matey's voice mimics the crowd too.
Ban de cat.
Lukaku ban de cat.
BAN DE CAAAATTTT!!!!!
Thanks @roydo and @Coffee and TV , good read that.
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