So the transfer window slammed shut at 5pm today with Everton have completed 4 signings this summer, a number that could have been at least one higher had Real Madrid not had a change of heart over the future of Dutch international Van Der Vaart.
Despite losing Lescott to City I believe that our squad is a lot stronger now following the arrive of Johnny Heitinga from Althetico, Russian midfielder Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, French Defender Sylvain Distin and Brazilian forward Jo.
Johnny will shore up our defence even further, with Hibbert surely now dropping to (at least) the bench as cover. ‘Billy’ will provide either driving runs and goals from the right wing or crosses from the left and Jo (surely acting as cover for Saha and Yak) will provide pace and hopefully goals from the bench.
All in all after our less than impressive start to the season we should now start the see things improve, certain players will need to improve or be dropped, namely Baines, Yobo, Osman and Cahill as we now have (at least some) strength in depth.
Top 4 … I doubt it, but top 6 yes!
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Tags: everton sign Johnny Heitinga, van der vaart rejects everton
Quite possibly the worst opinion I have heard on the transfer blogs…..
While Everton have without doubt added excellent additions to the squad the analysis above is quite out of sync with the reality that faced the club at the end of last season – we needed to fill a void that existed and still exists on the right hand side of the pitch. Our priority was to sign a top quality right back and improve our playing staff at right midfield. This has not happened with the new additions made to the squad. Diniyar Bilyaletdinov is a left midfielder and John Heitinga is primarily a central defender who can fill the gap on the right side of defence.
In my humble opinion Leighton Baines and Peanuts formed a formidable partnership which now will be broken to accommodate our £10m Russian attacker and Steven Pienaar will fill the gap on the right where last year he was virtually ineffective last year. So, all-in-all the signings were good, but not good enough. We have failed to add weight to the area of the team that was most exposed.
@ Mr Maxwell – As per ‘Billys’ comments on the OS he prefers to play on the right and drive in, and I fully expect that Pienaar and him will swop and change during matches, in my opinion our squad is now a lot stronger than last season, as we have almost like for like with Distin except for age, a proven international right back and some further strength to replace osman in MF.
Sorry Dan. He’s a left sided midfielder :
OS : http://www.evertonfc.com/news/archive/bily-the-man-who-kan.html
Wiki : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diniyar_Bilyaletdinov
Oh and our Dutch Friend, heres his own website : http://www.heitingaofficial.com/en/fact_file.asp
Wiki : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Heitinga
I enjoy your articles but this one has came without substance
I agree that Billys primary position is left mid, but on his interview on Everton TV he did say he likes playing on the right and cutting in, also re: Hetinga, he is very much the Moyes player, has played 3 positions regulary for club and country and I can only see him playing RB, especially once Jags is back.
I take all of your points but the post wasn’t as badly researched as it looks
On a lighter note would you be interested in becoming a contributer?
Maybe moyes and pienaar have discussed pienaars 5 years alongside heitinga at ajax and see a good relationship between the 2 down the right flank. We needed a natural left sided midfielder for balance. I think there is plenty of competition for the 3 slots in the middle of the park with felli, cahill, rodwell, neville, osman, baxter (maybe) and arteta to return. I think lescott peaked 18 months ago but reckon city would have gone for jagielka too if he was fit. Lescotts gone but the 3 who’ve come in are the quality required.
Why is it again we only spend after a sale? despite all the monies made by the positions in league and the cup run we still only spend the money gained from the sale of lescott? another let down by the chairman and board who seem happy just to achieve what they have over the last few years. I along with other Everton supporters want more, but I wont hold my breath with the people in charge at present…… disappointed with board
I would rather have a financially stable club than another Portsmouth. COYB
although a solid defensive midfielder would have gone down well
a rightback was and still is a priority and whats happened…..absolutely f… all
kenwright and co are still up to theyre old tricks again….panic buying
can someone tell me why they always leave it till the last few days to sign players.
its soooo annoying
Until the vast majority of fans wake up this is what we are stuck with.
Yet again our ‘good blue’ chairman has got away without any net spend.
Yet again David Moyes is expected to push a wafer thin squad to well above what is expected to keep the ship afloat.
How many more years will the sheep swallow his lies about looked ‘24/7′ for a buyer, how the ‘transfer window closed too early’ etc. The man is a charlatan and a fool.
The Kirkby lies (was ‘free’ but post ballot isin the region of 80 million?)
“Watch this space”
He even got Sir Phil to come out early summer and announce Everton’s transfer plans as ‘Exciting’ in early July.
Fact remains, not a single player was signed until we sold a nailed on first teamer. All the idiots can say ‘better off without him’ or ‘judas’ and such like, but the fact remains we should not HAVE to sell him to buy. Teams that underperform us year in, year out easily outspend Everton. Again.
Q1) Mr. Kenwright, is the club for a sale like you say or is it just another act?
