Williams leaves for Wigan

Good luck, Joe. You seem to be a good pro who will earn a good living from the game.

Joe Williams gone, Gueye gone, Robinson gone, Lookman gone, Vlasic gone, Onyekuru going. A raft of loans. Jagielka, Williams, Garbutt freed and essentially the end of Tarashaj, Galloway.

Lukuka bonus should be due on top of the above freed-up wages and transfer deals.

Just leaves Pennington, Mirallas, Besic, Niasse, Tosun, Bolasie, Martina, McCarthy on outgoings.

Be interesting to see if Dowell stays...

Just consider that list of players you've penned.

That is an amazing amount of players to try and move on.

Brands is doing one hell of a job in my opinion. I think, especially if he lands 2-3 more, he's easily our most valuable person at the Club.

Of course Moshri is, it's his money. But my God Brands is seriously shaping the future of Everton, and really doing a job.

And I agree with Michael. As we raise the bar, it's getting really difficult for the youngsters to break into our first team.

Might have been a masterstroke putting him on the board!

I'm sure also that he will make a Premier League player in a couple of years. Same with Dowell. I'm not so sure Davies and Calvert-Lewin will be with us then either. They might go abroad or play for a lower half team but it's about time we had someone at the club to make the hard decisions.

There was a table which showed we were 16th in the Premier League 2018-19 for minutes given to kids who had come through the academy. I was stunned as Brands and Silva spoke a lot about developing youth into the first team. I think they've realised that our youth players are good, but not good enough. PL2 Champions means nothing. It appears that we are now buying youth from elsewhere and will be developing them instead. Calvert-Lewin probably has this season to prove his worth or he'll also be gone.

Personally, I love it. I feared that we had forced ourselves into a corner with the 'developing youth' line but, after a few months, it was clear that Silva didn't trust all of Kenny, Holgate, Dowell and Davies. Calvert-Lewin is the last kid standing from that crop.

If they're good enough to get us challenging the top 6, then play them. If they have real potential but aren't there yet, then loan them out. I don't enjoy watching kids struggling to develop in the first team. It holds us back and crushes their confidence when fans get on their backs. Watching a player trying hard but ultimately offering very little is frustrating. Then you get told that he's a local kid and he's got loads of potential. Two seasons pass and you still don't recognise this potential they talk about. You begin to question your own judgement. But then Brands sells the kid and you realise you were right all along. That's Tom Davies 12 months from now.

This is all very encouraging from my perspective. Apologies to the many that love Tom Davies. It goes without saying that I would love to be wrong.

I'm still bummed we let Robinson go, but it was difficult to see a viable path for Williams to break into the midfield picture.

You only need to look at the quality of our squad Vs the wages we pay out. We must be in the top 20 wage payers in world football - yet have a squad outside of the top 100 ranking I'd suggest.

If we buy Gbamin or Lemina or both, then Davies may not even be on the bench.

I'd take the above, get a little relationship with a local team (Wigan) and help them out, help our lads out, but were not a charity so, in return, we need a big sell-on fee for any rough diamonds. Also, a buy-back clause should be something we start adding for a few years down the line.

About the above comments regarding Davies, I agree with Richard in that Davies will be used more this season in place of Sigurdsson, hopefully in league games we are comfortable in, also League Cup games, and hopefully build him up to become the player we hope he can be.

I don't agree that he hasn't improved, I believe the sale of Williams shows just how tough it is to move on in this league, getting games is a rare commodity for 20-year-old centre midfielders, you only need to look at players like Harry Winks who now looks a player, yet had to wait patiently for his career to kick start as it did last season in his 23rd year!

Considering so many of our fans slam Davies, he has played 75 games for the Blues despite being only 21 years old.

Imo, Davies will be a good player for the Blues at the very least; he could eventually even become a great Everton player if he adds a bit more to his make up.

I think he'll be a good player, maybe a great one. He just needs find his true role.

