[SOLD] Abdoulaye Doucoure

Money is actually a pretty big consideration this summer. We are sailing quite close to the wind as far as FFP goes. There's an awful lot of dross we can still dispense with which the previous regime saddled us with to balance the books, but who wants them? Nobody with half a brain

Besic
McCarthy
Schneiderlin
Bolasie
Mirallas
Niasse
Tosun

There's about 400k per week just there

 

I’m genuinely amazed to learn that Mirallas is still at Everton.

 

Entering the final year of his contract. We would happily give him away at this point, but nobody would pay him anything like the money he earns here, so he will probably see out the final year of his contract here whilst out on loan somewhere with us paying a decent chunk of his wages before he's finally gone in a year's time. He was actually a decent player for a few years, but he's been utterly pointless to have on the books for at least three years now.

 

Sort of.

He was a Moyes signing. Had a great first season. Also very good in Martinez's first season. Pretty good in Martinez's 2nd too (until the point where the whole team collapsed)

The penalty incident was Martinez's 3rd season (I think), and yeah, it was all downhill from there but the straw that broke the camel's back was 17/18 when Unsworth was the caretaker manager and both he and Schneiderlin were sent home from training after refusing to join in a drill (might even have been in the day to two before the Watford game). Nobody has ever really forgiven the pair of them since, given the dire situation we were in at the time.

 

Seems odd that this has only emerged now at the end of the window. Everton have had the whole summer to negotiate for Doucoure. It’s hardly a secret that he’s on Silva’s wish list.

 

It's not odd. It's designed to unsettle our player, they might even get him, plus the added bonus of screwing us up without having time to find a replacement.

For Everton, it's a win, win, win.

 

Unless they pay £60m, then he isn’t going anywhere. Unfortunately Watford aren’t in the position where they can turn down that sort of money.

 

If, and I think it's still a very big "if", there's any truth to this, the timing has more to do with us needing to let players go before we can complete deals. FFP doesn't care whether Moshiri is rich or not, so it's not been any coincidence that we've had to let players go this summer before we sign new ones. We've still got loads to clear out, so if we are really after Doucoure (I really doubt it), it's more to do with the amount of time it has taken us to shift the dross.

 

You think we wouldn't sell for £40m ??

 

FFP is a bit of a myth though as far as PL clubs go really, even thought it shouldn’t be.

But it’s only really enforced in the lower leagues and European competition.

 

I can see it now...

Doucoure goes to Everton, they crack the top four and he and Silva play in the Champions League next season, meanwhile we start the season with Cleverley as a first choice centre mid, Sema as a first choice winger, Prodl comes in at centre back, we finish 20th and lose our first game of Championship 4-0 at home to Luton.

 

I think at this juncture, even Gino would know the fans would be highly critical losing Doucoure at this point after so little incoming activity.

 

And he wouldn't care a shred.

 

Personally wouldn't want him to leave. But everyone is replaceable, even Doucs. Got a nagging feeling it will happen though.

 

The problem is that we won't replace him.

We replaced Richarlison with Ken Sema.

 

Then you're an idiot, plain and simple.

Sorry, but there really is no other way of putting it.

 

Sell for £50m, replace inadequately for £1m. The Pozzo model.

 

Lordy. Finally you've got something correct! Touché that man.

 

Not really. Pereya was always lined up for the position. The Scandinavian Ronaldo was always a squad filler. Money was used for GD. Plus others.

 

Well, also Deulofeu, who just happened to be better then Richarlison.

 

Watford Observer now saying that their sources (do they have any?!) believe the rejected £32m bid is accurate.

The slight concern for me is so much talking gets done between agents and players behind the scenes that these bids are rarely made without knowing if the player is keen to make the move. You’d suspect somewhere along the line, Doucoure and/or his agent have invited Everton to make the bid.

I would bet that Doucoure has been happy to stay and would only have moved for a CL sized club - but he’s seen Everton are serious about challenging this season and has seen how little business we have done.

 

Or the fact that Silva is a little weasel of man who was dominated by his former club last season and still has a chip on his shoulder. He hates us, we hate him, less than a week left, let’s try and unsettle watford. We got £50mil for Richarlison, so I have no doubt that if we do sell Doucoure it will be in excess of £50mil.

 

He'd be off for £35m.
No need to buy given our suite of CMs and having Chalo back to full fitness will be just like a new signing.

 

Can’t see it getting to £50m if the opening bid was £32m. An increase of £18m+ is going some.

 

Plus we signed a midfielder from Man City who is a ready made replacement

 

yup.

 

That’s what always happens. It’s all about trying to unsettle the player first. Look at Arsenal bidding £40mil for Zaha. Palace have always stated they want £70mil. So far Everton have bid £55mil and it was rejected. Zaha wants out, so I imagine Palace will eventually sell for £65mil. Opening bids mean nothing but interest and unsettling. We want £60-70mil for Doucoure, so we won’t sell for anything less than £50mil in my opinion. If we do, Gino will have a lot to answer for this close to the end of the window.

 

Being ITK, we'll sell him for £40m and a replacement is already lined up...Kevin Drinkwater for £15m

You heard it here first.

Source: Esso station.

 

He's looked absolutely top-drawer for us in his 0 pre-season minutes thus far. He's ready-steady-dele.

 

Richarlison was mostly rubbish for us. He started like Messi and Ronaldo's lovechild - then every week I had to read on here about how the poor love was burnt out from playing 90 minutes of football every week. It got old very quickly.

 

Can't Everton just b*99er off and sign Bakayoko instead?

 

I'm hearing he's told Adam Leventhal to tweet that he's on holiday in Senegal as a stalling tactic until the window slams shut. Should be fine with this one guys.

 

I think we will probably sell at around 40 million... if we do I hope we find a decent enough replacement but likely it’ll be either cleverly or Chalobah playing alongside capoue.

 

It will have to Cleverly. Time to stop fooling ourselves that Chalobah will ever be fit for purpose again in terms of any volume of appearances.