Bob Elstone
Player Valuation: £35m
Get rid asap. Failed in Jan. don’t need him doing it again in 6 mths.
yeah, no. Thought about it over night and cant really get over people raging about Thelwell. (apart from the kopite stuff, unforgivable!)
The absolute state he inherited, the lack of funds, the PSR fights, the need to try and build a new squad on a shoestring.
Everyone's peed because of the amount of time it took to get the Alcaraz deal announced. He got it done.
As for no other signings, I'd imagine TFG and Moyes line up pretty well on the 'return on investment' element of the game.
I don't really get the 'Thelwell out' shouts but I do believe that wanting him out is a very short sighted take on what he's had to do, and how the club has been structured over the last 3 years.
Are there better DoF's out there, yeah. Will TFG make a change in the Summer, possibly. Does Thelwell deserve this vitriol, definitely not.
The absolute state he inherited, the lack of funds, the PSR fights, the need to try and build a new squad on a shoestring.
Everyone's peed because of the amount of time it took to get the Alcaraz deal announced. He got it done.
As for no other signings, I'd imagine TFG and Moyes line up pretty well on the 'return on investment' element of the game.
I don't really get the 'Thelwell out' shouts but I do believe that wanting him out is a very short sighted take on what he's had to do, and how the club has been structured over the last 3 years.
Are there better DoF's out there, yeah. Will TFG make a change in the Summer, possibly. Does Thelwell deserve this vitriol, definitely not.
toffeeblue9
Player Valuation: £35m
Agree completely
A few things to consider - player recruitment is merely one area of the club which reports in to Thelwell. The rest of his job gets completely overlooked by 99% of fans. But for those vaguely interested, this is a great read about some of the work he's overseen since he got here:
Inside Everton's academy: 'We're building something very, very special'
Mark Douglas gets unprecedented access to Finch Farm where he hears from the brains trust turning the Toffees into a youth football powerhouse
inews.co.uk
Secondly, even if you want to focus solely on recruitment, how can we possibly judge someone without reference to the context of the conditions he's had to operate in? PSR has been a huge problem. Cash flow itself has been a huge problem. It isn't like he has been allowed to choose the managers he's been working with, even if he's been asked an opinion. Until recently he's worked for a lunatic owner who was likely throw his oar in and overrule everyone on a whim. He's had to compete with the voice of a Chairman who we are told had his own competing agenda.
I've seen some of the criticism about him focus on Maupay (who, while terrible, was bought allegedly against the wishes of Thelwell who preferred Guirassy if we are to believe what we are told by the Bobble and co), I've seen a focus on Beto (who was bought, with cash flow constraints in mind, for the principle sum of zero as an initial fee - I'd love to know who else we should have been focusing on that was available on the never never), I've seen references to some poor loan decisions (fair enough, not many of these have worked out, but do we blame Thelwell here or the manager? In either case, the fact they were loans and failed has left us no worse off which, for a club in the predicament we've been operating in, is a huge thing).
If you actually focus on what signings have come in under Thelwell, the exhaustive list of permanent deals looks like this:
Amadou Onana - Approx £33m (sold for £50m)
Dwight McNeil - Approx £15m
Neal Maupay - Approx £10m
James Garner - Approx £10m
Idrissa Gueye - Approx £2m
Beto - Approx £22m
Youssef Chermiti - Approx £12m
Jake O'Brien - Approx £18m
Iliman N'Diaye - Approx £15m
Tim Iroegbunum - Approx £9m
Asmir Begovic - Free
Granted Maupay is a poor signing, but even if we choose to not believe the context about him Thelwell has overseen 11 permanent deals, with relatively little scope to claim we didn't get good value from - Maupay and Beto are your misses there, with a few firm hits and a few who are either on the fence or have been unlucky with injuries
And that's before you have to remember that alongside signing these players, he's had to create a trading profit for PSR purposes all along as well
At the very worst, you could say the jury is out, but writing the guy off without accepting any of the context of the situation he's worked in seems absolutely nuts to me
Didnt he bring in Tarkowski and Young too?Agree completely
A few things to consider - player recruitment is merely one area of the club which reports in to Thelwell. The rest of his job gets completely overlooked by 99% of fans. But for those vaguely interested, this is a great read about some of the work he's overseen since he got here:
Inside Everton's academy: 'We're building something very, very special'
Mark Douglas gets unprecedented access to Finch Farm where he hears from the brains trust turning the Toffees into a youth football powerhouse
Secondly, even if you want to focus solely on recruitment, how can we possibly judge someone without reference to the context of the conditions he's had to operate in? PSR has been a huge problem. Cash flow itself has been a huge problem. It isn't like he has been allowed to choose the managers he's been working with, even if he's been asked an opinion. Until recently he's worked for a lunatic owner who was likely throw his oar in and overrule everyone on a whim. He's had to compete with the voice of a Chairman who we are told had his own competing agenda.
