13 - Neal Maupay - next best thing to useless

I can't say I have seen much of this guy, but maybe he's on FL's radar?

The Marxist Anarchists in Gladdy singing "More Pay!  More Pay!" has a ring to it.

Maupay is crap. Needs 10 chances per goal and has an attitude. Good mate of mine is a Brighton fan and they can't wait to get rid of him despite only having Welbeck as a forward. If he's the best we can get then we are fucked

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

callmebubbles wrote:Maupay is crap. Needs 10 chances per goal and has an attitude. Good mate of mine is a Brighton fan and they can't wait to get rid of him despite only having Welbeck as a forward. If he's the best we can get then we are fucked

He is the very definition of average. He's a striker, which is a selling point as far as we're concerned right now, but I think I'd rather stick with Rondon.

Can we sign Mick Lynch? He's the best available striker in the country at the moment. Would be good value in the post match interviews as well.

Meanwhile......Ellis Simms....

It was a blatantly dumb decision given our lack of forwards. Now we are scrabbling around for anyone

Looks like it's happening. Gutted, championship quality player at best. We are a joke

callmebubbles wrote:Looks like it's happening. Gutted, championship quality player at best. We are a joke

This has been our reality since Big Mosh came here.
We get what's left unless we are willing to pay players and agents way over the top.
Who else among the decent forwards, is willing to come here?
Maupay is now our standard.

Yankthattoffee wrote:

callmebubbles wrote:Looks like it's happening. Gutted, championship quality player at best. We are a joke

This has been our reality since Big Mosh came here.
We get what's left unless we are willing to pay players and agents way over the top.
Who else among the decent forwards, is willing to come here?
Maupay is now our standard.

Yup, realism bites. We are somewhere between a Blackburn and a Brighton, so we have a choice between Blackburn's best striker or Brighton's worst striker, or maybe both.

It's all about getting bodies in now, cut-price bodies. At least we'll be marginally better off than we were before and, once DCL is back, we might have someone to bring off the bench up front. We have no ambition beyond staying in the PL until BMD is completed, especially as we wasted so much money over the last five years. Whether the current squad is adequate, allowing for Maupay and maybe one or two others of a similar standard coming in this week, is the unknown.

hairy cataract wrote:

Yankthattoffee wrote:

callmebubbles wrote:Looks like it's happening. Gutted, championship quality player at best. We are a joke

This has been our reality since Big Mosh came here.
We get what's left unless we are willing to pay players and agents way over the top.
Who else among the decent forwards, is willing to come here?
Maupay is now our standard.

Yup, realism bites.  We are somewhere between a Blackburn and a Brighton, so we have a choice between Blackburn's best striker or Brighton's worst striker, or maybe both.

It's all about getting bodies in now, cut-price bodies.  At least we'll be marginally better off than we were before and, once DCL is back, we might have someone to bring off the bench up front.  We have no ambition beyond staying in the PL until BMD is completed, especially as we wasted so much money over the last five years.  Whether the current squad is adequate, allowing for Maupay and maybe one or two others of a similar standard coming in this week, is the unknown.

and once again....Ellis Simms

Trossard definitely the better of the Brighton forward line.

Pros - Premier league experience, an actual striker.

Cons - 8 goals last year, shortarse.

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:Yep, underwhelming, but let's look at the positives:

1. He's actually a striker. And a mobile one at that.
2. He's got some pace. That's really important. We must have been the slowest team in the PL by a country mile over the last five or so seasons.
3. He's proven in the PL. He's no great shakes IMO but we know he can get by in this division. The risk with signing Djibril Abdouneverheardofhim from the French league is always that we'll have another Gbamin or Tosun on our hands, out of their depth in the wrong league.

(In the Moyes days, random obscure signings could be exciting because he could spot a player - remember he wanted to sign Essien from Bastia, before he even joined Lyon - but nowadays I don't trust our scouting staff at all.)

Where we are now, we just need players who can contribute in some way to keeping us in that fucking division. Signing players with PL know-how - Coady, Tarkowski, Maupay - is sensible however "meh" we think some of these players actually are. Options are limited, we need to just get who we can get. Let's hope this one works out because we're dead if it doesn't.

Unless it will be Maupay plus another striker...  Nah, who am I trying to kid.

Yeah, it's all about attaining mediocrity - that's our short term aim. We need to build a side that looks a bit like a Brighton or a Crystal Palace or even an Aston Villa. A solid mid-table nonentity. Right now we're a long way behind those teams, especially without Richarlison and Gordon if he does go.

