njligernj

Don't worry mate your mods are already pulling our posts even if they're not breaking any rules so no need to fear.

Well I'm glad one person understands. Listen if selling your best players is such a wonderful tactic then I'm sure we will soon find out because the rest of the league sells their best players. So in no time Southampton should be up there battling it out for the league title. (I'd happily put some cash on the line that we finish above sell to buy Southampton this season if any of you disagree). Fact is we already KNOW it doesn't work. Teams have been selling their best players to the top 4 for over a decade now and the top 4 last season was the same 4 teams you'd expect. It hasn't worked out for anyone yet. When Liverpool and Spurs broke the top 4 they did it when they had their elite players. When they sold them they fell down the table because, yes, you can sign some CL players but they are going be the likes of Balotelli. Will trying to keep players work? Who the hell knows. Probably not TBH. But despite that it still seems like a better idea than trying to do the same thing everyone else does that hasn't worked for anyone yet. You want Stones? Fine. But don't try to convince me we'll be better as a result. If that were true you'd spend the 50m on the players we would buy instead of Stones. Fact of the matter is we had bids for Baines. Rejected. Jags. Rejected. Mirallas. Rejected. McCarthy. Rejected. Coleman. Rejected. None of them turned into sagas like this one (maybe the Baines one although not as big) but there were bids and interest from top sides for those players which we rejected. We've finished above either Liverpool or Spurs every year for three years until last year's nightmare season. Those teams have WAY larger budgets than us yet for three years we finished above one of them and we did that by not being forced to sell anyone. Martinez was happy to sell Fellaini for that price (you think you ripped us off for Lukaku? Please ... 28m for Fellaini who didn't fit our system when he had a lower release clause) but he hasn't sold anyone he didn't want to sell ... yet. He probably will sure but we've competed in no small part by holding onto our good players. Bird in the hand. So much can go wrong when you sell a proven commodity and roll the dice on a new signing.

Fair point but it's still more concrete than any of the shouts about him asking to move or any of the supposed magic numbers which were reported in numerous media sources we were holding out for (but obviously weren't as we since rejected higher bids). Most of us are just going by what Everton have said. You can tear apart what Martinez didn't say all day long but what he has said (and now a board member too) is that he isn't for sale. To tie into my earlier post, Martinez also doesn't believe in selling your best players. He has a plan and it involves not selling his best players. It's not just Stones but a message to lots of our young players about our ambitions (which are apparently laughable to you all but we gotta hang onto to something). Honestly some of the attitudes make it sound like you don't think we should even try to finish higher than sixth.

Okay sure so we could have spent half that fee on Pedro then? I've already explained it -- you all seem more keen on cheap shots than actually reading and considering what I'm saying. Let's say for the sake of argument our first 11 is all 7/10 players. Snide digs about us aside it's not an unreasonable assessment. Some positions are better than others obviously but it's a decent average. 8/10+ players almost always want CL. Money is therefore not the limiting factor; "status" (for lack of a better term) is the issue. Pedro was sold for the kind of money almost any Prem team could afford. Certainly the top half. Money was irrelevant. As for this specific deal first off you have to consider the delta. If Stones is good enough for Chelsea to pay 40m+ then he's a Champions League quality player. So we lose a CL player. Can we sign a CL player to replace him? Maybe. Probably not. We're having a nightmare convincing the maniac who owns Dynamo to sell us Yarmolenko. He's already refused to sell to Stoke because they weren't a prestigious enough club. Stoke had the money. Again. Money is not the limiting factor in the Yarmalenko deal. We have the money. We have to convince them to sell him and him to sign and so far it hasn't gone well. I guess you could argue if we had 40m extra we could horrifically overpay for people to get them to come here. Hardly seems like a sustainable strategy destined for success though. If we constantly lose CL level players we can't replace them with CL talent. We sign Europa-level talent and they sit on our bench. I'm struggling to see how losing a CL player and replacing him with 40m of Europa players to sit on our bench is making us better. If you disagree then let me know your thoughts. I'm just telling you our perspective on things. We'd rather have CL players than money we can't spend on CL players. Two years ago we finished with 72 points which is a point total good enough for fourth almost every single year. Prior to that we finished sixth two years in a row. I admit it's unlikely but is it really "complete delusion" to suggest we could get a similar points total to one we had just two years ago? I mean is that really so incredibly ludicrous? Again, admittedly unlikely ... but you reacted like I'm a Bournemouth fan talking about fourth. Also Naismith doesn't start mate. Hasn't started a single game all season. Has been a late sub. We now have a board member on video saying he won't be sold so we really lucked out with that coincidence.

Well it's not a fact; it's just highly probable. If we got fourth (our point total just two years ago was good enough for fourth almost every other year) it could buy us another year or two. Martinez's plan is to try to keep this core together. It's highly ambitious and probably incredibly unlikely to succeed but that's his plan. Yes it's unlikely but what do you want us to do? Give up? Pack it in? The sell to buy model is garbage -- a fact Southampton may have started to realize when our third goal went in last weekend. Our only hope, even if it's a huge longshot, is to retain players like Stones and Barkley. 40m of Europa level talent sitting on our bench is not going to help us get fourth. I've said it before and I will say it again: we can't sign elite players so your money is useless. Doesn't matter how much you give us for Stones ... 100 MILLION! ... we can't spend that money on players better than Stones (or most of our current first 11 TBH). A bottom half team can get better selling a top 4 side their players and buying new ones. Spurs, Liverpool, us ... we can't get IN better than we send OUT. So the money is a trap. Martinez knows that. He isn't holding out for more money. He wants to keep Stones. Make no mistake ... even at 50m ... most of us will utterly lose our minds if he's sold this window. I just want to stress that because it's a fact you lot (and the City fan above) seem unable to grasp. Not 30m. Not 40m. Not 50m. We don't want the money. Unless he puts in a transfer request -- which I think is unlikely this year -- he's not moving.

