Everton

[ChesterDave]

We'd just be in alternate halves of the draw I guess. No chance of a clash then. Or one plays home while the other away

[elrichio86]

AC and Inter have managed to schedule things without any issues for years.

[RedReet]

Fair points.

[red g]

I actually hope they finish 4th for the same reason, plus it would probably mean Arsenal are out of the top 4

My best mate is a blue and he wants us to win the League

same here. I don't live in the city so don't see enough of the bitterness first hand.

[topscorer]

We're having a right proper love fest for Everton now, my apologies lol

[PTP]

**** 'em i still hate the cunts

[kev776]

**** 'em i still hate the cunts

this x10.

[Yozza]

[Yozza]

Everton fairytale has us hooked - shame it's built on £50m loan sham of Lukaku, Barry and Deulofeu (so Wenger's right to moan)

• Everton's good season has been built around loan players such as Romelu Lukaku, Gareth Barry and Gerard Deulofeu
• The Toffees have done nothing wrong but loan system is flawed
• Lukaku, Barry and Deulofeu would cost more than £50m
• Arsene Wenger is correct to complain about the system

By MARTIN SAMUEL - SPORT

There is one problem with Arsene Wenger’s complaint about Everton and the loan system. Arsenal have been involved in 14 loan transfers themselves this season. None as effective as Romelu Lukaku, admittedly, but whose fault is that? It is hardly Everton’s responsibility that Arsenal do not play the loan game very well.

So let’s start by saying that the club challenging Arsenal for fourth place have done nothing wrong. Most fans admire Everton’s rootsy status and wish them well.

Roberto Martinez has done an outstanding job and Bill Kenwright is the type of wealthy local supporter who should be in charge throughout the Premier League. ‘If you’re going to take me, take me now,’ a classically overwrought Kenwright implored after Sunday’s impressive win over Arsenal. Lord knows how he’ll react if they make it to the Champions League.

To reach that level, having lost a long-serving manager plus one of their best players to Manchester United, will be an extraordinary feat and great for the English game. A new club breaking into the staid elite is always welcome. Everton, like neighbours Liverpool in their tilt at the title, are winning the popular vote.

And now the but, because you know there is always going to be a but . . . those loans. Wenger’s right. It isn’t on.

In regulatory terms they’re fine, obviously, and completely within the rules. Everton have been very smart in exploiting the nuances of the player market and good luck to them in that. Sam Allardyce kept Bolton Wanderers afloat due to his astute manipulation of temporary transfers and the club have missed his keenness since.

So it is not that Everton have contravened any regulations or dealt underhandedly to secure the services of Lukaku, Gareth Barry and Gerard Deulofeu on loan this season. It is just that the loan system is an anomaly in these days of financial fair play, because the two concepts are idealistically incompatible.

That sometimes happens. Open-door immigration might be considered a good, progressive policy. The welfare state most certainly is. Yet open-door immigration and the welfare state combined are potentially catastrophic to a nation’s resources.

The same principle shadows the loan system and FFP. They might both be considered valuable in isolation, but together they conflict.

What would Lukaku cost Everton? Let’s say upwards of £25m. Deulofeu is a rising star in the Barcelona academy who has represented Spain at every level from Under 16 through Under 21, and was voted the Golden Player at the UEFA Under 19 European Championship. He wouldn’t come cheap.

Then there is Barry, a squad player at Manchester City and now 33, but even so he might have commanded £6m as a permanent transfer in the summer. Total: somewhere north of £50m, maybe as much as £60m.

Could Everton have afforded that? Absolutely not, even with the sale of Marouane Fellaini. By the time wages are taken into account, it might even have put them in contravention of financial fair play.

Yet FFP is harsher on costly permanent transfers than loans. If Everton borrow they can skirt their financial limitations. So a club that buys outright, that offers permanence and meets the bill in full, risks being kicked out of Europe. One that creates a temporary structure, that shares the costs, that runs a shop with its rivals’ stock, gets the green light.

There remains no mandate for change.

That isn’t fair. Michel Platini, president of UEFA, says that living off the investment of their owner gives a club an artificially inflated position. Yet that is what Everton have achieved, simply by different means. Chelsea’s Lukaku and Manchester City’s Barry, in particular, have propelled them to a peak they would not have been able to attain under their own means. Yet, while self-improvement by owner is outlawed and scorned, by loan it is approved. How can that be?

This is the future. As financial fair play bites, clubs will find all manner of ways to sidestep its effects. Barcelona have recently fallen foul of FIFA for contravening the rules on cross-border transfers for Under 18 players, yet it is only natural that with top-end signings having such an impact on the balance sheet, the youth market will overheat.

