Dixie

Everton fan here - thank you, thank you, thank you! Good luck for the rest of the season (apart from against us lol). Seriously though, you looked really good & Ollie Watkins looks a great signing. Everton & Villa for the title race!

To be honest, I’m not really expecting us to recoup any meaningful money from sales. Just getting people off the wage bill is the aim. Regarding signing older players, this is the first time we’ve signed players in the 27-29 age bracket for many years. We usually sign younger players - Digne, Richarlison, Mina, Gomes, all 25 & under when signed. It’s not necessarily bad signing experience, especially when they’re as good as what we’ve signed. Everton fans aren’t really worried about the finances, we’re lucky to have Moshiri backing us. We’re also lucky in that the loss of matchday revenue makes up far less of our revenue than other clubs, who have been harder hit. The wage bill will be trimmed, I’m absolutely certain of it.

Will be interesting to see how Bielsa does. He’s never won anything major in Europe.

Everton fan in peace here. Fairly surprised at some of the views being expressed. Here’s the deal: We were a top 7 team for long time under Moyes & into Martinez first season. Then recruitment went wrong. Martinez lost his way & was rightly sacked. Koeman came in, steadied things, then recruitment was wrong again (even more so than previously) & he was sacked. Allardyce was a nightmare. We’d have probably stayed up without him but his football was appalling and he was purely there for the money & didn’t care about or get the club. Then Marco Silva came in. Bad appointment, job was too big for him. Then we hit the jackpot with Carlo Ancelotti. Great appointment, massive manager, won the lot. Except the midfield he had, well, it was terrible. That in turn put pressure on the defence and made them look far worse than what they are. Last season finishing 12th was our lowest league finish for 16 years & only the 4th time in 16 years we’ve finished outside the top 8. Carlo has come in & in 6 months realised the midfield was rubbish & has effectively replaced it. If you have a manager of his calibre you back him to the hilt otherwise there’s no point having him. Rodriguez is a superstar who has won the lot & excels under Carlo. Allan was outstanding under Ancelotti at Napoli. These are both players the manager trusts. Doucoure is a good signing too. 99% of EFC fans are incredibly excited for the new season. We will be getting rid of the likes of Delph, Walcott & probably Sigurdsson & Davies. These are now surplus to requirements. Anything less than at the bare minimum 7th will be disappointing for this season. Regarding the defence - Michael Keane is a good player who’s made mistakes because he’s had no midfield helping him. Holgate is a promising young defender. Digne at left back is class. I don’t rate Pickford but it is what is; he had a bad season, maybe this season he will be better. I wouldn’t be concerned about the wage bill. It’ll get cut and anyway, FFP is being relaxed this season.

The only thing I'd disagree with you there on is Michael Keane. He had a very good second half of last season, which earned him a recall to the England squad/line up. Keane is a good defender. We will struggle if we don't make the signings we need. If we do, we won't struggle. It's that simple really. Every Everton fan knows that and clearly fans like yourself do too. With the midfield and with Richarlison, we have the nucleus of a decent team. If we get the additions we need, we can hopefully challenge the top 6. We were certainly competitive when we played and beat the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal and Man Utd head to head.

Everton fan in peace here. Haven't posted on here in a long time. Good to have you back in the Premier League. Just a couple of points - season ticket sales aren't down. They're sold out. The're capped at 34,000. We give 3000 tickets to away fans and have 3000 tickets on sale to non-season ticket holders every game (which don't last long; every Premier League game at Goodison has been a sellout for the last 3 seasons). We have 10,000 fans on a season ticket waiting list. There's been no confirmation of EFC squad numbers for this season. DCL has claimed he wants the number 9 shirt, but the majority of fans would rather he didn't and that we sign a new striker or two to have that shirt. So the idea of a 'local lad having the number 9 shirt to win over fans' is far from the mark. The stadium images and video were long planned to be released this past Thursday. We've all known the date for literally months and eagerly awaited it. We're all pretty unanimously overjoyed and are incredibly excited by the designs. It's what we've all wanted for a long time and now it's just needs to get built. The inside of the stadium isn't a bowl, it's 4 distinct stands in a rectangular shape, very similar to Goodison except without the obstructed views. The gradient of the stands is the steepest that current regulations allow and steeper than a lot of clubs. If you're really interested, there's a free app 'Peoples Project' that available to download from the Apple app store. We've seen what it looks like in virtual reality displays at fans functions and roadshows and the architect Dan Meis has been a highly visible and vocal figure throughout the process, working with the fans. The club have taken so long because they're jumping through all the legal loops to make sure they get planning permission. A second consultation roadshow is taking place right now; it's a huge deal in the city and they're making sure everyone's views are gathered again so they can 'prove' that everyone is on board. The first consultation showed 95% of respondents wanted it to happen and it's likely the responses will still be the same now the images have been released. The demand is obviously there to fill 52000; many fans want it to be 55-60000. Planning permission is being submitted before the end of the year. If any of you have visited the Highbury site since Arsenal moved to the Emirates, well, that's pretty much what we've announced plans to do with Goodison. The pitch's centre circle is being kept as a local public park that people can visit, and they're building local medical and educations facilities around the site, as well as some homes. The Zaha stuff is just silly media talk driven by agents and betting companies. Yesterday Sky said we were in talks to sign Zaha. Today Sky are saying we're in talks to sign Kean from Juventus. The vast majority aren't fooled by the silliness. We do need a striker and I'm sure we'll sign one. We signed 3 players in the final week of the transfer window last year. All the signings last summer were big successes bar Yerry Mina, who had major injury problems. Everyone trusts the Director of Football Marcel Brands to get it right. After being an unhappy divided ship for most of the past 6 years, the last 12 months have been pretty calm. The finish to last season and the new stadium has all everyone pretty buoyed for the new season to be honest. The club is going in the right direction. Fans have 'bought into it' because we clearly are, even if the media won't give us the credit we deserve. We played Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man Utd in a 6 week spell at the end of last season and didn't concede a goal, winning 3 of the 4 games and drawing the derby (that basically stopped Liverpool winning the league). Hope things work out for you guys. You've signed a lot of players in one summer, which you needed to but it does take time for them all to settle, and some of them may not make up. All the best for the new season, apart from when you play us!

