Amadou Onana

[Trowel]

[Gash]

It was all going so well until they went full Jesse Lingard with the handshake.

[sam of the south]

It was all going so well until they went full Jesse Lingard with the handshake.

Ah allow it, man

[brap2]

Big boost having this man back

[Cereal Killer]

Apparently Barcelona will only buy him if we lower our asking price significantly

Or they just fuck off if they can’t afford him

[Bluedylan1]

Apparently Barcelona will only buy him if we lower our asking price significantly

Or they just fuck off if they can’t afford him

Load of clubs linked with him though, so I don't think that'll be an issue. Arsenal, Man U or Newcastle I reckon.

[Cozzie]

Be Arsenal or Newcastle I reckon.

[Shogun]

Aknowledge he's a good player but if we can sell him north of £50m then I'd be more than happy. Not a game changer at all and especially so with Dycheyball

[The Doc]

If we sell for 50 we're not actually making that much money on him. I'd be disappointed with 50.

[Toddacelli]

If we sell for 50 we're not actually making that much money on him. I'd be disappointed with 50.

Same. If we sell for £50M we would probably have to put some in the pot. So if we spent what’s left on a single player - would we be able to replace him?

Unlikely, so the squad would be weaker.

Sell for silly money as per current inflated prices and we may be able to put some in the pot, replace him with someone who is half decent and take a punt on one or two potential future Onana’s and the squad is stronger.

[brap2]

The debate burns bright on the cesspit app.



The question for me is, why are Onana and Garner viewed through such different lenses?

[Bluedylan1]

The question for me is, why are Onana and Garner viewed through such different lenses?

For me, as a fanbase I think we're conditioned to be almost suspicious of talent and we're equally conditioned to be far too glowing about good old fashioned graft.

I think part of it comes from us and part comes from the media. The part from the media is people like Carragher and Neville and Kenwright repeating for years and years that what Everton fans want is hard work and aggression, and it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then, when new managers and players join the club, or when Thelwell talks, you hear the same old stock phrases trotted out about ''Everton fans like hard work above all else'', like a PR officer has advised them to say those things (which probably is the case, I would suggest, because it happens far too often for it to be coincidental).

I mean hard work is a basic given. It's a non-negotiable at this level. KDB runs his arse off. Pep, Klopp and Arteta's systems rely heavily on a base of hard work for all the players, even the superstars. That is an absolute given at all levels of football, and should not need saying. But for some reason at Everton, it's expressed as a virtue, because of the conditioning that people like Kenwright have engaged in.

So then a mythology emerges around us as a club, and many of the fans and players buy into that narrative heavily. And the way we view Garner and Onana is just another example of that in a long line of the way we criticise the work rate of our most talented players (Stones, Lukaku, Barkley to name a few others), and how we overhype people who run around a lot doing not very much.

It's really sad. Because the odd time when we've come to life as an actual football team, like Martinez's first season or the start of that season under Carlo, it's like we snap out of the hypnosis and the bullshit about graft, and realise ''hang on a minute, we love good football, this was the School of Science, we've just forgotten what it looks like''. Unfortunately when that fades away, we pop back into our little regressive holes and mumble ''hard work'' again in the foetal position.

[Audrey Horne]

[AjaxAndy]

I've been quite critical of Onana at times as I don't think he does enough to influence games given his talent.

I've also (at times) been complimentary of Garner because I feel he's playing to the max of his ability.

However with Onana having been out and now back I've realised how important he is, and although I thought he was poor in the first half against West Ham he was very good second half.

He's more vital than I probably realised... But still imo needs to influence games more and stop shooting from 25 yards when there's almost no chance he gets it with 5 miles of the goal.

We can't build play without him though and so hopefully he's back fit now and can play regularly as we're a worse team by far without him.

[Goaljira]

The debate burns bright on the cesspit app.

The question for me is, why are Onana and Garner viewed through such different lenses?

It's also got to be a bit of expectation. Onana is going to be up there as one of our most expensive signings(Sig and Richi the only two more expensive I can think of) and to a club like ours who doesn't get to spend that much often and doesn't have much to spend every window you have to think that maybe for that much we're getting someone who can impact the game like the other two mentioned, or in a midfielder someone who dominates the game.

And we don't get much money in for our sales either. Most leave on a free, or for not much in the last year of their contract compared to their relative value(Iwobi).

Now in reality that much money buys the top teams a squad player, or another cog in the machine. It's not game changer money. Look at how much Rice, Caicedo, Fernandez, Szobozloi, Mount and even Matteus Nunes went for.

Conversely, depending which report you read Garner cost peanuts or at most peanuts and space raiders. And he was billed as 'England U21 midfielder' so again your being conditioned to think 'he's just a kid, don't expect much'. Where as Onana was billed as 'Belgian International' from the start, despite not playing that many senior games of football before he signed for us.

So one was a full International for a Top 5 team, who cost what to us is a lot of money, and the other is an U21 International who didn't cost much. So you can see how people's perception and expectation levels are artificially skewed.