Why wait until a player is 25 and pay £40m with UEFA looking on disapprovingly if a deal can be struck for a tenth of that at a young age? FFP makes it worth the gamble.

Manchester City have signed Rodney Kongolo of Feyenoord, who is already being compared with Patrick Vieira. Kongolo is 16 and would previously have made his name at his first club, like 20-year-old brother Terence. Now Feyenoord risk losing both as Terence becomes disenchanted without Rodney.

It is undoubtedly a harmful trend for smaller clubs, yet from City’s point of view, the money risked represents better FFP value than buying Kongolo later for a much larger sum.

So important is the youth market these days that City’s scouts even have a piece of computer kit, a very upmarket FIFA 14 almost, that shows how the teenage protege will link up with Sergio Aguero, or play beside Yaya Toure in midfield. Mums, dads, kids and agents are apparently very impressed.
Chelsea have placed similar emphasis on accumulating the next generation, farming young players out to Vitesse Arnhem in the Dutch league which, again, artificially inflates their league position.

Trouble in paradise has arrived, however, with the claim from former chairman Merab Jordania that the arrangement between the clubs runs deeper than youth loans, and Vitesse actually take their orders from ‘London’.

‘I wanted to be champion of the Netherlands, but London did not,’ he said. ‘Ambition is fine but Vitesse may not be in the Champions League with Chelsea.’ The Dutch Football Federation are investigating these claims. Vitesse are now fourth, having topped the table on January 18.

Arsenal are complaining most bitterly about the loan system, as it is their safe fourth-placed berth that is under threat from Everton. Yet the suggestion that it distorts the league would carry greater weight if Wenger was not perfectly happy for Arsenal’s purposes to disrupt other competitions.

Arsenal have two players of little consequence in on loan: Emiliano Viviano, a 28-year-old goalkeeper at Palermo, who spent last season with Fiorentina and has not played a first-team game in 2013-14, and Kim Kallstrom, the catastrophic January transfer acquisition from Spartak Moscow, who turned out to be as seriously injured as the player he was replacing. Kallstrom has featured for 11 minutes as a substitute against Swansea City, during which time Arsenal lost a 2-1 lead.

Reel them in, loan them out, drag them back, send them packing - and we wonder why there's no loyalty in football

Yet Arsenal’s loans out are substantial, amounting to 12 players: Damian Martinez and Benik Afobe (Sheffield Wednesday), Johan Djourou (Hamburg), Daniel Boateng (Hibernian), Ignasi Miquel (Leicester City), Nicholas Yennaris (Brentford), Francis Coquelin (Freiburg), Chuks Aneke (Crewe Alexandra), Joel Campbell (Olympiacos), Chuba Akpom (Coventry City), Park Chu-young (Watford) and Wellington (Murcia).

So, while taking a high moral stance on the Premier League, the competitions Wenger doesn’t mind influencing include the Champions League, Europa League, Championship, League One, the Bundesliga, Greek Super League, Scottish Premiership and Spain’s Segunda Division. He doesn’t mind affecting your club, he just thinks it is wrong when it happens to his.

As Leicester have earned promotion from the Championship, Olympiacos are the champions of Greece, Murcia are fighting to make the promotion play-offs in Spain, Brentford are second in League One, Hamburg and Freiburg may yet avoid relegation from the Bundesliga and Crewe Alexandra are still battling to avoid dropping to League Two, a great many managers may distrust Arsenal’s impact on their status.

Arsenal’s 12 loan players have made 207 appearances for their temporary clubs this season. Now there is talk of an Arsenal deal to buy Alvaro Morata of Real Madrid for £8m in the summer with a fixed buy-back price for the selling club in two years’ time. What is that if not a two-year loan with bells and whistles?

What Everton have been allowed to do is flawed, but every club plays the loan market for all it is worth and some with more talent than others. Indeed, now financial fair play has been so inexpertly grafted on top, the clamour for loans will only intensify.

Fortunately, Everton seem committed to their youth policy, too, yet others will not be as scrupulous. What does the production line matter when UEFA regulations as good as encourage the temporary acquisition of ready-made first-team players? How can it be the permanent transfers that are viewed suspiciously?

Reel them in, loan them out, drag them back, send them packing — and then we wonder why there is no loyalty in football.

