Richarlison: Growing into One of the League’s Best Wingers

He is not quite at the best in the league, what he lacks I feel is ruthlessness in front of goal. I just think of Salah's goal in the derby, or some of Kane's, Son's, Fernandes' goals. Just the hint of a chance and they punish teams. Richarlison (and DCL) are not quite there.

I think he also has a tendency to get frustrated when things aren't going his way, this can lead him to either falling to the fringes of games, or like in the derby, making rash decisions.

Once he eradicates these elements of his game, he'll be amongst the best in his position.

Hopefully that will be with Everton.

If the ultimate cost of this kind of lack of discipline is us not qualifying for Europe, and he buggers off to another club because he wants to play in the Champions League, I will be pissed off with Everton big time, because it will simply represent us going nowhere with a continuation of midtable mediocrity.

He's easily a £100m player. But I'd rather keep him than have £100m to spend.

Incidentally, Kean is not doing a bad job. Leanardo, the PSG sporting director has just admitted they have no option to buy.

Osimhem, similar ish player, scored lots for Lille last season and joined Napoli for £63m.

If Kean gets 25 goals then he's in the same bracket. And there's no reason why he won't. So if he wants to leave they'll be takers - and the fee could be hefty.

If I had one Xmas wish it would be to swap the entire squads of our neighbours with ours and to see how many of the former reds would get it in the neck for being useless, erratic, lacking in moral fibre, only play for the dosh, go down too easily, make us a laughing stock etc whilst the new bunch over the park would be lauded for their professionalism, ability, commitment to the cause, etc

I do think that Richarlison will go on to bigger and better things and if he remains as committed and as hard-working as he is now, he will forge a glittering career away from Goodison.

Unfortunately, he will probably leave us in the summer, at a time when we can ill afford to lose his talent. Ancellotti and Brands if it is to be they, will have a very difficult task in finding Everton a suitable replacement for the Brazilian.

I may have my facts wrong but I'm sure I'm correct in that one.

When you think how poor we look when Iwobi plays compared to when Richarlison plays, and you think that Iwobi cost us around £35m, you realise how hard it would be to replace the Brazilian - no matter how much we get for him.

Your Christmas wish and scenario are of course purely theoretical.

More pragmatically, we have appeared to lack discipline for some time, and Richarlison in particular has been guilty of it. He needs to improve in this respect, because he DOES have a duty to the team to do so. It's that simple.

I'm getting seriously pissed off with people saying he's more than likely, or certainly going next summer. It was the same with Lukaku and other players. The player(s) may well move on, it's a foregone conclusion anyway, (all players move on) either come next summer or when their contract is down to its final year, but try saying I hope he stays, or we need him to stay, instead of all these negative assumptions. Try thinking positive for once, though I know that's difficult for many of you.

(Cue all the sarcastic posts coming up saying "I hope he stays" or "We need him to stay").

Paul, he's both.

The season is a marathon not a sprint.

Man City, Man U, Arsenal and Wolves are still below us despite that poor run of form so we have got plenty of time to regroup and recharge.

Adversity is always a turning point and can be for the better or for worse but if we all get behind the manager and the players despite their shortcomings we will do better.

Personally I don't think he will move next summer, I think we will be in Europe (based on the first few games of the season, clearly not the last three).

We need a positive, determined mindset and not the utter shitebaggery some of them show when the going gets tough.

Yes he is Brazilian and like all top South American players have to make those arduous trips to play for their countries which can affect the next league game but I suppose it affects many other players in the Prem. too.

The biggest problem at Everton is having someone else similar who can come on as sub. when needed and still push the opposition. Speed is a definite asset as City and RS have proven but Everton don't have an abundance of it so they have to take a different approach.

When Seamus and Bainsey were in their prime the had great skill down the flanks. Walcott had speed but lacked confidence and in Richie, Gordon and James they have more trickery than speed.

Tosun may be alright for the last ten minutes but isn't really Prem. class.

Hopefully the recent malaise has passed and the return of Richie will produce results again.

Rob #14, I'll go ya one better and predict he will stay through next season at least. He's expressed no desire to go elsewhere, and assuming all is still going well for him next summer, I think he'll look at his ultimate ambition -- starting for Brazil in the 2022 World Cup -- and decline any chance to go to a Bayern or Barca where he's not certain to start and could endanger his national team position.

After Qatar, however, all bets are off -- especially if we're not in the CL by then.

It's the fighers who make it

We will get 𧴜M or more when we sell, which is even more amazing... Good player no doubt, on his day, he has many off days as well, as we have all seen.

Yes, he will make mistakes and get some unnecessary cards but he and Doucouré have a swagger that Everton badly needs. Without him, the pressing is turned up and lanes close. With him, there is always some fear of him getting one-on-one on the wing which opens up space we otherwise rarely create.