Give us the finger!?!? We don't want to sell him. You walking away would be a universally happy event for all Evertonians and the club. The self-righteous thing could easily apply to all the posts here which wilfully disregard everything Everton have said about the matter. FFS I've seen people put together team sheets for CFC with Stones in them. We have the Prem champions willing to pay 35-40m (in all likelihood) but 50m is deluded? Funes Mori is a 3rd/4th choice defender and in no way in any reality a replacement for Stones. We released two defenders this summer so we are signing replacements. Nothing to do with Stones. Lukaku was for sale. Because Pedro was for sale.

WTF?!?! Seems unlikely mate for a variety of reasons. We're not playing hard ball! We're inside watching the telly while you are outside in the rain complaining that we aren't playing fair. We're not playing at all!

So the fact we won't sell you a player we don't want to sell is making you hate us? Do you think you're entitled to have whomever you want? He's not for sale. It's not the money. Not for sale. Also we're perfectly happy with what we paid for Lukaku. He's great. He wasn't remotely overpriced if you look at the goal scoring charts for the last three years and consider his age and the utter garbage that is being bought and sold for figures in the 20m range these days.

Kenwright is very sick mate. Hard to get details but supposedly quite serious. We haven't heard much from him about anything and word is that Martinez has final say. So when Martinez says "not for sale" (which he has -- a lot) it is effectively the chairman saying it by proxy. I know you are a Chelsea fan and you don't think from other perspectives. We have a lot of good players. Some great. Players who are better than our current squad that will actually sign from a team not in the CL are few and far between. See my post on the last page. Martinez does not believe sell to buy works and neither do most Evertonians. Sorry mate but we're not buying the lie any longer. Doesn't work. 40m? We'd get maybe 25m left over for transfers. How does 25m help us bridge a gap of a billion pounds? 25m is what they're quoting for Ashley Williams for crying out loud! You think we get better replacing John Stones with Ashley Williams?!?!? What would help is keeping the players you lot (you, City, United) usually buy from us. That's what would help. I wouldn't sell for 50m mate. The money doesn't help when players worth 20-30m want CL. Go ask Spurs and Liverpool how well they progressed after selling their best players.

Everton fan in peace. Our board is useless and the weak link in this chain for us ... however I don't believe we will sell in this window. I don't want us to sell. Neither do most (not all) Evertonians. There are some who still believe the lie of "sell to buy" and a few who think he's good but not that good. Most us have seen Spurs and Liverpool get weaker from selling their best players and don't want to repeat their mistakes. 30m? 40m? 50m? It's a trap. Your money is a trap and hopefully we won't be as stupid as other clubs (and us in the past TBF) have been. Dumb people (journalists, pundits etc.) think we get 40m and can buy a lot of players and get better. "Only way to progress without investment is to sell. They have to sell." They want us to sell. So here is a list of players better than Stones we can buy with 40m who will come to EFC: Thoughts? Balotelli's and Shaqiris? Players with too many red flags for the real elite teams? Maybe we get some of those types. Do we even want them? We currently have a few CL level players and a bunch of Europa league players. All your money does is enable us to buy more Europa league players to sit on our bench. We don't even have Europe this year so a deep bench seems less urgent. We won't get better by selling you (or anyone) Stones. We know that. Martinez knows that. Your only hope is our horrendous board and/or Stones throwing a fit (although it's probably too late for Stones to agitate a move ... plus he isn't the type). But make no mistake ... your money is significantly less valuable to us that keeping our core young players together. Stones, Lukaku, McCarthy, Barkley ... keeping them together is our ONLY hope of ever winning anything without investment. Selling them and using the money won't work because what good is 40m when you're competing with people who have spent hundreds of millions? I think more and more teams are starting to realize that one or two golden eggs are practically useless when other teams own the chickens. We aren't holding out for more money ... the money is a sick joke ... we're holding out because as Martinez has said ... he isn't for sale and your money is no good to us. Good day! There are rumours that Barca have been in touch about Stones and told us to wait a year or two. Probably just nonsense rumours. You know nonsense rumours like the idea we are going to sell Stones in this window. It is insulting mate. From our perspective. We have to pay 15% or so to Barnsley, the ludicrous loyalty bonus to Stones, then we likely don't just buy one player to replace him we probably buy at least two (meaning the wages for the new player come out of this pot as well). It leaves us with about 15m to spend on actual transfer fees. 15m for selling the brightest defensive talent England has produced in over a decade? Yeah we aren't too excited by that TBH. Seriously? Okay this is the part that winds us up the most. The draw and defeat have NOTHING to do with it. The papers lie about pretty much everything. They were saying 25m was enough when you bid 20m. Then 30m was what we were "holding out for" when you bid 25m. So now you bid 30m they realize they were wrong twice so they have another guess. If you insist on listening to useless "journalists" why not listen to this one ... We don't want you to "pay over the odds" mate. We don't want your money. We want Stones. Not for sale. Especially not after we hammer City 3-0 on Sunday. :)