Steve Walsh - with the benefit of hindsight

[PITA]

Klaassen, Sandro, Bolaise, Martina simply not good enough - whatever the fee (and yes I know Martina was a free). That's over £50m alone simply wasted.

With Vlasic, Walcott, Tosun, Williams and Schneiderlin we overpaid by a long way on players who have been hit or miss, but not quite a disaster. That's another £90m where we got pretty poor value.

Only Gueye seems like a great bit of business.

I’ll never be convinced that we didn’t overpay for Martina

 

[peteblue]

I'd say Walsh 's record at best is mixed and at worst just malpractice.

We also have a tendency to overpay for talent.

And undercharge for real talent......

 

[Cameron Manning]

On its best day, MLS is maybe up there with lower Championship quality - if I'm being generous. Probably more comparable to League One but better than say the Scottish league

Thank you, EvertonFury, I had no idea myself.

 

[brieverton]

How many bad signings have Spurs made in the past 8 years?

How many bad ones that cost any appreciable money?

That's what we are up against.

It can be done. Slowly and methodically if need be.

Walsh doesn't bear thinking about. A charlatan at this level is the honest truth.

Let's hope Brands can deliver, if he cannot its more of the same.

 

[EvertonFury19]

Thank you, EvertonFury, I had no idea myself.

The MLS defenders in the USA will tell you it's as good as Championship or even bottom tier of Premier League which is complete crap.

 

[Rob17896]

Good post this mate, I wrote something similar in the transfer thread the other day.

Wayne Rooney was our top scorer and best player in his season for us, so certainly worth the free transfer and wages.

Not sure we can count Gibson or Henry as good value quite yet.


Rightly or wrongly, Walsh will be forever associated with the horrors of Bolassie, Klassen, Walcott and Tosun - £100m of absolute rubbish

10 Players No10 used to be a packet of fags until Walsh went shopping....I know but had to....

 

[Kenshin]

In posting about Onyekuru in another thread, I got to thinking that with 12 months behind us since we parted ways with Steve Walsh, I wonder if his success (or lack thereof) as Director of Football here is worth reconsidering.

We know, from what has been said since, that Walsh's job (unlike Brands') was solely focused around the recruitment of players. So to judge him, you'd focus solely on that. In Walsh's time here, we signed the following players... (taken from TransferLeague)

Season 17/18
Davy Klaassen	£23,600,000​
Jordan Pickford	£25,000,000​
Nathangelo Markelo	undisclosed​
Michael Keane	£25,000,000​
Sandro	£5,200,000​
Henry Onyekuru	£7,000,000​
Wayne Rooney	Free​
Josh Bowler	£1,500,000​
Lewis Gibson	£6,000,000​
Nikola Vlašić	£10,000,000​
Boris Mathis	Free​
Cuco Martina	Free​
Gylfi Sigurdsson	£45,000,000​
Dennis Adeniran	undisclosed​
Theo Walcott	£20,000,000​
Cenk Tosun	£27,000,000​
Season 16/17
Maarten Stekelenburg	£1,000,000​
Idrissa Gueye	£7,100,000​
Ashley Williams	£12,000,000​
Yannick Bolasie	£25,000,000​
Ademola Lookman	£7,500,000​
Morgan Schneiderlin	£24,000,000​

There are still some unmitigated disasters in that list. Klaassen (who we took a big hit on), Bolasie, Williams and Sandro all stand out. I'd also argue that Rooney, Walcott, Tosun and Schnederlin didn't give us value for money, although they weren't necessarily in the "disaster" category.

But, on the flip side, Idrissa Gueye was one of the best bits of business we have done in recent years. Keane and Pickford have proven to be worth the kind of money we spent on them. Sigurdsson, whilst overpriced, has proven to be a good addition. And then when you look at the younger prospects we invested in under Walsh - the likes of Lookman, Vlasic and Gibson, you start to see some real value.

I don't think you'll ever be able to argue that Walsh was a success, but I'm beginning to think he maybe wasn't quite the utter disaster I thought he was a year ago. In fact I think that Koeman was possibly the more destructive constituent part of the whole affair.

Anyway, that wasted a few minutes...

Walsh single handedly set Everton back around 3 years if we are lucky.

The sheer amount of players signed under Walsh that contributed nothing to improving the team is a complete joke.

Because the problem being you can say the likes of Pickford , gueye etc are individual success but when you then sign terrible players alongside them then what's the point? Like signing Messi and then getting 6 championship players.

Walsh is the dof that signed 4 of the same position, all with the same attributes , in the same window. That was embarrassing by itself.

