Steve Walsh - with the benefit of hindsight

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I agree to a point, but Moyes, for all his faults had such a limited budget ( most of the time ), that he knew he had to get it right as there was no more money for him.

He seemed much better at finding " budget " players who`d lost their way - Arteta, Pienaar.

I agree that he didn`t seem as good signing bigger money players like Koldrup / Beattie.

In saying that I wouldn`t have trusted Moyes with a blank cheque book same as Walsh.
Mad to think that there wasn't money to buy a single first team player between September 2009-January 2012.

That's what you get for spending £10m on Bilyaletdinov.
 
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


Thats tough on Walsh because I agree I like Lookman, Keane, Pickford and the younger players from that list..as well as Gana of course. Unfortunately he will be associated with Shakespeare and Allardyce and perhaps was forced into Walcott and Tosun who were like relegation avoiding panic buys a bit, but also the 'no10' disaster, I feel sorry for Klassen and Vlasic, and even Lookman / Dowell, when Rooney and Siggy were bought at the same time. Looked like they were kids with a credit card at times, and the volume of purchases did result in some good buys. They couldn't replicate Leicester's strategy and it may have been that he was more like a Head Scout rather than a DoF
 
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 agree to a point, but Moyes, for all his faults had such a limited budget ( most of the time ), that he knew he had to get it right as there was no more money for him.

He seemed much better at finding " budget " players who`d lost their way - Arteta, Pienaar.

I agree that he didn`t seem as good signing bigger money players like Koldrup / Beattie.

In saying that I wouldn`t have trusted Moyes with a blank cheque book same as Walsh.

Arteta will forever be our best Bargain IMO. Obvious one is Cahill ofcourse however Cahill wasn't a clever footballer, he was a snide, combative midfielder who was great at arriving in the box unmarked. while Arteta was a snide, his level of intellgience and quality on the ball for someone who cost £2.5m was incredible.
 
Arteta will forever be our best Bargain IMO. Obvious one is Cahill ofcourse however Cahill wasn't a clever footballer, he was a snide, combative midfielder who was great at arriving in the box unmarked. while Arteta was a snide, his level of intellgience and quality on the ball for someone who cost £2.5m was incredible.

Don`t forget Carsley either.

Moyes turned him into a superb defensive midfielder sitting just in front of the back four.

I can`t remember what we paid for him, but it wasn`t a lot.
 

Arteta will forever be our best Bargain IMO. Obvious one is Cahill ofcourse however Cahill wasn't a clever footballer, he was a snide, combative midfielder who was great at arriving in the box unmarked. while Arteta was a snide, his level of intellgience and quality on the ball for someone who cost £2.5m was incredible.
Getting Arteta, Cahill and Pienaar for a combined £6.5m was incredible. You pay more for academy signings that everyone knows will never play a first team game now.
 
Personally think Koeman was responsible for a lot of the big money buys.

Word is he and Walsh had a very poor working relationship and Koeman wouldn't always thought he knew best. Came to a head in one January when Walsh had Belfodil lined up for 7mil but Koeman vetoed the signing. He's now one of the top scorers in Germany.

Walsh also wanted Zapata in to replace Lukaku, but Koeman wanted Giroud.

Koeman also fell out with the board at Southampton over signing Sadio Mane as he didn't want him as well.

I find it very hard to believe Walsh was recommending players like Bolasie and Kalssen going off his work for Leicester.

He's a very good scout, just not a director of football.
This.
IMO, Koeman would identify which position is required and I believe Walsh would provide a list with Koeman making the final decision.

Youth signing is entirely down to Walsh and the difference is obvious.
 
Don`t forget Carsley either.

Moyes turned him into a superb defensive midfielder sitting just in front of the back four.

I can`t remember what we paid for him, but it wasn`t a lot.

I cant even remember us signing Carsley to be honest. my first season was 99-00 and i can recall little bits, then a childhood traumatic couple of years watching Wlater Smith's Everton has been blacked out by my brain to protect me.
 
Arteta will forever be our best Bargain IMO. Obvious one is Cahill ofcourse however Cahill wasn't a clever footballer, he was a snide, combative midfielder who was great at arriving in the box unmarked. while Arteta was a snide, his level of intellgience and quality on the ball for someone who cost £2.5m was incredible.

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 cant even remember us signing Carsley to be honest. my first season was 99-00 and i can recall little bits, then a childhood traumatic couple of years watching Wlater Smith's Everton has been blacked out by my brain to protect me.
If I recall correctly, him and Linderoth were signed on the same day, towards the end of 2001/02.
 

How many of those players were his signings though? Did he really make a case for Klaassen and Martina or was that Koeman going for an ex player and what seemed to be the best Dutch player at the time. There’s stories of Koeman begging Moshiri for Siggurdson promising them CL football if they got him. Did Walsh really come up with him as a suggestion? Same with Rooney I doubt very much he wasnt a long term target until walsh came in. We were always going to be interested when he left United.

There’s still enough damage left with the likes of Bolasie Williams Sandro etc. But ultimately Walsh didn’t put these players out on the pitch completely disinterested and Walsh wasn’t off playing golf instead of fixing the team like Koeman was.

I think if we’d brought him in as a scout under Brands he’d have done well but instead we had a muddled system where him, Koeman, and Kenwright were all making transfer policy, and then Kenwright, Elstone and Moshiri tried to close the deals. Very bizarre.

At least now it’s clear that Brands is in charge.
 
This.
IMO, Koeman would identify which position is required and I believe Walsh would provide a list with Koeman making the final decision.

Youth signing is entirely down to Walsh and the difference is obvious.

There's something here that I wanted to expand on, but it's more conjecture

Some of the players we were linked with under Walsh, but ultimately didn't sign have gone on to flourish

Belfodil has scored 15 in 27 at Hoffenheim this season. Sebastian Haller before he went to Frankfurt.

We are told that Koeman vetoed some of these signings - I genuinely think there's an argument for suggesting that it was Moon face himself rather than Walsh who was more responsible for some of the poor decisions.

That in itself is an issue because Moshiri should never have allowed it to get to a place where the manager could veto a signing over the recommendation of the DoF

There's no hard and fast evidence on this, but it's what we suspect having read some of the anecdotal stuff
 
Look past the fees and there is no way it can’t not be described as a disaster.

We have players on stupid money, with years to go on their contract, that are at the age/ability where we may never get rid of them and will just hemorage money until they go away.
 
A broken clock is right twice a day.

He was an unmitigated disaster.

For me, Sandro personifies this.
I thought Sandro was a decent punt at the time. Well worth a shot. I don't think anyone would have predicted his absolute garbageness from the season before he came here. I really thought the worst that could happen was he move on for not too much money.
 

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