Steve Walsh - with the benefit of hindsight

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Williams was a panic buy but without him we would have funes mori playing a full season.
And I dont think he was that bad in his first season tbh.

And I'll continue to say that pre injury bolasie played ok for us. Probably better options, certainly at that price and considering his age but he did alright.

I agree with you about Williams. He was decent enough first season and several teams had been after him for years, but the question even when we signed him was when would his legs go. Sadly, it was after about 18 months. Bolasie has always been Bolasie, pre and post injury and pre and post Everton. Speed and trickery, with a wholly unreliable end product. Was the same at Palace beforehand.
 
10 goals for us? 3 of which were against West ham, 2 were pens (1 rebounded, 1 pen scored) and obviously the marvellous half way goal.

Is he really doing well in MLS though? He is doing okay, nothing like you'd expect a big name to do... I watched DC United play someone a couple of nights ago and he constantly gave the ball away with bad passing or awful ball control. Amount of times his legs clearly couldn't move as quick as his brain was wanting to. I saw the exact same player that played for us. What was it, 10 goals for us of which 4/5/6 pens including the rebounded one against WHU.

6 goals in 12 this season for DC which on paper is okay but when you break it down...

1 v columbus crew (free kick)
1 v Columbus Crew (penalty)
1 v Orlando (Crossed free kick that looped over the keeper and in)
3 v RSL ( RSL down to 9 men by 90mins, 1 was a pen, 1 was big gk/defender error and 1 was a tap in).

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He's had the same issues as hes had with us in a slower, lesser quality league. Too slow on the ball, trying to do the right things but not having the legs to do so. We saw that over and over and over again last season. He was a poor signing for us. United fans saw that before we signed him and said so, just like we said about Lukaku's first touch not being good enough for a striker of United. He was finished when we signed him.

Now to be fair to Walsh, had Kenwright all over it along with part of the lukaku deal. I had no issue giving it a go, but also pleased we cut ties fairly quickly as well as he was a huge waste of money at 150k+ a week for 4/5 goals from open play.

Honestly, he's been very good for DC, especially last year when he took them from nowhere to the playoffs. HOWEVER, they had massive benefits on that run. Almost every match was at home, so there weren't a whole lot of 5 hour flights to games across the country and travel wasn't a big deal. Second, they had a good supporting cast and were terrible at CF, so he was a massive upgrade because of how poor they were in that particular role.

He's going to wear down this year no question, but his team isn't as good - they lost a couple important players and replaced them with downgrades.
 
As I said at the time, some of Walsh's moves weren't terrible deals in isolation, but the collective made no sense. The pieces didn't work well together and the tactics and management was brutal. That was team last year that was very fortunate to not seriously flirt with relegation.

The Klaassen deal was the one that was completely pointless, though. Total overpay and he isn't that good.

He overpaid for Bolasie, but Bolaise blew up his knee and was playing okay prior to that. So that was a bit unfortunate.

I also actually think that Sandro, although he hasn't scored, doesn't look THAT bad at Sociedad. Certainly not worth 100K a week, certainly not a good deal, and he's going to be tough to move.
 
I mean how can you go to Ajax with an open cheque book and a squad full of Europes hottest talents and come back with klassen

Its like those dudes on American Pickers who end up in a wizened old car collectors barn and spend the next few hours trying to get them to sell the real gems only to be told "sorry that ones not for sale". In the end they get so desperate to buy something they buy the wife's little run around for twice the amount that it worth.
 

Steve Walsh was a disaster when signing established players but his record in signing young players seems very good.

I wonder who was the decision maker when we signed Bolasie and all the other that have proven very poor value , was it Koeman or Walsh ?

The younger players that were signed seem good value for money and certainly in Gibson there seems to be another that may prove to be very good business.
 
To be honest I wasn’t against many of those deals at the time.

Klaasen I was quite excited about - Young, captain of Ajax, scored a few

Bolasie - Thought he did ok until his injury. Could obviously argue the fee was too high but in this day and age it’s hard to gauge what is market value

Sandro - Came through La Masia and had done well at Malaga.

Williams - Had been a great player for Swansea and looked to be a solid, cheap replacement for Stones

In hindsight, of course, they were all terrible value and certainly that calls into question his scouting ability.