Sorry but he was a complete failure at the job and clearly out of his depth. Now brands, an actual dof has to spend the first few years trying to get shut of all of those expensive mistakes to even have a chance of rebuilding.

Walsh is the reason why we are still midtable despite spending top 6 money in 2 years. Who the hell spends 200 million and shops in all the relegation battlers ?

 

[andy4efc]

One went missing in every big game whilst the other scored on every stage, Arteta may have been more skilful but Cahill was more dangerous

I literally said that Cahill was great at getting on the end of things, but Arteta was the better footballer and part of the reason Cahill was successful. Don't mis-interpret what I said as if I was slagging Cahill off, I wasn't, he was great at what he did but he was never technically good.

I recall Arteta scoring some important goals, away to City, in the derby, Fiorentina, Nurnberg. He may have had a bad game or two in the bigger ones but he was never one to go missing alone. Don't forget Moyes went into every big away game hoping to, and i quote. "get out alive". #

It's a shame really as would have loved to see Arteta in a team like our 72 points season. Would have thrived.

 

[davids]

That's a weird comment. His job was to pick the players going in and out, not sign checks. Are we now going to blame contract for the bloated payroll?

Seems as though some posters are suggesting he ran the club,negotiating fees and contracts without any checks from anybody else.Was Moshiri (or anyone who advises him) struck deaf,dumb and blind during this period?

 

[Black Belt Jones]

The Boloxassie signing has me shaking my head to this day, and in hindsight is a major symptom of things being seriously wrong at the club at that time. Happy to place it at the door of Ron Ganymede Head just on general principle, but it could just as easy be on Walsh - we'll never know unless he comes out and puts his side of the story out there (if he was a canny operator he would have done this already, probably get a somewhat sympathetic ear as we all hate RK).

I mean you could have a reasonable conversation about whether Bolassie is a legitmate starter for a premiership football club - it's a close call, arguments to be made on both sides of that question. And we paid £25 mill for him despite a clear track record of mediocrity in the prem for all to see. Second worst signing in recent history after Niasse.

Players like Klaasen and Tosun make me reconsider that the prem might be a special league after all. Never really bought into the idea that it has this white hot level of competitiveness that you just don't get anywhere else. But you sign these players and they're three levels off the pace - not like it's a step up and they've not quite made it, they look like they've been playing netball all their career and are now being asked to play football for the first time ever.

 

[peteblue]

Seems as though some posters are suggesting he ran the club,negotiating fees and contracts without any checks from anybody else.Was Moshiri (or anyone who advises him) struck deaf,dumb and blind during this period?

I don’t think the issue is really the fees or the contracts. Just the wrong players, and that was his job.....

 

[SerenityNigh]

Seems as though some posters are suggesting he ran the club,negotiating fees and contracts without any checks from anybody else.Was Moshiri (or anyone who advises him) struck deaf,dumb and blind during this period?

He was DOF (or essentially the same). If you hire a guy to be DOF and he’s bad, you’re responsible for his actions. That’s how ownership works. So on that we agree. But if you hire someone to run a part of your business and you watch over their shoulder, second guessing every move they make and telling them which moves you’ll agree or disagree, you’re a proper weirdo and a bad, micro-managing owner. That seems to be what you’re suggesting. Should we also see Moshiri sending notes to the touchline giving Marco tactical advice during the match?

 

[davids]

I don’t think the issue is really the fees or the contracts. Just the wrong players, and that was his job.....

The fees and contracts seem to be the problem for many posters, eg. fee for Bolasie, contract for Sandro. I'm not for one moment suggesting that Walsh wasn't inept,but the blame needs to be spread a little more evenly.It is Moshiri's money and we did have a manager in place (well on the golf course at least).Who'd have thought that with a billionaire owner,a manager who'd come from getting Southampton EL qualification and Walsh coming off the back of (allegedly) masterminding the Leicester miracle,it could all have gone so wrong.

 

[davids]

He was DOF (or essentially the same). If you hire a guy to be DOF and he’s bad, you’re responsible for his actions. That’s how ownership works. So on that we agree. But if you hire someone to run a part of your business and you watch over their shoulder, second guessing every move they make and telling them which moves you’ll agree or disagree, you’re a proper weirdo and a bad, micro-managing owner. That seems to be what you’re suggesting. Should we also see Moshiri sending notes to the touchline giving Marco tactical advice during the match?

I've a feeling there are others higher up the food chain who were awake.

 

[Joey66]

Be surprised if we get anything over £10m back for Tosun as well.

Twoshins as that's how he tries to control a football.......