All the players you named were sold under a different (financially poorer) regime. The culture at the club is changing. It was already on the way there with bids being rejected for Stones and him being held to his contract, but with the new owner in place, things are apparently going to be different. Of course, none of us have a crystal ball. What we do know is that money talks in football. Smart recruitment will play a key part. I don't think we'll spend £150m in one window either, but I'd imagine we'll bring in 8-10 new players, simply because a lot of older players and fringe players are out of contract and will likely be leaving. The squad itself is nowhere near as bad as some make out. We really should have finished in the top 8 at least this past season and the reason we didn't was solely down to the manager and his tactics. A few key additions in several starting positions (goalkeeper, centre half and striker) are needed. Stones is a good player with tons of potential, but he makes a lot of mistakes. There were times last season when he wasn't in the side and we looked far better defensively. If he goes it will be sad, but it genuinely wouldn't be that big of a loss, especially based on several of the young defenders coming through at the club who have already made their debuts. It's an uncertain time, but also an exciting time. There is definitely no feeling amongst EFC fans that we're on some sort of downward slide. The feeling is we've underachieved greatly the last 2 years, after being a top 7 club for the previous decade, and that changes will be made to rectify this this summer.

I appreciate your comments. As an outsider looking in, Villa's problems - and please correct me if I'm wrong here - stemmed from Lerner not supporting O'Neill's decent work on getting you top 6 a couple of times, resulting in a fire sale of your best players, not replacing them adequately, and then making a series of disastrous managerial appointments, each being worse than the one before them. Now Everton aren't perfect by any means, but we do have a very good infrastructure at the club. Martinez first season was very good. His 2nd not so good, as it all fell apart around Christmas 2014 for him and he never recovered from that. His main problem was a total inability to organise a defence, Attacking and midfield wise, all the stats showed we were top 4 calibre. Defensively we were bottom 6 at best. This season just gone was the same story - the sheer amount of games that we threw away a 2 goal lead in the last 15 minutes of games to either draw or lose was astonishing - if we'd held on for the win in just half of them, we'd have finished in the top 8, above Liverpool. That's ultimately why Martinez was sacked - gross mismanagement to the point of the players - many of them solid pros (not foreign mercenaries by any means) - had had enough of him and his ridiculous methods & tactics. As did the fans, as shown by the protests at games. I'm fully aware money is no guarantee of anything, but after 20 years of being paupers and a culture being built up in the media of the club being a feeder club to so called bigger clubs, I'm very optimistic about the future. Of course, everything hinges on the RIGHT decisions being made, but you could say that about everything. You could extend that to Villa - will Di Matteo being the right man? Will Dr Tony Xia be the right buyer and not another Carson Yeung (hope for your sake he isn't!). I actually think the league is as wide open as it has been in many years, and is ripe for another club to join those battling in the top, as Leicester and Spurs showed this past season. With the right investment and plan, anything is possible.

We've actually only sold one 'star player' in the last 5 years, and that was Fellaini for an exorbitant fee to Utd, and the vast majority of EFC fans were happy to see him go as it improved the team and the football we played. We rejected 3 bids from Chelsea for John Stones and turned down his transfer request, holding him to his contract, so the notion that we sell our best players is quite outdated. Obviously it appears this will be tested again this summer, but we'll soon see. Especially in terms of what we spend if we do sell. Local press and numerous national media journalists have frequently suggested the £100m-£150m figure. The guy who has bought us, Farhad Moshiri, is a fiercely ambitious billionaire who Arsenal would not let on to their board due to Kroenke's stranglehold on the club, so he sold his shares and bought us instead. Every noise coming out of the club thus far seems to suggest he means business - he was the one who sacked Martinez, not Kenwright.

Hi, I'm a visiting Everton fan. Always had a soft spot for Villa, hope you guys get promoted next season as the Premier League needs a club of your stature & history back in the top flight. Just on what you posted, normally that would be perfectly reasonable scepticism to have, however it is unfounded in this case. The club has just announced record season ticket sales for next season of nearly 31000 - http://www.evertonfc.com/news/2016/06/02/record-season-ticket-sales , more than we had at the same stage after Martinez first season when we finished 5th. This is after 2 terrible seasons of underachievement, with no manager (or more likely, the sales are because the manager went!) and all the usual transfer speculation.

Visiting Everton fan. Long time reader. Always had a soft spot for Villa. Hope you get promoted next season..