Useful Idiot

I think that net spend table is a out of date and slightly arbitrary, only showing the transfers over a short period of time. I think this one presents a more accurate picture of things: City still ahead by a long way, but Liverpool much higher up the table.

That's a youtube video of him with a horrible filter and a bad generic 'stoner rock' guitar loop. He looks pretty quick and fairly strong on the ball. Can't really tell anything else about him really as the Pro League isn't exactly the strongest. 8 goals in 33 there probably works out to about 4-5 premier league goals a season if he played every match, I'd guess. So possibly about as effective as Redmond if he can settle into the league. Seems a bit expensive for that sort of goal return, I suppose that we are gambling that Ralph can push him to significantly improve.

I really can't make my mind up what's going on in that video, it's either complete incompetence from the official or blatant cheating to help a struggling Liverpool get the result they need to keep them in the title chase to the final weekend of the season.

What is Armstrong actually good at?

For a big guy, Forster has never commanded his area particularly well and he's always been very slow to come off his line. He wasn't too bad when he had an excellent defence and midfield to cover for his shortcomings, but after we lost Van Dijk to injury Forster was exposed as very, very poor. The opposition started hitting more hopeful long shots around about then and I can't remember him getting anywhere near any of them if they had any power behind them at all. I'll still support him when he plays for us, and there's no way that I'd sarcastically cheer him or have a go at him, but unless the break has given him time to work on his shortcomings and confidence and he actually starts trying to show for crosses or close the angle if a player is running through he'll never be a particularly good keeper.

I think Forster's only real problems as a keeper are a tendency to stay on his line for far too long, poor distribution with either foot and lack of a long throw out, hesitancy in catching any crosses that are either driven or floated, that he's a slow to get down to shots, and that he normally gets beaten by anything on target from within 35 yards of his goal that's hit with any power. Apart from those slight issues he's excellent.

I like it that Ings is both in and out.

For an 18-20 man squad (which is what Ralph says he wants) I'd expect us to have something like this: ST: Ings, Long, ?New Signing? AM: Redmond, JWP, Sims, Armstrong, (possibly Boufal) CM: Romeu, Lemina, Hojbjerg (unless he's sold), (JWP can cover here as well, but only really alongside Romeu. Reed might also work in this role if we keep him) LB: Bertrand, Targett RB: (Valery, u21), (Possibly Reed) CB: Yoshida, Bednarek, Vestergaard, ?New Signing? GK: Gunn, Forster or McCarthey That is between 18 and 20 senior players already (not counting Valery as senior and depending upon Boufal and Reed). Ralph also says that he wants to look at the youth teams to fill out positions, so you can also add Slattery, Obafemi, Ramsey, Ferry, Johnson, Vokins, etc. to the mix. I'd expect we'd look to loan out or sell as many of the other senior players as possible. If we add another wide attacker, we need to sell one of the other players who is older than 21. I don't think it's a good idea to sign a back-up RB as that just bloats the squad and blocks Ramsey who looks promising and might get even better after a full pre-season. We definitely need a better CB and striker, especially if we look to play 4-2-2-2. If we sell Hojbjerg as seems to be suggested by Kruger then we would probably need to add another CM as well.

Pretty much disagree with most of that. I think he's a decent step up from Cedric in most respects. He is reasonably decent defensively. He had a habit of getting too tight when he started in the first team and giving away cheap fouls so I think he's actually improved in that respect as he concedes far fewer now. Cedric was a far better defender and more agile with the ball at his feet, but Valery is far stronger and less of a weak link defending crosses. He's also scored 2 goals already, which (I think) is as many as Cedric managed in his entire Saints career. His crossing isn't great, but it's no worse than Cedric's was. Overall, I don't think it's worth paying a huge sum of money to get someone in to block his development when his replacement would be unlikely to bring much more to the team than he already contributes.

I think it would be far better to spend the budget on 2 very good players rather than 5 average ones. A central defender and a striker, preferably. Then try to reduce the size of the squad to 18-20 senior players again, as Ralph says he prefers that the squad not be bloated.

******* Armstrong. What an idiot.

I think we need Romeu to play whenever possible, we always look much better with him on the pitch. Both Hoj and Lemina are better technically, but with those two as a pair we were crap under Hughes as our midfield lacked discipline. When Romeu was dropped for Sims with JWP playing in his spot we looked equally gash. When he went off yesterday we looked weak in midfield, too.

I'm usually pretty quick to criticise a poor performance by a ref but I didn't think Dean was that bad yesterday. Certainly not a Kevin Friend, Lee Mason, or Stuart Atwell kind of awful anyway.

That would be perfect, in my opinion. Well, apart from the Eurovision bit, don't really care about that one way or another.

While I agree with the argument this post makes, I loathe the cliche 'in and around' especially when used in this context. How exactly would one player improve by being 'in' any our other player? What's are they going to do, wear them as if they're a costume or something? Surely if anything that would be detrimental to both players in question's performance.

How to throw away a lead. We pretty much gave them that with out timidity since our goal. Cowardly play from us.

Nice demonstration of how accurate statistics are without context

The worst moment for me was going 1-0 up against Brighton and then sitting deep and letting them have the ball. If Pellegrino had shown even an ounce of courage and had us push up onto them, we'd have turned them over easily. Back then Brighton had no pace in the team and couldn't have got in behind us. As it was, we stayed narrow and just kept allowing them to ping crosses in until they inevitably scored. Woeful mismanagement of the situation.

Your post is dishonest diarrhea. I wonder why you don't spend more time posting on your Everton fansite instead of spreading a thick coat of stinking excrement everywhere else you go? On the league tables adjusted for goals which were incorrectly awarded or ruled off, we have consistently moved up places. For example, we should have moved up 2 positions last season and ended up with 4 points more. In the 2015-16 season under Koeman we should have finished third. Premier League table 17-18.........Adjusted table Man City....100....Man City....97 Man United..81....Liverpool....87 Tottenham..77....Tottenham..77 Liverpool.....75....Man United..75 Chelsea......70....Arsenal.......71 Arsenal......63....Chelsea.......70 Burnley......54....Burnley........50 Everton.....49.....Newcastle...48 Leicester....47....Brighton......46 Newcastle..44.....Everton......44 Cry Palace..44....Cry Palace...42 Bmouth......44....West Ham....41 West Ham...42....Watford......41 Watford.....41....Leicester......40 Brighton.....40.....Sotton.......40 Huddersfld..37.....Bmouth......38 Sotton......36......Stoke........37 Swansea...33......Huddersfld..37 Stoke........33.....Swansea....34 West Brom..31.....West Brom..33

Pretty much this. I really don't like Colin at all, and the way that Cardiff behaved recently has been hypocritical. Them beating us despite our having good penalty shouts ignored against them also makes this all the sweeter.

The expression on Colin's face makes the day feel brighter every time I look at it.

What a great result. I sincerely wanted Cardiff to lose and they did so in perfect fashion. Thee way they lost made it even more amusing. Serves the lot of them right, Colin in particular.

Brighton almost continuous niggly challenges that are never given as fouls. One of our players mildly brushes against one of theirs and the fall over and win a free kick.

Think he's always looked decent when given the chance. Then again, I always thought Hesketh looked even better, so maybe I wear rose tinted glasses when it comes to how good our academy players are?

We have Harry Reed to bring back into the fold. Under Ralph he'll be like a new signing and he's still young and hungry so he's certain to improve. That means any money we raise when we sell JWP to Liverpool in he summer should be kept as a contingency fund to help us out in the Championship when we start to adopt the 'yoyo' strategy after failing to finish 17th.