Hi All,
This is my first post on this forum, even though I have been around for a while. I am actually from Sydney, Australia and I support Leeds (thanks to the Harry Kewell / Mark Viduka days!), but have always had a soft spot for Everton due to Tim Cahill's time at your club. In fact you'll see he is featured in my profile picture, scoring one of the best goals in World Cup history against Netherlands in 2014!
As an avid fantasy football player (I don't play FPL or any of the mainstream ones, I play a private comp with a group of mates which is insane in its level of detail for points accumulation etc), I kept a really close eye on Aston Villa last season, even though they were garbage, because I had a couple of their players in my squad. I reckon I probably watched 15-20 of their matches through the season, and almost every single game Gana was either their best player or 2nd best (behind Ayew).
A lot of comments in the above posts seem to be based on an assumption that purely because he played in the centre of the park for a horrible Villa team, he mustn't be much chop at all .. but I promise you, after watching them so much last season, you could have put Claude Makelele and Toni Kroos in the centre of Villa's midfield last season and they still would have been relegated.
Villa didn't lose games because of Gana, they lost games in spite of him. The defending from the back 4 and from wide was abhorrent. Ashley Westwood, Carlos Sanchez, Jordan Veretout etc may as well have been sitting in the stand, such was their ineptitude in defence (and most of the time with the ball too). Up front, apart from Ayew who was out of form early in the season, good through the middle and then injured + suspended late on, they had absolutely nothing - they were giving games to Agbonlahor, Gestede and Kozak! Dudes who had scored a combined total of 4 goals in the previous 6 EPL seasons or something crazy like that (of course Gestede came from Blackburn in the Championship, so he had never played EPL before that).
Gana's passing isn't the best, but in the games I've watched of Everton neither is McCarthy's, Cleverley's or Besic's. Gareth Barry is probably your best passer in midfield, but he's 35 years old now and on his way out. At the same time, when Gana had to play a pass to guys like Westwood, Gestede, Agbonlahor or Bacuna - guys who either don't know how to make a run or are too slow/immobile to do so - you often found him playing a pass seemingly astray because his teammates had no idea what to do. I would actually say his passing is more than serviceable for a guy who is not asked to be the creator - you don't need him to thread balls like Ozil, De Bruyne or Fabregas ... you need him to recycle possession efficiently and cleanly.
His worst attacking attribute is actually his shooting - he tends to lose composure around the box and lets fly with a wild shot that goes 5m over the crossbar. Again, I would argue a lot of this came down to frustration at the hopelessness of Villa's situation and the absolute lack of class up the pitch.
Defensively, though, he is an absolute machine. Tackles, interceptions, aerial duels (so good for his height), blocked shots, midfield press .. I genuinely think he does a great job with that aspect of his game. Given Everton don't really have anyone other than Besic capable of defending in the middle of the park (a guy who is lucky to string 3 games together before another injury hits), signing someone like Gana just makes sense to me.
As Koeman showed at Southampton, he loves to build his midfield around a guy who he thinks can scrap in the middle and win the ball back. Wanyama was his man at Saints (again a guy whose passing and shooting wasn't great but his defensive work was top shelf - apart from the red cards!) ... perhaps he sees Gana as the man to do that for him at Everton.
Anyway, sorry for the long post ... just thought I'd say hello and chuck my 2 cents into this discussion!