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:Yep, underwhelming, but let's look at the positives:

1. He's actually a striker. And a mobile one at that.
2. He's got some pace. That's really important. We must have been the slowest team in the PL by a country mile over the last five or so seasons.
3. He's proven in the PL. He's no great shakes IMO but we know he can get by in this division. The risk with signing Djibril Abdouneverheardofhim from the French league is always that we'll have another Gbamin or Tosun on our hands, out of their depth in the wrong league.

(In the Moyes days, random obscure signings could be exciting because he could spot a player - remember he wanted to sign Essien from Bastia, before he even joined Lyon - but nowadays I don't trust our scouting staff at all.)

Where we are now, we just need players who can contribute in some way to keeping us in that fucking division. Signing players with PL know-how - Coady, Tarkowski, Maupay - is sensible however "meh" we think some of these players actually are. Options are limited, we need to just get who we can get. Let's hope this one works out because we're dead if it doesn't.

Unless it will be Maupay plus another striker...  Nah, who am I trying to kid.

Yeah, it's all about attaining mediocrity - that's our short term aim.  We need to build a side that looks a bit like a Brighton or a Crystal Palace or even an Aston Villa.  A solid mid-table nonentity. Right now we're a long way behind those teams, especially without Richarlison and Gordon if he does go.

I'm thinking Gordon will stay.
If we were getting £60M for him, I think we'd be going after better than Maupay.
Trossard would be good. Anyone who has been in my fantasy team is OK by me. (but not this year)

btw I like the look of the Warrington lad. Give him game time whenever possible. Ahead of Lil Tom already.

Yankthattoffee wrote:

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:Yep, underwhelming, but let's look at the positives:

1. He's actually a striker. And a mobile one at that.
2. He's got some pace. That's really important. We must have been the slowest team in the PL by a country mile over the last five or so seasons.
3. He's proven in the PL. He's no great shakes IMO but we know he can get by in this division. The risk with signing Djibril Abdouneverheardofhim from the French league is always that we'll have another Gbamin or Tosun on our hands, out of their depth in the wrong league.

(In the Moyes days, random obscure signings could be exciting because he could spot a player - remember he wanted to sign Essien from Bastia, before he even joined Lyon - but nowadays I don't trust our scouting staff at all.)

Where we are now, we just need players who can contribute in some way to keeping us in that fucking division. Signing players with PL know-how - Coady, Tarkowski, Maupay - is sensible however "meh" we think some of these players actually are. Options are limited, we need to just get who we can get. Let's hope this one works out because we're dead if it doesn't.

Unless it will be Maupay plus another striker...  Nah, who am I trying to kid.

Yeah, it's all about attaining mediocrity - that's our short term aim.  We need to build a side that looks a bit like a Brighton or a Crystal Palace or even an Aston Villa.  A solid mid-table nonentity. Right now we're a long way behind those teams, especially without Richarlison and Gordon if he does go.

I'm thinking Gordon will stay.
If we were getting £60M for him, I think we'd be going after better than Maupay.
Trossard would be good. Anyone who has been in my fantasy team is OK by me. (but not this year)

btw I like the look of the Warrington lad.  Give him game time whenever possible. Ahead of Lil Tom already.

I think you might be right about Gordon not going. Having said that, i had a feeling that we might announce three players in quick succession, funded by the Gordon deal. So maybe this will be the first of them, then next week just before the deadline we'll announce the sale of Gordon and the signing of James Garner and another forward, maybe Brereton Diaz or even some big unit from overseas. Not sure if Brereton Diaz and Maupay are too similar, but we do need a decent bench. If we had DCL, Maupay and Diaz, then we'd have plenty of options. None of them world-beaters, but at least we'd have a forward to bring off the bench if we were chasing the game.