Q2) Does any potential sale hinge on Kirkby go-ahead?
Q3) Was the ‘fortress fiasco’ just a tool you used to drive a board member out of the club who was willing to fund King’s Dock when you couldn’t?
Kenwright, you are a disgrace.
Get out.
Do you think it was last minite as people drop prices when they realise they cannot haggle for much longer? Maybe use a little bit of common sense. Posts like yours are shameful. We are not in an ideal financial situation, we all know that and Moyes has to get what he can for the money, Kenwright is not a wealthy arab, Everton is not a wealthy area. Do the maths yourself its not hard!
I agree with the initial article writer in that we do have a stronger squad now than last year. We lost one major player in Lescott who has been suitably replaced by Distin in what I believe to be a very good piece of business. It has been clear for everyone to see that in the past few seasons our right hand side has been without doubt the weakest and I think the two additions of Billy and Heitinga will end up being a very successful combination. I don’t see Moyes breaking the partnership of Baines and Pienaar so I expect Billy to play on the right when he is up to pace with the league (don’t expect to see him start, or at least play well for his first few games!). He is a left footer but he will more be more than capable of playing on the other flank much like Pienaar and as pretty much every winger in the premiership should be able to do.
With regards to Heitinga I fairly sure he has played RB for Holland fairly regularly and he will probably play there against Scotland this next week sometime and IMO if he is good enough to play there for his national team he can certainly do more than a job there for Everton until real quality is available. Or put it this way there is sure as hell no way he could provide less quality than what Hibbert is at the moment!
One point of disparity with the original author that I do have however is the use of Jo. For me he is our best striker in terms of his movement and the way he creates space for himself and others (especially Fellaini). He may not quite be the cool finisher of Yakubu or Saha but in terms of his work for the team (as against Sigma) and the fact that he still does score goals puts him top of my pile. As an example look at the chances he created when he came on against Wigan, probably more than Saha did for the large chunk of the game. He is real quality and should be given a run of games rather than just play a bit part IMO.
I have to say I was very very pleased when we managed to get Heitinga. Watched him play against Panathinaikos and thought he was very effective at right back, similar in a way to Bosingwa; decent defensively but eager to get forward and well able to put in a cross.
I’d have to agree with Dan that, despite all the speculation here, and in papers today, I too believe that Johnny will be predominately a RB with a remit to drive forward like Baines when its possible. People saying he’s a like for like swap for Lescott are, in my opinion, mistaken. Moyes will surely have discussed his primary role with him and I think this is RB and that John will be quite happy with this, along with the possibility of filling in as CB or even Def Mid if needs be. I can’t imagine he would have agreed to leave Atletico and miss out on Champions League football without being fully aware of what is expected of him at Goodison.
Distin was not Moyes’ first-choice replacement for Lescott, but he is a very similar player and will prove to be a good replacement for at least a couple of years. He and Jags will hopefully strike up a solid partnership, and with Distin’s experience in the premiership, I can’t foresee any problems there.
I’d agree with a lot of your sentiments about Mr. K, however I do empathise with him more than a lot of you seem to; he clearly doesn’t have the spending power needed to take us further, and while I would like to see him move on, I think it would be unfair of us to belittle or dismiss out of hand the work he has done over the years. But certainly it can’t go on like this and I’m almost afraid for us this time next year when we could be waking up every day in the new reality that is David Moyes as manager of Man U. He will become (if by some miracle he hasn’t already) competely fed up and frustrated with the lack of a guaranteed, decent war chest every summer to bring in one or excellent signings and a couple of decent squad players; its not a lot to ask but its something that the current regime seem completely unable to provide.
And the answer to the question what would have happened had we not sold Lescott? Very, very little. Moyes set out his stall early by looking for loan signings and as usual scrounging around and haggling over 0.5 million here and there for players he clearly wanted. And as usual he had to eek up the prices so much that other manager like Redknapp got wind of them and swooped in (Kyle Naughton, anyone??)
So in conclusion, we got damn lucky again this year. Had Hughes not wanted to pay double what Lescott was worth, we would have at best got one of the players we got, and maybe not even then, since David would have been trying to split the 10 or 12 million 3 or 4 ways.
I’m pleased with the Heitinga signing, I think he will make an excellent RB, but I do agree we could’ve done with another out and out flexible winger with good delivery skills (Moyes would’ve sorted Bentley out in no time at all) and a younger Carsley Def Mid to cover the back four.
We all know Moyes will move on eventually, but I’d have sleepless nights knowing it was a premature move, and caused because he was utterly frustrated with the lack of not astronomical, but signifcant, consistent, annual funds to bring the team on in the style everyone respects and loves so much.
Just heard Graham Hunter on talksport discussing Heitinga and he said he really struggled at CB for the first 75% of the season in Spain – rash tackles and poor positioning, giving away penalties etc – but that he was playing in a poor Atletico Madrid side. When he moved to RB he was very good – but he had heard from his sources that Moyes is looking at playing him in a defensive midfield role primarily.
