So the new season is pretty much upon us. Looks like apart from the goalie (is Stekelenberg any better than Robles?) and Gana/Gueye we will ‘going with what we’ve got’.
Stones has gone, Williams isn’t fit, Lukaku is doubtful and so is Coleman. Looks like a back five of Stekelenberg, Holgate, Funes Mori, Baines and… erm… Hibbe… errr. No. Who are we playing again? Spurs? Hold me.
New Signings
It was great to see Ashley Williams come through the door on Wednesday finally. That Tuesday was pretty mad, with John Stones going and us suddenly bidding for players all over the place. Although the videos of John Stones from City (they’re welcome to him now. Boom? Seriously?) and Williams (reading from an autocue is not one of his strong points it seems) were a little embarrassing.
Talking of slightly embarrassing, I was surprised by Everton wanting to shell out £25m on Bolasie from Crystal Palace. He’s always seemed pretty inconsistent to me but I guess Steve Walsh knows what he’s doing. Quite funny that both he and Stones spent a lot of time on the bench last year but have both got big moves.
Talk from Palace is that he will be brilliant one week and massively frustrating the next, ballooning cross and shots into the stand regularly. Sounds perfect for us actually. The main thing that concerns me is that he appears to think he’s a rapper. This is not a good thing. See below for the horrific evidence.
At least we know now why Everton have been peddling those minty caps. “This is the Cap”. Okay, thanks for that. The Everton twitter account is getting pretty funny. Seems to be trying to sell merchandise directly to the exact people who are likely to just tweet back abuse or the phrase “BOLASSIE” in the hope that the person who looks after the account will suddenly remember that they were meant to share the video of a press conference.
It appears that Lamine Kone has asked to leave Sunderland overnight. Whether this means that Moyes will be pushed into giving him a new deal or honour the request and take a bigger slice of the cash is to be seen. Koeman has said that he wants four centre backs though, and we can assume that his preference would be to have Williams,
I must admit that whilst I welcome the new signings and have trust in the manager I hope he realises that these new signings won’t actually be available in January/February due to the African Cup of Nations. Senegal and Ivory Coast have both qualified so we might have to hope that they don’t get picked. Many they can have a slight injury each that means they miss a week of games?