Everton seem set to lose out on Maddison
Today’s paper rumours include a story that supposed Everton target James Maddison is close to a shock move to Southampton.
The Sun on Sunday are claiming that Southampton are in advanced talks with the Norwich and England Under-21 star. If this story is true it would seem to represent a set-back to the new management regime’s Everton transfer strategy.
It appears as though Saints boss Mark Hughes has stolen a march on other Premier League clubs. He has made a £20 million bid, which the paper claim Norwich have accepted.
Of course the earlier rumours linking Maddison with a move to Everton might have been just that, it seemed that he would have fitted well into a new youth-orientated transfer philosophy.
He has had a very impressive season, albeit in the Championship. And he was one of the players of the season in that league.
There would be no guarantee he would be able to reproduce that form in the Premier League but he certainly seems a very promising prospect.
It worries me that if indeed Maddison was a player that Marco Silva wanted and Everton miss out on him, that could be setting a pattern for the rest of the summer.
I was very pleased to see Marcel Brands joining the Blues, even more than Silva. This felt like a really progressive move by the club.
But the Blues seemed to be retreating from a truly proactive transfer strategy when he was quoted as saying they were going to have to offload lots of players first before going into the market for new talent.
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He also made it clear there won’t be the kind of big spending again this summer as happened last year.
This always felt potentially like it would make Everton a hostage to fortune. Especially if, as I think it will, it proves difficult for the club to offload some of those players.
The Blues need a serious injection of pace and quality both in defence and attack.
This will surely take some big spending unless Brands can pull some gems out of the hat and on the cheap.
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Perhaps that’s the plan. However I feel that if Everton stick rigidly to this approach the club will find that preferred targets (like Maddison?) will be going to other clubs who are able and willing to move more quickly. That would be a serious concern.