I think Dowell too just needs this, and hopefully at Everton

Tom Davies will reach the very top. I am certain of it. Do not write him off.

So I can only trust he's not good enough and will not be good enough in the next 2 to 3 years.

At the very least sell on / buy back clauses as part of any permanent deal.

However, I'm disappointed that Vlassic and Lookman are considered not good enough. For me the coaching is not good enough if they can't get those two playing in a successful winning team.

I thought it would be Sam to blame for selling the Crown jewels but it appears Brands and/ or Silva are to blame and yet the majority seem happy about it now.

Of most concern is bringing in top class players to boost the first team. Where are they?

Maybe someone is more au fait with these rules than I am and I've got this wrong, but back up full back seems to be the best place to sneak your ‘home-growns' into the squad.

I also know that the high earners at the other end of the spectrum, are almost impossible to shift because of ages and ridiculously high wages, should be the ones to depart in an ideal world.

I do think that in the cases of Williams and Robinson, we have let them go for a song, to Wigan, and just hope we don't regret it later. There again we don't know what goes on at Finch Farm or in training, or what the players themselves have said in the grand scheme of things.

Yet we get buttons.

Obviously, the market values more players from these teams just because, but it also seems we are push overs.

Vlasic and Henry have CL and international experience and go for less than Championship players like Solanke and Wilson.

Not to mention the sale of our best player for 28 million (Wilson + some lad who was on loan in Scotland)

You say Silva doesn't trust Davies, how do you work that out when Silva himself made him captain, turned down loan deals and gave him a bumper new contract ?

Maybe he's just not quite there yet physically, maybe he's just not quite as consistent as midfielders who are more experienced than him.

Imo Davies has more than proven he's a premier league player by playing 75 games before he was 21 years old.

Let's try and get behind our youth instead of slamming them.

The very worse case scenario is the likes of Davies, DCL, Kenny and Dowell fill our bench instead of expensive overpaid misfits like Schneiderlin, Sandro, Tosun and Niasse.

There is no rule regarding academy players, last season we had two with many EPL squads having none at all.

There's an 8 player homegrown rule which many say raises the value of English players disproportionately.

Homegrown has a certain age criteria as the likes of Fabregas, Pogba, Lukaku, Schniederlin and Gylfi are classed in this category.

There is no rule stating that we need 4 players from our academy in the squad. UEFA have that rule, but the Premier League doesn't. It's 17 non-homegrown and up to 8 homegrown. There was talk of clubs having to have 2 from their academies, but that hasn't been introduced.

I just hope there is a sell-on clause as I believe both players will go on to have good careers.

Unfortunately it is too big a leap from the U23 to the premiership except for exceptional talent such as Rooney and (hopefully) Kean which does not help younger players at all.

Joe hadn't cracked the first team squad by now so expecting that to happen would have been a major anomaly..

Issue I have is that Silva has shown no inclination to play youth much. Reading that stat that we were 16th of playing youth or academy players is shocking for us but it didn't have to be..

We have noticeably given less playing time to the kids but expect them to be ready exactly how without it? Lookman was clearly good enough to get decent playing time but also wouldn't be given a proper run. Then what do we expect when he does eventually get minutes? I'm frustrated at how we manage our youth. Too many hang around the u23s for too long blocking progress of others eg Simms.
Then the youth that have a real opportunity are kept on the periphery of the first team getting limited runs.

We are excellent at creating professional footballers.. we are poor at creating Everton footballers right now.

I see what your getting at in terms of Davies lack of game time, especially near the end of the season, but around that stage of the season Davies signed a new deal which must have been down at least partially to Silva.

Also mate, I didn't mean you had slammed Davies, I'm just talking in general about our fans and youth player.

I appreciate you getting back in regards to my comments mate, and although I don't fully agree i do see your valid point.

My main opinion is I believe Davies may develop more physically and push on as a solid squad player for the blues.

Cheers Chris.