I've seen some of the criticism about him focus on Maupay (who, while terrible, was bought allegedly against the wishes of Thelwell who preferred Guirassy if we are to believe what we are told by the Bobble and co), I've seen a focus on Beto (who was bought, with cash flow constraints in mind, for the principle sum of zero as an initial fee - I'd love to know who else we should have been focusing on that was available on the never never), I've seen references to some poor loan decisions (fair enough, not many of these have worked out, but do we blame Thelwell here or the manager? In either case, the fact they were loans and failed has left us no worse off which, for a club in the predicament we've been operating in, is a huge thing).
If you actually focus on what signings have come in under Thelwell, the exhaustive list of permanent deals looks like this:
Amadou Onana - Approx £33m (sold for £50m)
Dwight McNeil - Approx £15m
Neal Maupay - Approx £10m
James Garner - Approx £10m
Idrissa Gueye - Approx £2m
Beto - Approx £22m
Youssef Chermiti - Approx £12m
Jake O'Brien - Approx £18m
Iliman N'Diaye - Approx £15m
Tim Iroegbunum - Approx £9m
Asmir Begovic - Free
Granted Maupay is a poor signing, but even if we choose to not believe the context about him Thelwell has overseen 11 permanent deals, with relatively little scope to claim we didn't get good value from - Maupay and Beto are your misses there, with a few firm hits and a few who are either on the fence or have been unlucky with injuries
And that's before you have to remember that alongside signing these players, he's had to create a trading profit for PSR purposes all along as well
At the very worst, you could say the jury is out, but writing the guy off without accepting any of the context of the situation he's worked in seems absolutely nuts to me
TheBigIguana
Player Valuation: £100m
Not a Harrison fan at all but for no transfer fee he’s been absolutely fine. That doesn’t mean he’s a good player but he filled the squad out in rough financial circumstances.
toffeeblue9
Player Valuation: £35m
He did, you're right - missed that one, but it hardly does his case any harm
I'm not sure we'll ever know if Moyes and Thelwell were on the same page this window. But my instinct is that if they were aligned on decisions, we get more than 1 player in.
I agree, I edited it and added Young but I'm fairly sure Thelwell had nothing to do with that, good squad player tho.
I haven't seen anyone make a good anti Thelwell argument. It's just 'we didn't sign enough players and didn't announce one quickly enough, off with his head'.
toffee-L
Player Valuation: £20m
Think he's done a decent job by and large but this window was a disappointment. We have a huge rebuild on our hands for the summer and I think we should have tried to get some players in now to reduce the strain in the summer but obviously the caveats of January being a tough month and PSR lingering over us are valid excuses.
The majority of our squad are either out of contract or expiring loans, so we've given ourselves loads to do and the amount of time it took us just to get one extra body in for January, who was sorely needed, doesn't bode well for him or his recruitment team. Should we have confidence in them to get the 8-10 players we need in the summer? I have my doubts.
I think a decision on his future should be made immediately as we need to be strategizing for the summer in earnest. Moyes is an obsessive and does not share control of transfers easily. He had a poor relationship with the DoF at West Ham and would probably not work with one at all if given the choice. The DoF model has largely been a disaster here and whilst Thelwell is easily the best one we've had, it's a pretty low bar.
Moyes left an absolutely unbelievable platform in 2013 that even an abomination of a manager like Roberto Martinez could run with for a season. I'd be tempted to give Moyes the keys to the kingdom in the hope will do it again.
The majority of our squad are either out of contract or expiring loans, so we've given ourselves loads to do and the amount of time it took us just to get one extra body in for January, who was sorely needed, doesn't bode well for him or his recruitment team. Should we have confidence in them to get the 8-10 players we need in the summer? I have my doubts.
I think a decision on his future should be made immediately as we need to be strategizing for the summer in earnest. Moyes is an obsessive and does not share control of transfers easily. He had a poor relationship with the DoF at West Ham and would probably not work with one at all if given the choice. The DoF model has largely been a disaster here and whilst Thelwell is easily the best one we've had, it's a pretty low bar.
Moyes left an absolutely unbelievable platform in 2013 that even an abomination of a manager like Roberto Martinez could run with for a season. I'd be tempted to give Moyes the keys to the kingdom in the hope will do it again.
Maybe, and maybe thats a good thing?
Moyes barred the West Ham DoF from their training ground.
In the modern game there's too much going on for the manager to take on all the responsibilities of the DoF.
If it's going to be Moyes going forward, best to have a DoF he can work with,
If Thelwell, who wrote a book about playing 3-5-2 and signed players to play in that system, can put up with Dyche for years, I'm hoping he can work well with Moyes and find much more common ground.
yup, that's a good argument,
I do think that the days of the head coach taking on all the responsibilities of the DoF are gone tho.
I'd personally like a clean break for all I do think TFG in the next month or so need to be getting a CEO and a DOF in place so everyone is bedding in come the summer.
If those positions aren't filled come April that's a massive concern for me going into such an important summer.
If those positions aren't filled come April that's a massive concern for me going into such an important summer.
devon_blue
Player Valuation: £225k
Agree re positions filled in good time for summer. I don't think retaining Thelwell would be a bad idea - I think he's done a good job overall in ridiculous circumstances. Appreciate that isn't necessarily a widely held view though
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