I really think we missed out on a gem in Eze, who for 16 million in this market looks an absolute steal. He would have been able to cover in the wide positions, as well as play as a central attacking midfielder.

Gordon needs his chance, and should be in the bench.

Sarr at Watford for me could do the job too. He'd be an investment, but as Liverpool have proven with signing Jota, it's worth it.

It's a never-ending cycle of rebuilding otherwise!

If however, the club are happy to meander along in the premier league year in year out, collecting in the TV money, then by all means, sell Richarlison, Calvert-Lewin, Digne etc, and rake in the millions, but don't expect the support to continue as it does, because sooner or later everyone will get well fed up with it.

If they're not already!!

We lose with monotonous regularity – whether he plays or not.

Dale, he is not Everton, he is gracing us with his talent just like he did Watford and soon enough he will be off to a bigger stage.

The reason he does get in trouble is the same thing that makes him hungrier than, for example, Sigurdsson. He gives everything on the pitch, he takes a lot of punishment and he puts his body on the line. He does it because he wants to be a Brazillian great.

But he is here because it's a decent stepping stone to his ambition, which is Champions League football and World Cup success.

I don't think I was particularly harsh, I said he was a good player on his day, and he has a lot of poor and indifferent games. We've missed him in the three games he's been suspended, but no player is irreplaceable. If we get the fanciful figures plenty of fans think we will get for him, I would sell him pronto.

It's interesting to look at the league games he's missed over the last few years too:

Huddersfield (H)
West Ham (H)
Spurs (A)
West Ham (A)
Newcastle (H)
Southampton (A)
Newcastle (A)
Man Utd (H)

Not a particularly difficult group of fixtures by any stretch of the imagination, and yet we took just 4 points from them.

He's hugely important to the team. I don't think it's a coincidence that Rodriguez's sparkling early form has fallen off a cliff over the last three games. Richarlison stretches the pitch and occupies defenders – creating the half-yards of space that Rodriguez needs to work his magic.

The challenge is to keep Richarlison and find players who offer similar end product. Get that win % up even higher.

You make a fair point; however, I don't know which seasons you are counting to arrive at your average points – I would say it's about 54 points if not less for a few years prior to Richarlison joining Everton.

The previous Everton sides were as reliant on Lukaku and his goals and it could be argued that the team that Lukaku played in at Goodison had a lot more about them collectively than this current bunch.

Yes, Carlo 'fantastico' has shown himself to be Carlo 'not-very-bright-io' by allowing one of three strikers to leave, but we are losing these games because we are conceding goals at an alarming rate. Richarlison could have smashed his personal best and scored a goal a game in the last three and we'd have still lost them.

The contrast in fortunes is not down solely to Richarlison's absence – it is down to Carlo changing a winning formula in his absence. Not one player has not fallen off a cliff in the last three games.

If we include 4 cup defeats, we have lost about 36 games since Richarlison's debut just over 2 years ago. Even if we did lose 4 of them in his absence, we must have lost over 30 when he has played... Some talisman.

Our manager is being taken to school by younger coaches. He has to somehow re-invent himself and rediscover the Midas touch. All the straw clutching in the world won't help us if he can't do that.

Don't get discouraged just because some here have an aversion to statistics that's so deep it's almost religious.

Whether 8 games is enough to use as a data set in less sure about!

Have a week off from bashing the manager. The thread is about how good a player Richarlison is becoming. It's getting very tiresome you slagging off a manager who is the best manager we have had in some while.

The RS have done this well selling the likes of Suarez and Coutinho and building a title-winning side. Likewise with Leicester when they won the league selling Kante and Mahrez and more recently Chilwell and replacing them with Tielmans, Maddison and Castigne.

I get the impression Everton aren't a very proactive club. They are not looking ahead 12-18 months down the line and identifying those replacements to bring in. Should Richarlison leave in the summer, we should already have begun the process of identifying 3 or 4 replacements to add to the first team, but we won't.

The strategy around recruitment really needs questioning in my opinion.

It sounds like I'm slagging him off, but I'm not. He's a player who has made himself a key part of the team. He has maximised his talent and he has a great mentality. He is a good age so I hope he continues to improve further. We need his directness in the team, because he's about the only player we have in midfield who thinks about driving towards goal every time he gets the ball.

I just don't see him being good enough to play for some of the teams mentioned above (Bayern, Barcelona etc). I think we are the best place for him, allowing him to develop and build on his partnership with Calvert-Lewin and Rodriguez. He has to be scoring 20+ goals, or creating more, if he is to be considered worth over 𧴜 million in my opinion.

I'm sorry but I beg to differ on that.

