Sleepless In Seattle

The Everton squad is off to a training camp in Seattle ahead of a series of games on a tour of North America. Nice place to be based. Bit like the UK in terms of weather, but unlike anywhere in England, there's plenty of space. That's not to say Seattle is a city full of space. Some genius stuck the mother of all freeways right through the middle of it years back cutting off the waterfront from the main downtown cityscape. And it does have some of the worst traffic jams in the USA outside LA.

That aside, I love the place.

The travelling squad is pretty much a case of 'as you were' in terms of unenlightening additions and no obvious replacements for the departed Castillo, Van der Meyde, and Valente. You could easily argue with a shrug of the shoulders 'so what we managed without them for most of last season', which has validity. However, by May 2009, Everton were obviously running on empty with the squad stretched to the limit demonstrating our blatant need for reinforcements.

Outside of the re-signing of Jo, there have been no further additions. I refuse to count the youngsters we've poached from youth schemes away from our own. The rumours have run their course and we've not signed M'Bia, Tuncay, Owen, Hunt, Reo-Coker, Eagles, Defour or Moutinho. The Naughton story drags along through the dirt and I've lost complete interest in that now. The fact that it's 10 days or more since a concrete offer was made, countered by Spurs and followed by a whole series of increasingly bizarre scenarios even including another lad at Sheffield called Kyle. It does make you wonder what on earth the clubs, agents and players are up to.

All of which effectively leaves us with a starting 11 come August 15th of Howard, Hibbo, Lescott, Yobo, Baines, Fellaini, Neville, Pienaar, Osman, Jo and Saha. The weak link remains Hibbert and Osman. It's as obvious now as it was 4 years ago.