So its Pip to RB and Johnny in the middle.
Might work – lets see Davey do his magic!
Sorry but I cannot agree with you Lior, this is the same excuse this awful chairman and his sycophantic cronies have been coming out with for years, “we dont want to become another Leeds, we dont want to become another West Ham, we dont want to become another Portsmouth. Moyes has had a net spend of roughly 4.5 million per season since he arrived. No other manager in world football would be able to achieve what he has done with that sort of money. He has consistently gave us a top 5 finish and European football. Our attendances have averaged 38,000 since he came to the club and of course the small matter of a FA cup final last May. Despite this huge increase in revenues the board have consistently let him down. We only needed a right back and central midfielder and those returning players would have easily had us competing for a top four finish, instead just like in previous seasons we have signed nobody until first team players have been sold. Then Moyes is left scrambling around for players to try and improve and what he did the year before. Kenwright is scum end of, I wish he would just p**s off and we get people in with the same ambition and vision that our manager has. If Newcastle, Chelsea and City can get investment when they had much bigger debts and an honours list that doesnt compare to our own then sorry clearly investors are put off by Kenwright. Shameful!
OH WELL EVERTON HERE WE GO AGAIN IN SAYING NOT ENOUGH PLAYERS HAVE BEEN SIGNED ESPECIALLY QUALITY PLAYERS IM NOT SURE ABOUT DISTIN AND I DO NOT RATE JO AS HES NOT LIKE THE YAK PROLIFIC.WE NEEDED SIX QUALITY PLAYERS AND THINGS WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOT BETTER I WE HAD SIGNED EITHER BENEGA VAN DE VART OR DEFOUR ITS THE ONLY WAY WE WOULD OF CHALLENGE THE TOP FOUR HAVING A TEAM FULL OF QUALITY PLAYERS.YES I KNOW AND EALISE THERE IS QUALITY IN THE TEAM BUT NO WAY NEAR ENOUGH
hang on i think most people have missed a trick here moyes may well of wanted a right winger but ended up with a left but Pienaar will end up on the right as Heitinga will be playing RB and if you cant remember these 2 players have played together before when they both played for ajax so although we would be breaking one partnership were just reuniting another
It’s all Kenwright’s fault. All of it. Everything. The whole lot. We’d have been better off with Johnson. He was the right man for th job. A true visionary. In the style of Monty Python . . . What has Kenwright ever done for us?
Same old tired arguments. Why were City and Chelsea bought before us? Because Kenwright wouldn’t sell? Because he wanted too much money? B*ll*cks. If someone buys us at the moment they have to buy the shares and pay off the debt. And build a stadium. £200 million for the shares and the debt? £150 miilion for transfers? £500 million for a stadium? Would the stadium money be a loan or a gift? Who would own the stadium? The new owners of Chelsea and City had nothing to put in for a stadium. Coincidence?
Kenwright may well be too much of a lovey sometimes. But he’s all we’ve got at the moment. And compared to the yanks at Liverp**l and at Man United he’s a godsend. Be careful what you wish for.
Well said DEX
Finally some one posts som edsense on this thread.
Nice to see the Ron Managers as usual getting stuck into Heitinga BEFORE HE HAS KICKED A BALL FOR US!!! Not good enough? Can any of you do better? If so why aren’t you beating Moysey’s door down to play?
Give the players a chance, give whatever plans DM has a chance before you start your unhelpful negativity.
No wonder Kopites call us Bitter!!!!
i would like to see everton make summer signings earlier in the summer and not just before the window closes . I think this would help to make a good strong start to the season and a better platform to build on . We do seem to have goals in the team now and i can see that carrying on as players come back from injury .
Sorry but I cannot agree with you Lior, this is the same excuse this awful chairman and his sycophantic cronies have been coming out with for years, “we dont want to become another Leeds, we dont want to become another West Ham, we dont want to become another Portsmouth. Moyes has had a net spend of roughly 4.5 million per season since he arrived. No other manager in world football would be able to achieve what he has done with that sort of money. He has consistently gave us a top 5 finish and European football. Our attendances have averaged 38,000 since he came to the club and of course the small matter of a FA cup final last May. Despite this huge increase in revenues the board have consistently let him down. We only needed a right back and central midfielder and those returning players would have easily had us competing for a top four finish, instead just like in previous seasons we have signed nobody until first team players have been sold. Then Moyes is left scrambling around for players to try and improve and what he did the year before. Kenwright is scum end of, I wish he would just p**s off and we get people in with the same ambition and vision that our manager has. If Newcastle, Chelsea and City can get investment when they had much bigger debts and an honours list that doesnt compare to our own then sorry clearly investors are put off by Kenwright. Shameful!