[Roboklopp]

Everton fairytale has us hooked - shame it's built on £50m loan sham of Lukaku, Barry and Deulofeu (so Wenger's right to moan)

• Everton's good season has been built around loan players such as Romelu Lukaku, Gareth Barry and Gerard Deulofeu
• The Toffees have done nothing wrong but loan system is flawed
• Lukaku, Barry and Deulofeu would cost more than £50m
• Arsene Wenger is correct to complain about the system

By MARTIN SAMUEL - SPORT

There is one problem with Arsene Wenger’s complaint about Everton and the loan system. Arsenal have been involved in 14 loan transfers themselves this season. None as effective as Romelu Lukaku, admittedly, but whose fault is that? It is hardly Everton’s responsibility that Arsenal do not play the loan game very well.

So let’s start by saying that the club challenging Arsenal for fourth place have done nothing wrong. Most fans admire Everton’s rootsy status and wish them well.

Roberto Martinez has done an outstanding job and Bill Kenwright is the type of wealthy local supporter who should be in charge throughout the Premier League. ‘If you’re going to take me, take me now,’ a classically overwrought Kenwright implored after Sunday’s impressive win over Arsenal. Lord knows how he’ll react if they make it to the Champions League.

To reach that level, having lost a long-serving manager plus one of their best players to Manchester United, will be an extraordinary feat and great for the English game. A new club breaking into the staid elite is always welcome. Everton, like neighbours Liverpool in their tilt at the title, are winning the popular vote.

And now the but, because you know there is always going to be a but . . . those loans. Wenger’s right. It isn’t on.

In regulatory terms they’re fine, obviously, and completely within the rules. Everton have been very smart in exploiting the nuances of the player market and good luck to them in that. Sam Allardyce kept Bolton Wanderers afloat due to his astute manipulation of temporary transfers and the club have missed his keenness since.

So it is not that Everton have contravened any regulations or dealt underhandedly to secure the services of Lukaku, Gareth Barry and Gerard Deulofeu on loan this season. It is just that the loan system is an anomaly in these days of financial fair play, because the two concepts are idealistically incompatible.

That sometimes happens. Open-door immigration might be considered a good, progressive policy. The welfare state most certainly is. Yet open-door immigration and the welfare state combined are potentially catastrophic to a nation’s resources.The same principle shadows the loan system and FFP. They might both be considered valuable in isolation, but together they conflict.

What would Lukaku cost Everton? Let’s say upwards of £25m. Deulofeu is a rising star in the Barcelona academy who has represented Spain at every level from Under 16 through Under 21, and was voted the Golden Player at the UEFA Under 19 European Championship. He wouldn’t come cheap.

Then there is Barry, a squad player at Manchester City and now 33, but even so he might have commanded £6m as a permanent transfer in the summer. Total: somewhere north of £50m, maybe as much as £60m.

Could Everton have afforded that? Absolutely not, even with the sale of Marouane Fellaini. By the time wages are taken into account, it might even have put them in contravention of financial fair play.

Yet FFP is harsher on costly permanent transfers than loans. If Everton borrow they can skirt their financial limitations. So a club that buys outright, that offers permanence and meets the bill in full, risks being kicked out of Europe. One that creates a temporary structure, that shares the costs, that runs a shop with its rivals’ stock, gets the green light.

There remains no mandate for change.

That isn’t fair. Michel Platini, president of UEFA, says that living off the investment of their owner gives a club an artificially inflated position. Yet that is what Everton have achieved, simply by different means. Chelsea’s Lukaku and Manchester City’s Barry, in particular, have propelled them to a peak they would not have been able to attain under their own means. Yet, while self-improvement by owner is outlawed and scorned, by loan it is approved. How can that be?

This is the future. As financial fair play bites, clubs will find all manner of ways to sidestep its effects. Barcelona have recently fallen foul of FIFA for contravening the rules on cross-border transfers for Under 18 players, yet it is only natural that with top-end signings having such an impact on the balance sheet, the youth market will overheat.

Why wait until a player is 25 and pay £40m with UEFA looking on disapprovingly if a deal can be struck for a tenth of that at a young age? FFP makes it worth the gamble.

Manchester City have signed Rodney Kongolo of Feyenoord, who is already being compared with Patrick Vieira. Kongolo is 16 and would previously have made his name at his first club, like 20-year-old brother Terence. Now Feyenoord risk losing both as Terence becomes disenchanted without Rodney.

It is undoubtedly a harmful trend for smaller clubs, yet from City’s point of view, the money risked represents better FFP value than buying Kongolo later for a much larger sum.