Everton have a long history of selling top class performers and replacing them with lesser players.

We did it with the entire title winning squad, look at some of the players we started the 90's with.

We sold Kanchelskis and replaced him with John Oster.

We sold Rooney, replaced him with nobody in the same stratosphere.

We sold Lukaku and replaced him with Tosun and an at the time untried kid in Calvert-Lewin, whilst Dom has come on leaps and bounds as a goal hanger he's still not at Lukaku's level.

We sold Barkley and brought in Sigurdsson.

So I'm sorry if I can't quite subscribe to the "no player is irreplaceable" club, in our past experience, virtually every star we sell is never replaced.

Mike (46), yes let's use the stats from the eight games Richie didn't play in and ignore the many games he played and we lost, I have no interest in both sets of stats they are just information that really prove nothing.

Darren (45), you carry on saying what you see in how Ancelotti is performing with the teams efforts, I think the selection, performance and set up of the team had a big part of how we performed so miserably in those three games, less so the United game, he hasn't got a great squad to choose from, we all know that, some are next to useless when chosen together, I don't have to dwell on that but I think he could have done better.

I'm backing Carlo to eventually get it right at Everton but his mistakes should surely be pointed out, he's not infallible, like every manager, their are no guarantees in football, that he will be a success here is not guaranteed either, and it must be stressed that what Carlo has achieved in the past has gone, it's what he does at Everton is what we should all be interested in.

When Lukaku was here, there was arguably too much reliance on him, and now that over-reliance is arguably on Richarlison.

However, I think Darren makes a good point, in that the entire team has underperformed in the last three games, which seems to be a case of lack of effective organisation and consequent lack of fluidity in the play, in contrast to the first few games.

It is how we have done business with Stones & Lukaku and results in deterioration.

However, if like Dortmund we hoover up world class youth then the replacement can be groomed to step in when the star leaves.

Dortmund can do it because they have the reputation, long built, of developing players. It's why the likes of Haarland choose to go there rather than to Utd. He knows he'll develop. The likes of Bellingham have gone there because they know they will play and develop, and they will play in the Champions League. They know they may be on the bench for a year, but in a year they will be in the first team, challenging at the top of the table, challenging in the Champions League.

The best young players will not come to Everton and be willing to wait for Richarlison to be sold.

As a club, we need an identity: we don't want to be a team that just gets to 40 points. We as fans need to change and get an identity as well. We need a team of youthful energetic decent players that can be developed. That's what we need...

I agree with all you say.

We have let a decent striker go out on loan on the presumption that Tosun will morph into a Premier League goal threat. As much as I like him, he is too slow to catch a bus and is only useful if we are well on top and providing plenty of chances. Neither he or Calvert-Lewin are the sort that creates for themselves.

The manager now has paceless peacocks in Gomes and Sigurdsson. Add to this, Delph – who is only fit to understudy Allan – and we have an unbalanced and slow group.

Iwobi and Bernard have some good and bad qualities but neither is good enough to replace Richarlison.

If we had gone in for King, we would have had an alternative to Calvert-Lewin and the option of playing him on the wing. He has pace and a trick or two.

These problems are down to Brands and Ancelotti. This squad is not equipped for a Top 6 finish. We will need a lot of luck with injuries to maintain our place in the top half.

The return of Richarlison coincides with some easier fixtures but I don't think that his return will be quite the revelation that we hope for. Let's just hope he is fit on his return from the International games.

Indeed, if Dominic, Seamus or Lucas get rocked, then we are really fucked.

Definitely no disrespect, but you like stats; I don't. Each to their own... but, for the sake of a bit of fun and to please those who like them and absorb them, if you've got time on your hands, tell us what the stats say about his performances in the 76 games Richarlison did play in?

I don't expect you to do this, you more than likely have better things to do. Thanks for your previous posts.

The key thing is having a development plan that shows the player his route to the first team and then sticking with that plan.

Branthwaite, Lookman, Vlasic, Onyekuru, Kean etc have all shown they will come to Everton from far and wide.

We are not.

Dortmund will qualify for the Champions League every year, so young players will look at them as a 'big' club where they can get Champion's League experience, and thus become the sought-out players like Sancho, Garland, Reyna and co are, and those before them.

For me, comparing Everton to Dortmund as a business plan is akin to comparing me taking AFC Weymouth to world dominance on Football Manager. It just isn't viable. We can't guarantee Europe. We can't offer a platform where we'll dominate 80% of teams in the league.

These differences between what Dortmund do and what we viably can do are too great. Dortmund wouldn't function in the Premier League.

What we should look at is Leicester and Tottenham. Not based on selling the best and building buy buying the best young players, but by building a solid team and squad, and sprinkling with a couple of star players that can take it forward.

