Saint Domingo
Player Valuation: £90m
@catcherintherye
Bringing it into the correct thread.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on Rondon. I see a slower target man striker who took a while to get fit but is improving. I’m sure no one at Everton thought we’d be without DCL and Richarlison for such a long period, and no one knew if we’d see Tosun back fit or not. Simms was also injured at the beginning of the season. Given the budget constraints we had, I can see why Benitez brought in a player he knew with prem experience on a free. You don’t see it this way though and that’s fine.
As for the long term rebuild. I see Everton’s problems since 2014 as: recruitment, injury prevention and treatment, player mentality, player profile, and recently managerial instability.
Obviously by wanting to keep the incumbent in place it removes the last issue. I wanted to keep Ancelotti as well. For me the churn between Koeman Silva Allardyce Ancelotti Benitez hasn’t done us any favours.
Player recruitment has been muddled under Moshiri with him, DOFs, and managers buying players. That didn’t work. Benitez has ousted Brands and taken control of this. The summer signings are undoubtedly his and in Gray we’ve made one of our best signings in ages.
Player fitness and recovery. Ultimately too early to judge. He’s at least dismantled a medical team that was clearly not fit for purpose. There’s also some green shoots with Gbamin Delph Tosun the permanent sick notes actually staying fit, Allan staying fit after struggling to last season and also with Doucoure recovering quickly from his injury and coming back strong. The downsides have been Mina carrying on being a liability and of course the DCL injury. Next few months will start to tell us more hopefully, and the aim would be to keep our best players fit for most of next season.
Player mentality. Again far too early but there’s been some encouragement in terms of coming from behind numerous times this season when we’d struggled to do that at all under Silva. There’s also been an increase in work rate in terms of running distances. There’s still been far too many poor performances so it’s a wait and see as to whether Benitez can turn the dial on this or not. If Digne isn’t on board with what he wants to do though then establishing that the manager is in charge at Everton and not these players is a positive step in my view.
Player profile. We’ve bought too many slow weak players recently and it’s left managers hamstring in terms of how they can play. Buying Gray and Townsend, plus wanting to play them in a 4 with DCL and Richarlison shows that he wants to at least play with some pace upfront. That for me is a welcome change in direction away from Davies Bernard Siggurdson Gomes shuffling around the pitch.
He’s not been here long so it needs a far bigger sample to see if any of these changes will bear fruit. Not giving any of these changes a chance to even see if they’ll work or not seems illogical to me. I think giving any manager only 13 games or so to turn around 7 years of decline doesn’t seem logical to me.
Bringing it into the correct thread.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on Rondon. I see a slower target man striker who took a while to get fit but is improving. I’m sure no one at Everton thought we’d be without DCL and Richarlison for such a long period, and no one knew if we’d see Tosun back fit or not. Simms was also injured at the beginning of the season. Given the budget constraints we had, I can see why Benitez brought in a player he knew with prem experience on a free. You don’t see it this way though and that’s fine.
As for the long term rebuild. I see Everton’s problems since 2014 as: recruitment, injury prevention and treatment, player mentality, player profile, and recently managerial instability.
Obviously by wanting to keep the incumbent in place it removes the last issue. I wanted to keep Ancelotti as well. For me the churn between Koeman Silva Allardyce Ancelotti Benitez hasn’t done us any favours.
Player recruitment has been muddled under Moshiri with him, DOFs, and managers buying players. That didn’t work. Benitez has ousted Brands and taken control of this. The summer signings are undoubtedly his and in Gray we’ve made one of our best signings in ages.
Player fitness and recovery. Ultimately too early to judge. He’s at least dismantled a medical team that was clearly not fit for purpose. There’s also some green shoots with Gbamin Delph Tosun the permanent sick notes actually staying fit, Allan staying fit after struggling to last season and also with Doucoure recovering quickly from his injury and coming back strong. The downsides have been Mina carrying on being a liability and of course the DCL injury. Next few months will start to tell us more hopefully, and the aim would be to keep our best players fit for most of next season.
Player mentality. Again far too early but there’s been some encouragement in terms of coming from behind numerous times this season when we’d struggled to do that at all under Silva. There’s also been an increase in work rate in terms of running distances. There’s still been far too many poor performances so it’s a wait and see as to whether Benitez can turn the dial on this or not. If Digne isn’t on board with what he wants to do though then establishing that the manager is in charge at Everton and not these players is a positive step in my view.
Player profile. We’ve bought too many slow weak players recently and it’s left managers hamstring in terms of how they can play. Buying Gray and Townsend, plus wanting to play them in a 4 with DCL and Richarlison shows that he wants to at least play with some pace upfront. That for me is a welcome change in direction away from Davies Bernard Siggurdson Gomes shuffling around the pitch.
He’s not been here long so it needs a far bigger sample to see if any of these changes will bear fruit. Not giving any of these changes a chance to even see if they’ll work or not seems illogical to me. I think giving any manager only 13 games or so to turn around 7 years of decline doesn’t seem logical to me.