This is part of an article in the Guardian by Barney Ronay -
The most striking part of Anthony Gordon’s proposed transfer to Chelsea is how quickly – despite not existing – it has already progressed to this final stage. Gordon to Chelsea for £60m: this probably won’t happen. But already mocking Anthony Gordon, laughing hysterically at his disastrous gambit, circulating clips of his failures, his paltry tally of deflected goals has become a kind of online happening.
The American novelist Don DeLillo has a character in one of his books who has a network of CCTV security cameras, and who starts realising that the sequencing is wrong, that things are happening on the screen before they happen in real life. This is how the Gordon transfer disaster feels. Do we actually need the football here? Do we need the long-form version, Gordon on the bench looking cold in a beanie hat, a much-mocked missed open goal, the Newcastle rumours? At what stage will content, eyeballs, reaction become all that matter? Can we save time by simulating all this using AI, or at the very least reducing it to a high-production musical montage?
And yet, of course, it does matter. Or at least, this one feels like it does. Gordon to Chelsea for £60m is such an extreme concept it is already causing harm simply by not happening. This is a nonexistent transfer that seems to capture so much that is transgressive about this industry, from the stupid money of English football, to the dislocation of how clubs should work, to the violent things football wants to do to the young people in its grip.
The first thing to say is that it may work out. Gordon is a late bloomer. He has a way of turning quickly with the ball, beating the press while scanning all the moving parts around him, that analysts at clubs such as Chelsea prize very highly. Also, it is only really the fee that makes this absurd. He shares an agent with Reece James. Chelsea need to manage their homegrown squad numbers. Why not?

But it is still nuts on a basic football level. Chelsea already have seven players in Gordon’s inside-forward position, all of whom are probably better at it. Chelsea no longer have an endless bank-of-dad loan fund. The fee being suggested for Gordon would be the third-biggest transfer in Bundesliga history, the eighth-biggest fee in Real Madrid’s history. Todd Boehly’s reputation is built on aggressive deal-making. Todd Boehly looks like he invented an electric car in the 1980s. But Todd Boehly is also a maverick billionaire and you’re not. Perhaps this signing is simply making a statement. The problem is that statement appears to be: I don’t know what I’m doing.

Does any of this matter? Inflated transfer fees are an everyday occurrence. But the thing about this one is its layers, the way the more you peel it, the more it stinks. History suggests this will be not be good for Gordon. For a player in a development stage he is in exactly the right place. He will play and improve. Moving to Chelsea will threaten this. This is how the story goes. Fine young players miss the chance to reach their ultimate ceiling. Fortunes are made. But the game as a whole is poorer for the talent-stockpiling model. Anthony Gordon at Everton playing every week, with desperation in his scurrying legs: this is a kind of poetry, the spectacle as it should be. Money will no longer allow it.

It is also bad for Everton. There is an idea this money might be “invested”, but far greater sums have already gurgled away down the waste disposal unit. Even if Gordon stays, Everton will have had five league matches with this noise buzzing around their best young player. And in the end the real question Gordon to Chelsea raises is the most basic one: what is the point these days of Everton football club? Is it to compete, to strive through smart moves and homegrown talent to match the top tier? Or simply to service those entities, to exist as a backdrop?

and now we have him

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/62695388

Not inspiring, but better than Rondon.

I'm pleased we've finally signed someone to play up front. Main thing about him is he's a shithouse and we need that after selling Richarlison. In fact, I think he might even be more loathed by other teams than Richie, which is saying something.

Welcome Neal, and may you constantly wind up the opposition, and score last minute winners.

Be great if he could get VVD sent off in the derby

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

Yankthattoffee wrote:and now we have him

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/62695388

Hmm. Maybe it's the lighting, but that signing photo suggests he's going prematurely grey. He's been with us literally for a couple of hours. This is what Everton does to people.

In other news, Coady has gone completely bald since our last game, Tarkowski's gout is playing up like a bastard, and Onana's missus is currently reassuring him along the lines of "it's alright love, it happens to a lot of men, you can get meds for this now and I wasn't that horny anyway, so why don't I make us a nice cup of tea?"

Also, you can't see it in the photo, but he's only 4' 11" tall. He uses it to his advantage though, nutmegging opposing defenders with his entire body.

As much as I want to believe we have an overall transfer strategy, I can’t help but imagine…

Kevin thelwell and Frank lampard are sitting in an office surrounded by numerous whiteboards and flip charts, both looking increasingly exasperated. Night is drawing in.

Kev: “what about Maupay?!”
Lamps: “oh fuck off”
….
“You’re serious, aren’t you?!”
….
“You know what, fine! (Standing up) FINE! Get Maupay, I don’t really give a shit any more…”

Lampards phone goes off.
“Yeah, sure babes. I’ll drop by the chippy on the way home.”

“Right Kev, I’m off home, you get maup, I’VE WON THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, YOU KNOW!”

Kev: “yes boss”

“ and that goal against Germany was over the line as well!!”

“Yes boss, it was”
“Night boss”

“…night Kev.”