Our problem is our team remains unbalanced. The star players are there, but the squad depth is paying for years of poor signings.

The problem in selling your top players is being able to replace them with someone else without losing their effect and contribution to the team. Bringing in young players is admirable, but there are no guarantees they will develop into the same standard.

Team-building is not easy and every manager has his own style that takes time to build to his way of playing and that is why David Moyes had time with little money to get a fairly successful team.

Today's managers who have good financial backing with enough time to build a team are at a disadvantage as top players want instant success or they move on. I agree that Richarlison is a good player that will improve, but successful teams have to be able to have the depth in the squad to replace players who are injured or suspended and not be classed as a 1-man team.

I use Dortmund as an example but plenty of other clubs follow a similar approach. Dortmund will be first pick for the likes of Haaland because though young he was a ChampionsLleague performer before he joined. Sancho possibly too, because he was so highly rated. Others, like Isak (now at Real Sociedad) and Zagadou might well have come to us if they can see a route to the first team. Bellingham too even – if we'd have been prepared to compete of price / wages.

Another point. There are more than a couple of very good young players in the world. Dortmund can't buy all of them.

I'd also say Leicester have done exactly what I'm suggesting. They could see Maguire might leave so, before he did, bought Benkovic and Soyuncu. The former has been loaned out. The latter has been a huge success.

Wolves, you could say, have done the same – buying the young Portuguese striker, forget his name, in case Jiminez gets bought. So we absolutely can follow this approach.

Rooney and Lukaku and even Lescott may have well stayed if we were Champions League regulars. Therein lies the problem: we never are.

Ancelotti convinced Richarlison to stay this season as we make a push for the top 4. The lad wants to play Champions League football. If we don't qualify, I think he will be off.

I agree we should be proactive here in getting a replacement in for him now, Sarr? Diatta? We need attacking reinforcements anyway. I don't think we will find anyone as good, but we need the best we can get.

I'd be amazed if we spend in January.

If Sarr is on form and Watford look like they might go up then they'll be wanting a huge fee. And Sarr is good but is he as good as Richarlison, or are we just spending fortunes to get worse (our general approach since Koeman).

What I really mean is that Richarlison's replacement should have been bought age 19 ish last summer (2019). He'd now be filling in or playing on the right flank sometimes - then age 21 ish he would assume the LW spot.

I think the religion belongs to the worshipers of stats. We cynics are the non-believers. The infidels.

If ever there was a thread to demonstrate the absolute futility of trying to mask facts with a few carefully selected stats, this is it.

Yes, the selected "stats" will tell you we haven't won one of the eight games played without Richarlison, but you'd have to be blind to the incontestable evidence offered by official records and facts to buy into this suggestion that he is some sort of talisman and that his absence was the reason we have been twatted in our last three.

The fact is Richarlison has played in 71 of the games during his two full seasons here. We have failed to win around 60% of them. Our results have been generally crap... with or without him. Only a fool would allow himself to be blinded to the bigger picture by a carefully selected snapshot.

Those clinging to this latest reason for Ancelotti's failures are simply painting themselves into a corner. Next time we lose with Richarlison in the team, they are going to have to come up with yet another excuse.

It could lead to heavy summer investment in a top quality young right-back, Aarons maybe, possibly Sarr, Diatta or similar athletic and fast player with goals for Richarlison's role, and a younger mobile dynamic central mid to bring energy and a higher tempo and drive to outer play (I defer to your superior scouting knowledge).

If I was Moshiri I would appoint a manager on a weekly contract, play poorly and lose, pack your bags, and off you go. Of course, that is not going to happen, but for a manager of Everton to be given less than 12 months, following on from several dysfunctional and ill-suited bosses, is a tad premature. Carlo shouldn't be given a free-pass, far from it, but trying to motivate our lot is like trying to herd cats, especially when none of us can air our views live at the stadium.

If Carlo isn't the answer and I readily admit that he might not be, I do wonder where we are going to find the right boss to lead us forward.

Carlo is still managing with one hand behind his back. The quality in the squad is still thin and a player of Richarlison's class will always be missed.

My only criticism of the management is why Sigurdsson still gets game time. he brings absolutely zero and it's like playing with 10 men. Couldn't believe the stat last week that as our No 10 he didn't pass to Calvert-Lewin once in 90 mins.

Carlo has been in charge for less than a season and he'll need at least two more windows to have the right level of quality across the team.

We started the season well but that has subsided into mediocrity, the midfield was ticking over nicely so how have things been allowed to slip so badly?

The obvious lack of attacking options seems to be the problem again and needs to be addressed in the next window, or this season will be another waste of time devoid of entertainment.

Jay, I hope you and your family are okay, drop a line please. It would be nice to know everything is okay with you and all your family. Best wishes.