Steve Walsh - no longer our Director of Football

[Big_nev]

What is strange about all of this is that when you look back at Walsh's career in terms of scouting and recommending players is that he's found his success stories in France. Mahrez, Drogba, Essien, Kante - even when he's spoken in the past he talks about having a scouting network in France and spending a lot of time over there.

Why all of a sudden the switch to Premiership proven expensive players at Everton? Is he being briefed from above to only look for players in England? It's strange, he's abandoned the principles that he's built his reputation on and has ended up a joke character.

 

[bluestevon]

Needs to be the first out the door in the clear out.

A poor manager can do a lot of damage to the club before he's sacked.

A poor director of football can fully destroy a club if he's given too much time.

If he's allowed to remain and spend a penny more then it's a further indictment of Moshiri being clueless.

Get shut pronto, get in a seasoned proven dof, and start preparing for a needed summer overhaul, from manager all the way through to the coaching staff and players.

Next man needs to be the one who is given the task/aim for the clubs future, then left alone to make the decisions and recruitment needed to get us there, without any third party interference from within the club. Long as we make sure we are hiring someone whose proven in that role then that's the best way out this mess.

 

[KindofBlue]

He really has ruined the squad.

 

[jinkyali]

He needs to be removed ASAP.

How we can have over 100m talent sitting on the bench/ stands is ridiculous

 

[Eggs]

..he must be the most fortunate man in football.

 

[Berenger]

The transfer strategy is a mess because of how it is governed. Too many cooks and apparently no leader driving the overall strategy. Im not sure we can blame Walsh entirely for that. It’s another problem shared between Moshiri, Walsh and the managers.

Pickford, Rooney, Sigurdsson, Walcott, Tosun, Gana, Lookman, Vlasic, Onyekuru, DCL are good signings in my opinion. Keane is an odd case. Williams was OK for the time and Schneiderlin was also good on arrival. Only unqualified failures are Sandro and Klaassen so far. Klaassen was purely a Koeman thing.

It comes back to the fact that we have a pretty good squad, certainly as good as anything outside the top 6. What we don’t have is a footballing identity for everyone to get behind. I’m convinced that if we had an identity, some of these players would start to show what they are made of.

 

[GwladysBlue]

Get this absolute disgrace out of our club.

 

[N.S.N.O.]

It comes back to the fact that we have a pretty good squad, certainly as good as anything outside the top 6. What we don’t have is a footballing identity for everyone to get behind. I’m convinced that if we had an identity, some of these players would start to show what they are made of.

We dont have a pretty good squad.

From hearing lukaku planned to leave in March 2016, we waited nearly 2 years to sign Tosun (who doesn't even have a great goalscoring record in Turkey)...him, Niasse and DCL are our strikers (if you consider DCL a striker)....that's incredible for a club our size.


we signed 4 number 10's last summer.... So yeah on paper having Rooney, Sigurdsson, Klassen, Sandro in our squad looks good, but the reality is if 3 of those will either be played out of position or not played then its a waste of time and money....add to that Rooney might be a massive name in the game, but he set on Uniteds bench last season even after Ibrahimovic was injured because Mourinho knew his legs were gone...then not only did we sign him but we paid him double what anyone else was on (things like that will mess with team spirit)....yes Rooney will get some goals, so will Peter Crouch...

Now to our backline....again, Yes on paper it looks good, all big names, but the reality is Jags, Williams and Baines were all done last season, they dont have the legs or energy to compete at this level anymore....and this wasnt addressed last summer....We bought only Keane who has never settled, and a freebie signing from Southampton (what a joke that is)....Martina & Kenny arent good enough full backs for a team trying to compete in the top 6

 

[peteblue]

We dont have a pretty good squad.

From hearing lukaku planned to leave in March 2016, we waited nearly 2 years to sign Tosun (who doesn't even have a great goalscoring record in Turkey)...him, Niasse and DCL are our strikers (if you consider DCL a striker)....that's incredible for a club our size.


we signed 4 number 10's last summer.... So yeah on paper having Rooney, Sigurdsson, Klassen, Sandro in our squad looks good, but the reality is if 3 of those will either be played out of position or not played then its a waste of time and money....add to that Rooney might be a massive name in the game, but he set on Uniteds bench last season even after Ibrahimovic was injured because Mourinho knew his legs were gone...then not only did we sign him but we paid him double what anyone else was on (things like that will mess with team spirit)....yes Rooney will get some goals, so will Peter Crouch...

Now to our backline....again, Yes on paper it looks good, all big names, but the reality is Jags, Williams and Baines were all done last season, they dont have the legs or energy to compete at this level anymore....and this wasnt addressed last summer....We bought only Keane who has never settled, and a freebie signing from Southampton (what a joke that is)....Martina & Kenny arent good enough full backs for a team trying to compete in the top 6

Spot on, now I’m more depressed than ever.......

 

[Azza]

Stephen Warnock just called him out on MOTD2 Extra.

 

[Azza]

On talking about Micheal Keane...


