Leighton Baines

[Jayhow15]

I don't think we can sell Baines and spend £20m and become a better team. We'd have to get very, very lucky. I'd be absolutely furious if we sold him -- don't care about debating between 15m or 20m -- it won't make us a better team at any of those prices.

Probably get crucified for this but might as well sell Fellaini aswell whilst his stock is high, plus Heitinga, give a decent% to the new manager who can try and build a new team over next few seasons.

 

[njligernj]

... and I agree with putting in a 12m bid for Rooney.

 

[Papa Shango]

mate if they accepted that bid I would think we would pay it.

How are we paying his 200k a week?

 

[Julian Carax]

How are we paying his 200k a week?

He's a true blue. He'll play for free.

 

[Brennan]

I don't think we can sell Baines and spend £20m and become a better team. We'd have to get very, very lucky. I'd be absolutely furious if we sold him -- don't care about debating between 15m or 20m -- it won't make us a better team at any of those prices.

Baines cost £6m from Wigan.

 

[steken1]

Tell him to **** off the cheeky ginger tossbag. Then show him his own quote about 'we don't sell our best players cheaply at Everton'.

 

[keverton]

How are we paying his 200k a week?

Mate I'm not getting in a serious debate about buying Rooney. It's a non debatable conversation as it would not happen. Obviously we would not pay him 200k a week.

 

[steken1]

Baines cost £6m from Wigan.

He weren't even the best LB on merseyside when he came. We could buy potential but we wouldn't get a player who'd improve on him.

 

[njligernj]

Oviedo or even Distin can do a good enough job at left back! I'd have absolutely no problem with that at all.

Yikes.

What is Everton trying to do? Is it trying to be a good football team? If so, we have the best LB in the world. We shouldn't sell him because the chances we take 15-20m and get "the best player in the world" at whatever position we buy is so close to 0% we might as well call it 0%.

It won't make us better. I think we can sell Fellaini because he isn't the best player in the world at his position and we might be able to get better with the money.

As much as we complain about our squad size ... guess what? It works. We usually do better than the other teams with "no money" who have bigger squads. All those teams sell their best players. Where does it get them?

 

[TippEverton]

Tell him to **** off the cheeky ginger tossbag. Then show him his own quote about 'we don't sell our best players cheaply at Everton'.

Haha, is right, great idea that, I like the counter offer for Rooney idea too, neither will happen though.

 

[Jadubsee]

Some United 'fans' display breathtaking ignorance of football. Take this gem from the Daily Mail story's comments:

"Moyes is a disgrace, we have Evra/Buttner/Fabio, all are better than Baines but this poor excuse of a manager wnats to waste our money on this weak fullback, he is not worth 12m"

Absolutely laughable! To be fair though it's probably some kid from Indonesia who's never even seen a game

 

[Julian Carax]

I can understand some united fans looking down their noses at Moues, but Baines!

 

[Essex Blue]

Yikes.

What is Everton trying to do? Is it trying to be a good football team? If so, we have the best LB in the world. We shouldn't sell him because the chances we take 15-20m and get "the best player in the world" at whatever position we buy is so close to 0% we might as well call it 0%.

It won't make us better. I think we can sell Fellaini because he isn't the best player in the world at his position and we might be able to get better with the money.

As much as we complain about our squad size ... guess what? It works. We usually do better than the other teams with "no money" who have bigger squads. All those teams sell their best players. Where does it get them?

Why did you miss out the bit where I suggest using the Baines money to sign Negredo?

There is a reason why boss strikers tend to cost more than even the best left backs. I think we would be better off losing Baines and replacing Anichebe with Negredo, rather than keeping Baines and continuing with the likes of Anichebe.

Baines has his negatives as well, he provides less defensive protection than Coleman does. Our team would improve if we gained Negredo at the expense of losing Baines IMO.

 

[njligernj]

Baines cost £6m from Wigan.

... and Bily cost 9m. We could go back and forth for days quoting prices of one player back and forth but it doesn't prove anything. The bottom line is that there are probably hundreds of players which cost 6m (or less) who turned out to be not the best player in the world at their position. We've bought a few of them. It's like saying we should be more like Barca and just develop a shed-load of great players in our youth system for practically no cost. A lot easier said than done.

I said we'd have to be "very, very lucky" to spend that money and get better and that's true. Baines could have cost 600k or 6k -- doesn't matter. Unless you have a proven method to believe you have a good chance of unearthing a diamond then you are making a mistake selling that player.

Obviously if every time we spent 6m we found a Baines of course we should sell him. However if we're going to get one Bily and one Heitinga (whom I include as an example of a good but not great signing) then we shouldn't.

Plus I am talking about getting better. Baines cost 6m but he isn't better than Baines.

This "logic" of selling players in their prime is what keeps teams in the middle/bottom half of the table. You never have great players that way. Oh I better sell this guy because he only has his best years left and replace him with someone with potential who might be worse or might one day become as good as the guy I sold ... and then I'll immediately sell him as well. How is that progress? You can literally never improve that way. Spinning your wheels with a big risk of ruin where the best case scenario is stagnation.

 

[Pabbers]

God I hope City come in for Baines!!!