He's spent nearly £93m gross & £56m net in 18 months ffs. If his squad is 'thin' & weak in certain areas it's because he's not used the plentiful resources available to him wisely enough. To start bleating about the loss of a striker to injury, when you paid £11m for one when you arrived, who turned out to be that ****e you've sent him out on loan (& he can barely get a game for Sunderland - lol) is a tad rich.... Mentioning the £15m he spunked on Allen is also totally relevant, as it was another poor buy.
Twisting facts just a tad to exaggerate the negative mate. Borini was injured for most of that time and on his return we had an on fire Sturridge and Suarez. While he may well be ****e or More likely just ok, he was never getting into a team ahead of those two on form and after so long off, sitting on the bench would guarantee wasting that 11 million. I haven't followed him at Sunderland other than I caught one good performance by him and don't know how well the permanent strikers they have are performing as I would suggest on form they would get priority over the loanee? Oh and if we're going to be super accurate we were without TWO of our best players yesterday. Coutinho only managed to play 20 minutes after injections. And even hobbled he improved us at least a bit but you could hardly say he was in effective condition. And if spending reflects position then we are currently exactly where we bought. 4th in league. After 4th in spending in the summer. (If value for money outrages you so much Tobes I suggest you camp on the Spuds board) that's despite the fact we started from a position of a thread bare squad rather than a powerful squad like Chelsea and City who then went on to outspend us anyway and arguably United and Arsenal (another team who despite spending marginally less than us had a better squad before spend and their spend was on an expensive high end player) And then look at what money bought. We bought squad players in the under 20m bracket , the rest bought the star players that we chased but couldn't or at times wouldn't pay in the 30m bracket. or who wouldn't come to us because we weren't champions league material. Now can you do better with less money? Possibly but despite how well you've (Everton) done on your resources you haven't made top four for exactly the reason BR suggests. Just because we've spent more than you doesn't mean it's enough to improve to top 4 by end of season. I point again to the teams above us and what they spent on specific players. Having said all that it's BR's last use of that excuse as he has also stated that the players that come in now must be better than what we have. So no more squad players, no more 'ones for the future' the incoming players must be 1st team ready and top 4 class otherwise why are we buying them.
Tobes has got his stick out and is poking people with it looking for a reaction, just remember we are fourth in the league yesterday was a bad day but there's plenty of footy yet to come.
Frank - I think you're being generous there tbh. If I was a red & I heard him bleating about squad depth after a performance as inept as that, I'd be bouncing. He's made some quality buys i.e. Coutinho & Sturridge, but he's also made some howlers i.e. Allen, Borini & Assaidi. A manager lives & dies by his signings & after bringing in 12 heads, if his squad is weak - look in the mirror, you phoney ****er.
You can pretty much right off his first transfer window - new club, feet under the table, no help. We did make poor signings. Since then, we got the transfer committee sorted so that gave us 2 windows where we addressed our weakest areas - attack and defence. Attack was weak but then we added two instrumental figures. Defence was lack of numbers which we rectified in summer. Still plenty of work needed to be done but to overhaul a squad takes more than 2-3 transfer windows.
This is a myth which is used by inadequate managers to give themselves time. If you buy the right players they fit in straightaway: RVP, Ozil and there must be dozens of examples around
Fellani.......cough There's also dozens of examples of players that take time or get worse ....young, Anderson....... You're doing it again....tsk tsk
I don't disagree. Still you don't need 3 transfer windows to work out that they were mistakes. They will either be good enough or they won't. Kleberson, Djemba Djemba, Bebe if you wish to add to the list...
And you forget you lucked out with an entire midfield of kids (no matter how much you applaud your academy it'll never happen again) that allowed mistakes in the transfer window without it being apparent. You try replacing that many players now. In one window , even as champions...I'd argue you haven't even matched it in terms of quality through buying gradually over ten years. Which is why Giggs is still playing. You forget just how tthread bare we were and remind you that we dont have the money to replace them with 30m stars one at a time.
Relying on attacking strength only works if you have a world class setup to do it. It has worked when we have the world class SAS duo. The problem isn't that Sturridge is injured. It's that the defense is ****, mostly from being changed around every match. If we had a solid defense we'd have won that game 1-0. Instead we get blunders upon blunders.
The defence has been poor but they are exposed far too often by an inept midfield - which can't retain possession nor offer protection. Arsenal don't have a top class striker and their defence (despite their stats) isn't all that great as they aren't tested. Their midfield offers protection and possession. A top class midfield supports both attack and defence.
We will see how good they are soon against more top teams...They have been tested against United and failed.
That is true but I fear that was down to an inferiority complex. They are clearly the better team than Utd, and despite Arsenal playing poorly, they still dominated the game where Utd could only attack through set pieces. They're in the Group of Death in the CL and have amassed 12 points!