KaiserEFC
Player Valuation: £70m
Feels like Ive been harking on at this forever. We are too loyal. Too loyal to current players, too loyal to ex players.
Everton have a party line, this is obvious. Anyone who buys into it is welcomed to the club with open arms, see Rooney, Ferguson, Osman, Royle and Unsworth. Anyone who doesn't is shunned, see Neville Southall. This party line is a poison on our club, the line which has accepted mediocracy, has prevented us from replacing players who became far too old years ago and has created a cult of failure.
I can't think of a team in the Premier League who would start with a defence with the combined age of 120 and would continue to play Baines, Jagielka and Williams. So why do we play them? Well we don't really have any other option. What club who is supposedly challenging for silverware and champions league places wouldn't have replaced a 35 year old centre back or a 32 year old left back who after a series of injuries has looked consistently off the pace? Oh yeah, Everton.
Now Jagielka is our captain, is well regarded around the club and at one point a very capable centre half. However, if you ask most fans, he is a poor captain who will never argue with referees and is rarely seen trying to motivate his team mates, the "church mouse" to quote another poster on this forum. He turned 30, five years ago, and in that time we have bought and sold John Stones, got rid of Distin (who didn't sing from the Everton song sheet), tried a few academy lads and bought Ramiro Funes Mori. None of these really worked, so we settled for 31 year old Ashley Williams, not as a replacement but as a partner, this has ended up with us having a frankly laughable and in football terms ancient centre back pairing which was showing severe warning signs as far back as last season. Yet Only Michael Keane was brought in this summer which once again hasn't worked, proving that one of the old guard is still the problem.
Leighton Baines has been considered one of us by the fans and has always been a favourite. He suffered injuries over the last few seasons which combined with age have made the attacking left back of old look thoroughly off the pace in many of the games he's played in. Leighton Baines has never been replaced, we never even looked at replacing him with a long term prospect (Oviedo was a totally different kind of player). If Baines got injured, we would not have a senior left back. Just let that sink in.
This loyalty has left us with a defence that has at the time of writing, shipped 20 goals, joint second worst in the league.
Why haven't these players been replaced then? As a club we put certain players, current and past on a pedestal making them untouchable. Just look at Phil Neville for an example, considered by many to be the worst captain in recent memory. He was played week in week out despite other options until it got to the point where Moyes had to drop him as his performances were totally untenable. We do not replace them because we are too loyal to them. This is dragging us down. Couple that with signing aged players and being a general charity case (see Wayne Rooney, Francis Jeffers and Jose Baxter) and you have a recipe for disaster.
In my opinion, this old school of Kenwright, our current captain and all the current and ex players we let set the direction of the club is killing us and Everton really need to find a way of letting go because its stifling us on and off the pitch. This long term mismanagement coupled with the mismanagement which has already turned this season into a debacle has turned the club we all love into a ticking time bomb destined to explode in the very near future. Long story short the club needs a real change, and we have to hope Moshiri has the minerals to cut these cancerous influences out of our club, and hire a manager who has no affiliation to the club, resisting the pressure to appoint David Unsworth. I'm not holding my breath.
Everton have a party line, this is obvious. Anyone who buys into it is welcomed to the club with open arms, see Rooney, Ferguson, Osman, Royle and Unsworth. Anyone who doesn't is shunned, see Neville Southall. This party line is a poison on our club, the line which has accepted mediocracy, has prevented us from replacing players who became far too old years ago and has created a cult of failure.
I can't think of a team in the Premier League who would start with a defence with the combined age of 120 and would continue to play Baines, Jagielka and Williams. So why do we play them? Well we don't really have any other option. What club who is supposedly challenging for silverware and champions league places wouldn't have replaced a 35 year old centre back or a 32 year old left back who after a series of injuries has looked consistently off the pace? Oh yeah, Everton.
Now Jagielka is our captain, is well regarded around the club and at one point a very capable centre half. However, if you ask most fans, he is a poor captain who will never argue with referees and is rarely seen trying to motivate his team mates, the "church mouse" to quote another poster on this forum. He turned 30, five years ago, and in that time we have bought and sold John Stones, got rid of Distin (who didn't sing from the Everton song sheet), tried a few academy lads and bought Ramiro Funes Mori. None of these really worked, so we settled for 31 year old Ashley Williams, not as a replacement but as a partner, this has ended up with us having a frankly laughable and in football terms ancient centre back pairing which was showing severe warning signs as far back as last season. Yet Only Michael Keane was brought in this summer which once again hasn't worked, proving that one of the old guard is still the problem.
Leighton Baines has been considered one of us by the fans and has always been a favourite. He suffered injuries over the last few seasons which combined with age have made the attacking left back of old look thoroughly off the pace in many of the games he's played in. Leighton Baines has never been replaced, we never even looked at replacing him with a long term prospect (Oviedo was a totally different kind of player). If Baines got injured, we would not have a senior left back. Just let that sink in.
This loyalty has left us with a defence that has at the time of writing, shipped 20 goals, joint second worst in the league.
Why haven't these players been replaced then? As a club we put certain players, current and past on a pedestal making them untouchable. Just look at Phil Neville for an example, considered by many to be the worst captain in recent memory. He was played week in week out despite other options until it got to the point where Moyes had to drop him as his performances were totally untenable. We do not replace them because we are too loyal to them. This is dragging us down. Couple that with signing aged players and being a general charity case (see Wayne Rooney, Francis Jeffers and Jose Baxter) and you have a recipe for disaster.
In my opinion, this old school of Kenwright, our current captain and all the current and ex players we let set the direction of the club is killing us and Everton really need to find a way of letting go because its stifling us on and off the pitch. This long term mismanagement coupled with the mismanagement which has already turned this season into a debacle has turned the club we all love into a ticking time bomb destined to explode in the very near future. Long story short the club needs a real change, and we have to hope Moshiri has the minerals to cut these cancerous influences out of our club, and hire a manager who has no affiliation to the club, resisting the pressure to appoint David Unsworth. I'm not holding my breath.
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