So important is the youth market these days that City’s scouts even have a piece of computer kit, a very upmarket FIFA 14 almost, that shows how the teenage protege will link up with Sergio Aguero, or play beside Yaya Toure in midfield. Mums, dads, kids and agents are apparently very impressed.
Chelsea have placed similar emphasis on accumulating the next generation, farming young players out to Vitesse Arnhem in the Dutch league which, again, artificially inflates their league position.

Trouble in paradise has arrived, however, with the claim from former chairman Merab Jordania that the arrangement between the clubs runs deeper than youth loans, and Vitesse actually take their orders from ‘London’.

‘I wanted to be champion of the Netherlands, but London did not,’ he said. ‘Ambition is fine but Vitesse may not be in the Champions League with Chelsea.’ The Dutch Football Federation are investigating these claims. Vitesse are now fourth, having topped the table on January 18.

Arsenal are complaining most bitterly about the loan system, as it is their safe fourth-placed berth that is under threat from Everton. Yet the suggestion that it distorts the league would carry greater weight if Wenger was not perfectly happy for Arsenal’s purposes to disrupt other competitions.

Arsenal have two players of little consequence in on loan: Emiliano Viviano, a 28-year-old goalkeeper at Palermo, who spent last season with Fiorentina and has not played a first-team game in 2013-14, and Kim Kallstrom, the catastrophic January transfer acquisition from Spartak Moscow, who turned out to be as seriously injured as the player he was replacing. Kallstrom has featured for 11 minutes as a substitute against Swansea City, during which time Arsenal lost a 2-1 lead.

Reel them in, loan them out, drag them back, send them packing - and we wonder why there's no loyalty in football

Yet Arsenal’s loans out are substantial, amounting to 12 players: Damian Martinez and Benik Afobe (Sheffield Wednesday), Johan Djourou (Hamburg), Daniel Boateng (Hibernian), Ignasi Miquel (Leicester City), Nicholas Yennaris (Brentford), Francis Coquelin (Freiburg), Chuks Aneke (Crewe Alexandra), Joel Campbell (Olympiacos), Chuba Akpom (Coventry City), Park Chu-young (Watford) and Wellington (Murcia).

So, while taking a high moral stance on the Premier League, the competitions Wenger doesn’t mind influencing include the Champions League, Europa League, Championship, League One, the Bundesliga, Greek Super League, Scottish Premiership and Spain’s Segunda Division. He doesn’t mind affecting your club, he just thinks it is wrong when it happens to his.

As Leicester have earned promotion from the Championship, Olympiacos are the champions of Greece, Murcia are fighting to make the promotion play-offs in Spain, Brentford are second in League One, Hamburg and Freiburg may yet avoid relegation from the Bundesliga and Crewe Alexandra are still battling to avoid dropping to League Two, a great many managers may distrust Arsenal’s impact on their status.

Arsenal’s 12 loan players have made 207 appearances for their temporary clubs this season. Now there is talk of an Arsenal deal to buy Alvaro Morata of Real Madrid for £8m in the summer with a fixed buy-back price for the selling club in two years’ time. What is that if not a two-year loan with bells and whistles?

What Everton have been allowed to do is flawed, but every club plays the loan market for all it is worth and some with more talent than others. Indeed, now financial fair play has been so inexpertly grafted on top, the clamour for loans will only intensify.

Fortunately, Everton seem committed to their youth policy, too, yet others will not be as scrupulous. What does the production line matter when UEFA regulations as good as encourage the temporary acquisition of ready-made first-team players? How can it be the permanent transfers that are viewed suspiciously?

Reel them in, loan them out, drag them back, send them packing — and then we wonder why there is no loyalty in football.

Gotta hate the Mail - every single opportunity, even in the sport section.

[ChesterDave]

It takes a special kind of racist cunt to complain about open door immigration polices while bemoaning a football club in England signing an English player from another football club in England

[tsb]

Holy **** at that sentence!

[Roboklopp]

It takes a special kind of racist cunt to complain about open door immigration polices while bemoaning a football club in England signing an English player from another football club in England

[Trippendicular]

The article seems to be suggesting that it's Everton gaming the system and that the loaning system is flawed, when that's not at all true. The problem with the system is obvious when you look at the clubs who have loaned the players to Everton. Man City and Chelsea are gaming the system by overpaying for each and every youth prospect then loaning them out to whoever they want.

The mandate for change should be directed towards the clubs with whole squads out on loan.

[EwarWoo]

Not to mention if they had the cash reserves and market appeal of Arsenal they could have just bought the players.

Always liked Wenger as a manager but he seems to be getting gradually more bitter.

He's annoyed because Everton have found a way to compete with them despite their disadvantages.