Rooney was garbage sentimentality, though, and Walcott and Tosun were panic buys who were never going to cut the mustard.

Overall a generous 4/10
 
Nightmare for us. That’s what the Steve Walsh saga was for us.

We rather naively took his astute signings as a sign of a new dawn, and sadly for us and Steve it never worked out.

It was clear from the offset there were issues, rumours of discontent between him and Koeman, Moshiri getting s little too involved and you could see he was out of his depth.

He was rightly let go, but at a great cost, and I’d like to think we’ve learned our lessons from the Koeman/Walsh fiasco because it set us back approximately £20m if you include Allardyce.

But, let’s look back at Walsh legacy, and who we brought in, and the successes. Forget your Sandro’s, Klaassen’s for a sec.

Calvert-Lewin has become a first team regular (whether you like him or not £1m got a striker who’s going to be at worst a handy Squad player), then you’ve got the likes of the youth teams Bowler, from QPR, they’re talking about him like he’s going to make it and the same with Gibson the lad we got from Newcastle.

Go to Leicester, he signed Mahrez and Kramaric (both 23) and they worked out successful careers.

Steve Walsh was very good at what he does, which is sign young players with potential. But he was never ever, a Director of Football.

If you told me we could have him as a youth scout I’d have him.

Those dark days have gone now though.

Calvert-Lewin was wanted by Unsworth and he recommended him to Koeman
 
His job should have been solely identifying young talent and recommending first team players we can get on the cheap like Gueye for us and Marhez for Leicester.

Giving him an open cheque book was sheer madness.
 
I give Walsh 3/10 for his work with us, and that's generous imo.

Lukaku now would likely sell for a similar fee (80-90m), imo. Maybe we'll see this summer. But United definitely passed Rooney off as being worth about 20m in that transfer. lol Plus we got the honour of being able to pay him 150k to play for us.

Take away Rooney's penalties and he was an unmitigated disaster for us. Good hat trick against West Ham, though! No ill will towards him from me, but he should never have been allowed anywhere near Everton at that stage of his career, on that money.

I can agree that Walsh did some good things, but the big-money signings he made as still causing us to suffer, and that says it all. Lost huge money in offloading certain players, and can't find takers for many others while they bleed us dry.
I really wish Rooney had worked out, just for the sentimental reason of it but I really don't understand how to have got the team playing well with him in it. I don't think he suits the high pressing style, and we were not prepared to build a team around him, or shouldn't have tried. In the last 4-5 years I think only Fergie knew how to get the best out of him, and so now in DC he's working out because he's the boss and plays where he likes.

I think 5/10 for Walsh, but he was a fish out of water
 

I agree with you about Williams. He was decent enough first season and several teams had been after him for years, but the question even when we signed him was when would his legs go. Sadly, it was after about 18 months. Bolasie has always been Bolasie, pre and post injury and pre and post Everton. Speed and trickery, with a wholly unreliable end product. Was the same at Palace beforehand.
oh god forgot about bolasie

i think the positives were
keane, pickford, DCL, bowler, lookman and gibson

negatives were
bolasie, walcott & tosun (were they his?), and of course the attacking midfielder fiasco rooney, klassen, siggy and vlasic , with barkley, lookman and dowell already there.

I really wonder how much Moshiri was involved - i hope that brands is the spokesman now and not moshiri on Sky Sports with Jim f'ing white
 
Ashley Williams is one of the worst, if not the worst, player I have ever seen in an Everton shirt. And I've seen lots. Also ( grudge alert) I will never forgive him for not looking remotely concerned when Seamus got injured so badly in the WAles/Ireland match. I know they were on opposite sides thT DAY but they were teammates.

However I don't actually care if it was Walsh Koeman or Fat Sam who screwed our club so horribly. I put the blame mostly with Koeman who appears to be an arrogant bully. They did untold damage to Everton which I think ( fingers crossed) we might just be starting to recover from.
 
Sometimes with Walsh i think it was a case of him coming in and asking RK 'What style are the team going to be focusing on next season?' then RK was like 'No idea mate, im busy on the golf course at the moment' so he ended up just getting out his little black book with his player lists in and just running through it seeing who he could sign so it looked like he was doing something. The fans were never going to complain at that time about new players coming in.
 

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