grandjoeblue
Player Valuation: £35m
Can Benitez rely on a player who faked an injury to avoid being in the squad?
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Can Benitez rely on a player who faked an injury to avoid being in the squad?
Marius57
Player Valuation: £50m
When did he fake an injury?
Eggsyblueskin
Player Valuation: £40m
When was this ? Or are you just myth making?
Do you mean the injury this weekend that was lied about as he was on his way to Doha?
James trained on his own at Finch Farm on Saturday so I doubt he was ever injured. On Sunday he flew to the middle east.
grandjoeblue
Player Valuation: £35m
Indeed his mystery self diagnosed muscle injury. Lets face it the lad wanted to go for one last payday in Qatar. He'll be retired by 2023. All the best to him.
The injury that didn't exist because James likely never ever said that to Benitez, who will have known a move was on the cards so it was just a case of saying he was injured to ensure no questions were asked.
It's not hard to get your head around mate. The manager lied (and that's not a criticism of him, he'll have been told to do so as the deal was being worked on).
Spadge Vernacular
Player Valuation: £60m
Oh, if results and performances go against us, especially if we are lacking creativity he will be the focal point for a disgruntled fan base. Hopefully, the manager can deliver results. You have to ask what those sanctioning weakening a paper-thin squad are doing.
grandjoeblue
Player Valuation: £35m
Why is a world class superstar moving to Qatar at this stage in his career? Surely the most adamant James fan has to admit it doesn't add up. The lad just wants a partial retirement so he can spend more time on Twitch etc.
kenada_blue
Welcome to Barcelonaton FC
Pretty much.
Can't totally agree we've pushed him out but Benitez hasn't bothered with him and the club don't mind him going, so it's not exactly trying to keep him either. It's just turned sour.
As for fans...we just like turning on our best players leaving. Makes the medicine go down better.
Bottom line is...the club has just hit the wall now. We tried pushing forward. Failed. Back to just steadying the ship for a few years.
BigDuncTributeBand
Player Valuation: £25m
You’d have to ask Benitez but it looks for various reasons that he doesn’t want to rely on him.
I’m fine with that, it’s Benitez’ choice.
What I’m not fine with is if that choice detriments the team, we’ll see whether that turns out to be the case.
Ultimately Rafael chose to get rid of James, who was our best passer and top chance creator last season. He did that knowing the window closed without him being able to bring in anybody to replace him and with serious lack of depth and quality in those areas in the squad.
If it was me, I’d have kept him in the circumstances and tried to use him. Just because of the lack of options we have who can contribute and the way the window panned out.
Rafael didn’t want to, fine but I’ll have very little time for him trotting out “we didn’t have any options on the bench or we didn’t have the quality or decision making in the final third” in his interviews.
Because the manager doesn't see him as key and he wanted to leave. Because of his wages, no continental clubs can afford him and even Everton wouldn't let him go to a PL rival, not without a big enough fee.
So his wages were too much for European teams that he'd go to (not gonna go back to Madrid and PSG hardly need him - they're the only teams who could afford his wages) without us subsidising them or trying to do what we did with Porto and include that as part of an offer for Diaz.
Porto didn't want to sell Diaz unless it was for his buy out (68m) and then James didn't want to cut his wage. Wrong choice? Probably, but that's on him and he has no obligation to. He also definitely didn't want to go to Turkey even though we were going to pay his wage so he wouldn't have lost out.
The difference between Turkey and Qatar is that James will be the league's poster boy in the season leading up to the first ever WC in the middle east, and a tournament that Qatar has pumped billions into. Like it or not, there's going to be a huge political sway from FIFA ahead of that tournament and Mendes will have sold that to James.
So yes, of course he's far too good to be winding up there, and it will be an easy life for him, but Everton have bene desperate to move him on all summer, and not just because he initially wanted to leave. If Everton had sat down with him at the start of this month and said they wanted him to stay until January, then he'd have been here and available. But they didn't, they went around every other league that still had a transfer window open looking for chances to move him on - with Mendes doing the leg work as that's what he does for his clients.
I actually don't think this is all on Benitez here.
I think Benitez would have preferred to have him available until January once the August window passed but the club are knackered financially and he knows this.
His tone seemed to change last night on it. We'll see what he says on Friday but from what RB has said on the situation in his last few pressers, he has always referenced the 'special circumstances' at the club in relation to FFP.
Wonder who we will be saying needs to get off the wage bill next summer as our excuse for not spending.
Marius57
Player Valuation: £50m
Richie, digne, dcl, doucoure, Godfrey, allan..... take your pick. Whoever is considered our best player at that point will be need chased out the club.
UptheTofees
Player Valuation: £20m
Glad we got his 500k wage bill off our books
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