"That's not Sam Allardyce's signing, that's Steve Walsh's signing. So that's where you go to Steve Walsh and say 'You tell me, what did you see in certain players'. And that's what a lot of Everton fans are saying.

I live in the area, I hear it all the time. What is Steve Walsh doing? What is his job? Is he the sole person who is bringing these players in? Or did him and Ronald Koeman sit down in the summer and say these are the list of players and they all agreed on them."



Oh for who ever is reading this from The Echo, you may use it on the website.

 

[ToffeeJord]

Anyone with a brain could tell you signing players from. Palace Burnley Swansea released player from Southampton would be a recipe for disaster.
And people wonder why were in this mess?
Why aren’t we signing players like Spurs did raiding Leverkusen or Lyon. Or like Liverpool buying Salah from Roma!

 

[Berenger]

We dont have a pretty good squad.

From hearing lukaku planned to leave in March 2016, we waited nearly 2 years to sign Tosun (who doesn't even have a great goalscoring record in Turkey)...him, Niasse and DCL are our strikers (if you consider DCL a striker)....that's incredible for a club our size.


we signed 4 number 10's last summer.... So yeah on paper having Rooney, Sigurdsson, Klassen, Sandro in our squad looks good, but the reality is if 3 of those will either be played out of position or not played then its a waste of time and money....add to that Rooney might be a massive name in the game, but he set on Uniteds bench last season even after Ibrahimovic was injured because Mourinho knew his legs were gone...then not only did we sign him but we paid him double what anyone else was on (things like that will mess with team spirit)....yes Rooney will get some goals, so will Peter Crouch...

Now to our backline....again, Yes on paper it looks good, all big names, but the reality is Jags, Williams and Baines were all done last season, they dont have the legs or energy to compete at this level anymore....and this wasnt addressed last summer....We bought only Keane who has never settled, and a freebie signing from Southampton (what a joke that is)....Martina & Kenny arent good enough full backs for a team trying to compete in the top 6

Thanks for pointing out the difference between paper and grass, but I was already well aware.

The fact is that assessing a squad is an exercise in relativity. Relative to the others outside the top 6, our squad is pretty good. If you go through other squads with a fine toothcomb they are full of weaknesses too. The way people go on, you’d think every other squad was perfectly balanced with top players.

The point being that our current malaise is in large part due to the horrendous off-pitch strategy. It has left the squad devoid of so many key ingredients. They don’t know well enough how each other plays. You can correct some of that in the short run, but nowhere near all of it.

The ‘four number tens’ thing is a classic misunderstanding too. It’s a sign of the poor strategy, not of a poor squad: a very important distinction that most people either don’t understand or overlook. Having a surplus of tens doesn’t make the squad worse. That only makes sense if signing those tens crowded out purchases for strikers and left backs. There is no evidence that that is true. For instance, the Giroud saga and the search for a left back this Jan. The areas in which the squad is weak are not weak because Davy Klaassen exists. They are weak because we didn’t buy left backs and strikers.

 

[kenada_blue]

What is strange about all of this is that when you look back at Walsh's career in terms of scouting and recommending players is that he's found his success stories in France. Mahrez, Drogba, Essien, Kante - even when he's spoken in the past he talks about having a scouting network in France and spending a lot of time over there.

Why all of a sudden the switch to Premiership proven expensive players at Everton? Is he being briefed from above to only look for players in England? It's strange, he's abandoned the principles that he's built his reputation on and has ended up a joke character.

I honestly think Koeman had a large sway over it. He was on a timeframe. He didn't want to wait for players to mature. He wanted the finished article. It's why he shrugged on us paying ridiculous fees for Siggurdson, Bolasie, and Keane

The flip side is that Walsh has bought some promising young players - DCL, Lookman, Onyekuru, Vlasic.

I want him gone. But mostly I want a manager with a strong vision who is able to build a side on his own terms.

 

[N.S.N.O.]

The ‘four number tens’ thing is a classic misunderstanding too. It’s a sign of the poor strategy, not of a poor squad: a very important distinction that most people either don’t understand or overlook. Having a surplus of tens doesn’t make the squad worse. That only makes sense if signing those tens crowded out purchases for strikers and left backs. There is no evidence that that is true. For instance, the Giroud saga and the search for a left back this Jan. The areas in which the squad is weak are not weak because Davy Klaassen exists. They are weak because we didn’t buy left backs and strikers.

If we spend 45m on sigurdsson, then he should be played in the position that made him worth 45m....klassen cost 24m (sandro only 5 but on high wages), neither of them were ever gonna get a chance, so that money should have been spent on a left back... We had a transfer budget, so if we sign Klassen, thats 24m we cant spend elsewhere, so other areas of the squad ARE weaker because klassen exists...

My view that our squad isnt good remains, we have too many has-beens, and too many never-gonna-be's... Our squad isnt the best outside the Top 6, its in a worrying decline and the people in charge of our player recruitment seem to be as blind to this as you are...