The Ultimate Football Thread

Your defence is old and tiring, coming to the end of their contracts - and your bench opportunities aren't fantastic - Naysmith, anyone?

Your midfield is capable of grinding out 1-0, fugly matches, but no real flair or suitability to Europe.

The less said about your forwards the better. You've released your top scorer of last season.

You're left with Beattie, a proven premiership player turned past it

Big Dunc, a fugly player who can no longer tell if he's kicking the ball or a defender's head it (not that he'd care)

and if anyone cares to name James McFadden as a player of the future, I'll laugh in their face.

n short, you need to buck up your ideas. You need signings if you want to make it in Europe or continue at the top end of the Premiership. Else it's a long, slipper road downwards and I'm sure that any of Middlesborough, Bolton or even Newcastle would be happy to take your place.

Christ people, you're all so mind-numbingly fickle. Sissoko is a very useful squad player

bought because Rafa knows him well from Valencia and because he's ready suited to the Premiership

He's tall, he's fast, not bad on the ball and eager to tackle. Going quickly to Tony Le T,

don't slate him before the season even begins.

He's still a youngster fitting into the team, and it looks like he could have a good rapport with Cisse. His attitude seems to have sorted itself out, he just needs to work on his game

The most frustrating player that I watched last night, well a recording at about 3am this morning) was Luis Garcia. He squandered so much possession it was shocking, but it was his first game of the season, and he lacks sharpness.

Crouch was bought for very different reasons. As European Champions, it's clearly evident that Benitez knows how to win in Europe. To succeed domestically, Benitez has realised that different tactics and types of players are involved. If you (*ahem* Dan) watched any of the La Liga games of the Benitez-era, you'll see similarities in Carew and the player Benitez wants Crouch to be.

You've also shown complete ignorance in branding Crouch's style as long-ball merchant. If we're going to have wingers scrambling up the touchline to put in corners, we need someone to bang them in. Other than Morientes, we have no specialists. As well as having scored 16 goals in 24-odd games last season, Crouch also provides many goal scoring opportunities. As well as the odd flick on, he's not a bad link player. His footwork's impressive for a player so far away from the ground, and (very importantly) he holds the ball up very well. It would be appropriate to make reference to the big Jan Koller (also 6'7) of the Czech Republic - perhaps relative to Baros's profilic scoring record internationally.

Just as a quick note to all of our Everton compadres on the board: your notable ( ) signings of the new season appear to have been Simon Davies and Kroldrup.

Not exactly going for quality are you?

Perhaps more worrying than the dearth of signings (obviously not for lack of trying)

is the fact that you've been consistently snubbed.

Doesn't exactly inspire confidence if you want to make it with the big boys?

Your defence is old and tiring

coming to the end of their contracts -

and your bench opportunities aren't fantastic - Naysmith, anyone?

Your midfield is capable of grinding out 1-0,

fugly matches

but no real flair or suitability to Europe.

The less said about your forwards the better.

You've released your top scorer of last season.

You're left with Beattie, a proven premiership player turned past it;

Big Dunc, a fugly player who can no longer tell if he's kicking the ball or a defender's head it (not that he'd care) and if anyone cares to name James McFadden as a player of the future, I'll laugh in their face.

In short, you need to buck up your ideas.

You need signings if you want to make it in Europe or continue at the top end of the Premiership.

Else it's a long, slipper road downwards and I'm sure that any of Middlesborough, Bolton or even Newcastle would be happy to take your place.

He's sh*te! - He's the McFadden of the Redsh*te, i'd give him away to save his career..!

I've said all along, he'll never be a decent premierleague player. He's much more suited to the Champions League, or probably in your case later on in the season, the UEFA cup, where he can have 10 minutes on the ball before deciding what to do with it..

Although Carew has never played in England and so it's a bit silly to base a player on somebody who has never been proven in the league you are working in..! Better use for Crouch would be to take him down to the beach and use him as a surf board..

He's a one-trick pony. That paragraph seems like a desperate attempt to convince yourself that he'll be a success; he won't. After the CL final all the talk with the LFC fans was that you were going to sign Raul, Figo, Ronaldo, Pele etc - look who you got! £7m makes James Beattie seem like a snip, superb!

He ain't bad with his feet, but he also ain't particularly good. Yeah he'll win lots of headers, but by getting the ball out wide all the time isn't going to go down too well with your main striker, Cisse, is it? Surely paying £14m for him and then abandoning your style of play to accommodate Crouch () is a slight mistake..

Along with Beattie, who will seem like a new signing come the start of the season, a young english goalkeeper, and Li Tie, who has been missing for a whole season (good squad player to have, especially with the CL coming up..)
Davies proven quality player in the premierleague, Kroldrup arrives at Everton with a glowing reference from Jan Molby (former sh*te!) and his former manager at Udinese, Roy Hodgson. Oh, and there will be more signings before the start of the season.

Who said you needed to buy players in the first month after finishing the league season?

See interview with Keith Wyness here, which shows that half of the players we've been linked with haven't even been in talks with Everton, let alone the players apparently snubbing us to go elsewhere.. Big boys? We're not trying to compete with Chelsea or Arsenal just yet! Oh, and we beat the so-called Liverpool big-boys last year, and that was without our new signings

Small squad, did us well last season did it not. I'd be more than happy to see a bench of Richard Wright, David Weir, Li Tie, Duncan Ferguson and Marcus Bent this season..

Hard to work out how you have come to that conclusion, as we haven't even had a game in Europe yet..

When you've got goalscoring midfielders, a la Tim Cahill, do you need prolific scorers? I'm certain Moyes will bring in another striker to challenge up front. It'd be nice to see a good long-term partner for Beattie upfront. Robbie Keane would be nice, but we'll have to wait and see..

Duncan, most valuable substitute of last season? Statistically, yes! It's his last season, i'm sure a couple of Merseyside derby goals from him won't go amiss.

Why? What have we done, apart from finish 4th, that is so bad? We've made signings, we'll be making more signings and we're looking the best we have done in years - typical Kopite talk that is, anybody else telling us to buck up our ideas? Where are your big name signings?

Or Liverpool? Remember, we finished 4th, Liverpool 5th!