Lighthouse

Mystery trialist maybe.

Given our wage bill is towards the bottom end of the Premier League I really don't see how that would be the case. I can't see us needing to plug losses of £40m a year with player sales.

Yep. That's probably good for £10m of Sterling's fee.

Sterling has got double the shelf life of Schneiderlin and £30m for Shaw still makes him one of the most expensive full backs ever. £49m is overpriced for Sterling but when you go after the top players, prices go up exponentially. Just look at Bale and Di Maria.

Neither of those players are that good that someone will come in and offer £25m for them. Baines has probably been as good for Everton as Bertrand has been for us. He makes the headlines with a few decent free kicks but is hardly a superstar. Besides Everton have almost as many players to bigger clubs as we have.

We aren't weak. Name one team below us who have hung on to a player as good as Morgan or Lallana.

I just didn't understand his policy of signing large amounts of crap. I think we got relegated with 40 senior players on the books, which can't have looked good on the wage bill. How we ended up there instead of 25 decent players I don't know. Yahia, Nilsson, Jakobsson, Van Damme, Davenport, Bernard, McCann. How did we end up signing such dross? Even Crouch, who turned out well in the end, was only signed as a cheap bargain who Villa didn't want.

Girls don't like boys, girls like cars and Mané

Works for me. At least it's clearly legible.

I've no idea what Yoshi has to do with this. I'm simply pointing out that we have at times been crap with Morgan in the team and excellent without him. 1/4 of our games last season no less. I'm not doubting he is an excellent player and a massive loss, I just think we can be as good without him if we bring in the right replacements. No doubt every poor performance next season will be followed by, "we really miss Morgan." I've no idea what this one is about. When did I say we should become less defensive?

Walcott, Bale, AOC, 5 last summer and 2 this, so 10 players. I wont include the likes of Jones and Surman who we'd have kept if we'd been in the Premier League and financially stable. More to the point, who have Everton kept in the same class as those players, or the ones we have sold?

Sold Rodwell, Fellaini, Lescott, Arteta, Pienaar, Gravesen and Rooney in the last 11 years.

I wonder if Michael Fialka ever did move out of his parents house.

Who said he was easily replaceable? I'm just saying we have played well without him on some occasions when he hasn't been available and that's without having his replacement in the squad. Most people thought Lambert would be difficult to replace as he was key to out attacking play (second only to Messi in terms of goals plus assists or some stat like that) but we did. Most of us thought Bertrand would be nowhere near Shaw's level and yet RB has had a far more consistent season. Most of us thought Lovren was our best CB since Killer, possibly better. Then we got Toby. Lallana vacuumed up pretty much every award going at the end of season awards a year ago but Tadic and Mane have pretty much covered his loss. Everyone is replaceable. I'm not sure what you mean by like for like. The incoming players may have different attributes and may not be quite as good individually but we can replace Morgan, just like we did with the others.

I'd be almost certain on it being Forster, without actually having the stats to back it up. After his injury we pretty much went from top 4 form to midtable form.

Au revoir Morgan. I can't bring myself to wish him the best of luck at Man Utd but I will thank him for all his good performances here.

So why did nobody come in with any sort of offer for him when we went into administration? Why didn't any Championship club come in and offer us £0.5m for him?

Because he was crap, he had an awful first season for us and nobody offered us half of what we paid for him. If it really was some sort of get rich quick scheme then Lowe is stupider than I thought. People have driven home from the pub steaming drunk and it "worked out well in the end." Doesn't mean it wasn't a dreadful idea.

Which clubs below us have got players as good as Morgan, Clyne, Lallana etc. and hung on to them?

Yes. We got relegated, went into administration and almost got liquidated. You don't think an extra £1m might have been handy?

We didn't try to get Clyne to sign a new contract then? We didn't force Morgan to stay for another season after he clearly wanted out?

So is Morgan. People talk as if he is the be all and end all of our team but he really isn't. Last summer everyone was talking about how much we depend on Lambert and the team can't cope without him. We replaced Rickie and will replace Morgan. Last year without Morgan we: Beat Villa 6-1 Beat Arsenal 2-0 Beat Everton 3-0 Beat Newcastle 2-1 With Morgan we Lost 1-0 to Sheff Utd Lost 1-0 to WBA Drew 0-0 with WBA Lost 2-1 to Stoke Lost 1-0 at Everton Yes I know I'm just cherry picking results but the point is we've had some great wins without him and some sh*t defeats with him. He will be missed but there is no reason our results will drop if we bring in a decent replacement.

Who haven't we given time to?

It was. As I posted above, we have been VERY lucky with the way this worked out.

Mané and Wanyama are probably our most saleable assets, although unfortunately they are the same person, according to that commentator. Our next big thing other than that will probably come from the academy as we seem to be making a shift in transfer policy towards cheaper options. I don't think it will be JWP. I know he is young but he's been in the first team 3 years now and not made that superstar impact that Bale, Walcott, AOC and Shaw did. Who knows he could be another slow burner like Lallana and be big time eventually.