Amadou Onana

[Escalator]

Despite a 20% sell on fee to Lille we still make £26 million net profit on his amortised book value which is pretty decent.

[brap2]

Nobody is saying he's a particularly poor player. I think that the general concensus is that he is undoubtedly very talented, but most definitely not consistently great enough for Everton to turn down an offer of £50m plus.

He has shown in little flashes that he has ability and massive potential, but he's also shown that he is just as likely to go missing in games too.

He may flourish at Villa, he may be just as inconsistent there. Nobody knows. The fact is £50m on Everton's balance sheet is much more valuable right now than a player who has the occasional flash of talent when he decides to turn up. That is the reality of where we are as a club. It's not a slur on the player's ability, more of an acknowledgement that we are not in a position to turn down good money for a player who is inconsistent.

I think ultimately, I just disagree.

People are very much saying nah he's not that good, believes his own hype, we were better when we dropped him etc.

And if you are on social some of the stuff on twitter is extreme.

I can however understand and broadly agree with you however that yeah he hasn't blown us all away, and we clearly need to raise some money. I would just say that personally there's very few defensive midfielders that blow anyone away. Even Rodri who is the best in the world by a huge margin doesn't exactly sparkle and entertain and grab the game by the wotsits or whatever. Very very very much so fewer who do so at 22. And yes we have to raise money, but that doesn't mean I have to agree that we've done a good job to raise this particular amount.

For a 22 year old in the prem he's been great, and shown enormous promise IMO. Other opinions are available.

He's just very expensive, and the balance sheet shows what £20 odd m profit. Ok, well thats less than we bought Beto for. We're losing a player who is valued at £50m, as opinion splitting as that is, and we're gaining profit of £20 something. Our quality is going down, for not a huge gain, so that's all I mean when I say we need to do better. Buying players for 30+ and selling for 50+ is a high risk med reward strategy.

[777Kidnappings]

Just reading the villa forum. Wasted by dyche while still looking our best player by an absolute mile. Could be the best midfielder in the Premier league. Villas Rodri or toure. Jesus he sounds fucking amazing

[Raptor]

Just reading the villa forum. Wasted by dyche while still looking our best player by an absolute mile. Could be the best midfielder in the Premier league. Villas Rodri or toure. Jesus he sounds fucking amazing

I dont think that particularly untrue, he is our best midfielder and I think he has been massively impacted by the structure around him. You wont find many (any) players of his profile, with his figures, build and athletic ability for the price they are getting him

[777Kidnappings]

I dont think that particularly untrue, he is our best midfielder and I think he has been massively impacted by the structure around him. You wont find many (any) players of his profile, with his figures, build and athletic ability for the price they are getting him

Our best player by a mile. I don't think he's even our best midfielder. Think gueye and doucoure were both more important to our season. We barely won when Onana played.

[Kerryblueboy]

Just reading the villa forum. Wasted by dyche while still looking our best player by an absolute mile. Could be the best midfielder in the Premier league. Villas Rodri or toure. Jesus he sounds fucking amazing

Yeah but he is no James garner

[Raptor]

Our best player by a mile. I don't think he's even our best midfielder. Think gueye and doucoure were both more important to our season. We barely won when Onana played.

I didnt say he was our best midfielder by a mile, I said hes our best midfielder. Gueye and Doucoure were probably more important, but that goes back to the other point about him not being used properly.
Dyche uses Gueye to mop up everywhere, and Doucoure just to run and be a pain and get on the end of balls lumped upfront, Onana was massively inhibited imo by Dyches tactics.
I think its a deal that makes sense as Dyche is Dyche, and its going to be pretty basic football irrespective, so there is no real point in having people of Onanas quality if you arent going to maximise them. We will replace him with a player thats probably going to be more effective in this team, but it doesnt mean he'll be a better player.

[Kerryblueboy]

He was the only one who could get the ball from the keeper and play from the back to say gueye and duke are better midfielders than him is a joke neither can pass a ball duke is good at arriving in the box late to score gana is a tackle machine but neither are good on the ball

[TheRam]

Nobody is saying they are better, just more important because they suit how we want to play more than somebody like Onana.

[Gary1878]

As I have previously said, I think this is just a good transfer all round for all parties, and it's not often you say that.

Onana is a really good player and will get better. Villa should get their money's worth, but for £50m, we are also making a good profit and that's not exactly cheap.

I think he is a very likeable chap who is ambitious and hopefully he will have a great career.

It's not easy to see a young player with a lot of potential move on. But we shouldn't take it to heart so much. It's not a slight against the club at all, it's just the way the football business should work and the way that things should be. If you get player trading right, then we should hopefully have plenty more of these types of transfers going forwards.

[superpull]

We signed him for £30m and we're selling him for £50m. We lose some of the £20m profit due to a sell-on fee.
Everybody needs to get out of the amortised accounting tricks mindset. Cold, hard cashflow is just as important as regulatory sleight-of-hand.
We have circa £16m in cash and space in our books for less than a £30m player (less than as we want our books to improve, dont we?)

That's the numbers people need to keep in mind when deciding whether this is a good deal or not.

I think we will not be able to replace him with anybody that has near as high a ceiling as him.
But we can definitely add 2 players that will improve the team for the next year.

[brap2]

Could probably do with a few more pages of this couldn't we

[Cereal Killer]

Could probably do with a few more pages of this couldn't we

We could, it’s been useful occasionally, but the threads a bit hit and miss, not sure it’ll ever become world class

[Cozzie]

Gonna miss his big leggy tackles like.

[brap2]

We could, it’s been useful occasionally, but the threads a bit hit and miss, not sure it’ll ever become world class

Just wish someone would finally explain that actually it's not that we don't rate him it's just we won't miss him and actually we are getting £50m for him.

If someone could then helpfully confirm that actually he is very good and might even look better at a different team.

If at all possible could we then go back to the idea that actually we know he's got ability, but we didn't see it enough to care.

But then finally just circle back to well actually