Dear Andy Gray, (one of my 80's heroes) and your team (who didn't look at the facts when debating Everton) from your studio ..........
I hear a lot of pundits, not just you, talking about Everton, and comparing our fixtures to Burnley, because it suits an agenda to fuel the fire against Everton's situation and in particular Koeman.
I believe your words were
"I object to him (Koeman) offering up a tough start as the reason they're bottom of the league".
.........Let's take a closer look (and a fairer look) at the respective campaigns of Everton and Burnley so far:
Burnley have played a total of 10 gamesChelsea 2-3 Burnley
Burnley 0-1 West Brom
Spurs 1-1 Burnley
Burnley 1-0 C Palace
Liverpool 1-1 Burnley
Burnley 2-2 Leeds (Lg Cup - lost on pens)Burnley 0-0 Huddersfield
Everton 0-1 Burnley
Burnley 1-1 West Ham
Man City 3-0 Burnley
Everton have played a total of 17 gamesEverton 1-0 MFK Ružomberok
MFK Ružomberok 0-1 EvertonEverton 1-0 Stoke
Everton 2-0 Hajduk SplitMan City 1-1 Everton
Hajduk Split 1-1 EvertonChelsea 2-0 Everton
Everton 0-3
SpursAtalanta 3-0 EvertonMan Utd 4-0 Everton
Everton 3-0 Sunderland (Lg Cup)Everton 2-1 Bournemouth
Everton 2-2 A LimassolEverton 0-1 Burnley
Brighton 1-1 Everton
Everton 1-2 Olympique LyonnaisEverton 2-5
ArsenalI guess you may say our Top 5 opponents play Champions league too, but compare the squads of those Top 5 to ours.
Oh .... btw - 3 days before playing Burnley (home), Everton played Apollon Limassol
While Burnley failed to beat Leeds in the cup, Everton were rewarded by getting yet '
another' AWAY fixture against
Champions Chelsea, which will take our total to 18 games, before Burnley play next.
Good luck to Burnley, but let's not dismiss the difficult campaign of Everton so far, by quoting them, because it suits an agenda.
Next -
Everton spending in the transfer window:
Official figures are undisclosed, so let's approximate:Lots of people like to say Everton have spent £150m, because it sounds better than quoting the actual figures.
About £15m of that went on players who either play in the u23's, such as Josh Bowler, Lewis Gibson, Boris Mathis, Dennis Adeniran, or are still at their club on loan, like Henry Onyekuru. £15m doesn't seem like an awful lot in the grand scheme of things, but remember Everton also SOLD just shy of £100m worth of talent, so we're already below the £50m mark of first team investment.
Ronald Koeman, or whoever it was that wanted to sign the players (There's debate on that issue) also had an eye on the 'future' of Everton, and we can see this when we look at the age of some of the players that we signed.
Nikola Vlasic cost approx £10m - he's just 20 years old.
Sandro Ramirez cost approx £5m - He is just 22 years old.
Even Jordan Pickford is only 23, while Klaassen and Keane 24, so we've put together a young squad.
Everton have actually played 8 players this campaign who are 23 or under, but I'm digressing.
Do you think for a second that Ronald Koeman would sell Romelu Lukaku, and think for one moment that Wayne Rooney, or Sandro Ramirez would be suitable replacements? I wonder how much of the Wayne Rooney transfer was for the benefit of commerce?
What is more important is 'why' Everton didn't buy a senior Striker, and 'why' on the last day of the window, our Board still looked to sell both Ross Barkley, and Oumar Niasse, and had they done so, our net spend (forget amortisation) would probably have been closer to £10m, so one has to question our ambition.
Let's forget the cost of players for a moment, and instead look at it in terms of Chess pieces.
By selling Lukaku, we sold our most valuable piece - our Queen, given the King is the club itself. We replaced the Queen with much lesser value pieces, and we've been playing chess without a Queen ever since. We're bolstering our first 11, with players from the u23 team, and as good as they are, they're still u23 players.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin is just 20 years old, while Ademola Lookman and Jonjoe Kenny are the same age. Mason Holgate is 21, while Tom Davies just 19.
These are 'all' players that will form the future of Everton, but one has to ask why, with a Billionaire owner, who has talked about his ambition for the club, we are using so many u23 players in the senior first eleven, because surely if Koeman had money to spend, he'd have bought the best for each position, but would they come?
We also have to ask why, despite our cash, we took a free agent, Cuco Martina, as Right Back cover, who wasn't even getting a game for his previous club? Why would Koeman do that if he had money to spend? He's hardly played since his arrival.
Anybody who talks about £150m spending, and ignores the fact that we sold near £100m doesn't want to look at the real picture. Your comment that Man United sold Ronaldo and coped was bizarre, as they are in a completely different situation than Everton are, and were one of the best squads in world football at the time.
Everton didn't just sell Lukaku, but sold him to one of our rivals for a top 6 place in United, the team that finished one place above us last season, strengthening them, whilst weakening ourselves. That isn't the action of a club that has one eye on climbing into top 6 position, but the action of a club who looked upon his transfer fee as an opportunity to strengthen other areas, yet the fact we didn't sign another quality striker is a very big weight that currently sits around Koeman's neck. I'm certain Koeman also wanted another defender.
Add to that, we lost Ross Barkley to injury, regardless of him leaving, or not, and that accounts for arguably our 2 best players. In fact, our main player assets, in John Stones, Romelu Lukaku, Ross Barkley, and if you like, Gerard Deulofeu have all moved on, or about to move on, which is worrying. Why give Martina a 3 year deal? Some will argue he wouldn't have signed without some kind of safety net, but is Seamus Coleman the next player out of the door?
Did Koeman have a say in the matter with our signings?
A player of his experience would have known Gylfi Sigurdsson was a dead ball specialist, and that he wasn't going to set our midfield ablaze in the same fashion as a Hazard, or Fabregas, so having already signed Klaassen, why would he spend any remaining funds on another midfielder, when we so desperately needed a Striker, and even stranger, why would he buy Vlasic on the basis of him impressing over 2 games? The latter although proving to be good, was a surprise to just about everybody, so was he a Walsh signing?
Koeman wasn't my preferred choice of manager when he arrived, but I'll support him as long as he's in the job, and I don't agree with a lot of his decisions on the pitch, but how things might be different if the board had covered all angles, in the transfer window, instead of leaving the manager hanging out to dry.
Fixtures, a new squad, short pre-season, lack of quality, selling our best players, inexperience, and debatable tactics have all lead to our current situation. Yes, Koeman is at fault for many things, but I'd love to have been a fly on the wall.
As for your comment that Everton should be beating the top 6 sides, even our very best teams of the 80's failed to do that on a regular basis, so what chance does a patched up new squad have? The gulf between the likes of Man City, Chelsea, just to name two is there for all to see. Every team strengthened. Everton had to improve a squad that had been struggling in mid table, whilst the top teams were improving winning sides.
Our slump started in the late 80's, and it's been 30 years since we were a top team, so a balance between expectation, and reality, might be a good thing. We've not beaten Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, bar a penalty shoot out, since 1994, yet there are fans that will 'expect' Koeman to go there and win on Wednesday ...... if he's still here. There was a 32 point difference between 1st place and 7th place last season in the league.
Yes we all want to win, and NSNO sounds cool when trying to maintain ambition, but anybody would think Koeman is the first manager not to beat the top teams.
All the best.
