Everton fail to strengthen in transfer window
The January transfer window has closed and despite some fairly persistent rumours about player comings and goings, Everton didn’t sign anyone and only let a few fringe squad players leave on loan.
The biggest story affecting Everton concerned the possibility of Idrissa Gueye leaving for pastures new, specifically PSG.
That rumour seemed to gather pace during the month but in the end Gueye didn’t join the French club and remains an Everton player.
The transfer window was a pretty underwhelming event for everyone, not just the Blues. It was not exactly filled with major, big money moves.
Everton didn’t sign anyone of course and this situation raises several important questions.
First of all why haven’t Everton at least made a more determined attempt to solve obvious and glaring problems with the side, such the lack of a recognised centre-forward and regular goal scorer.
The rumours that the Toffees were going to make a bid for the Chelsea striker Michy Batshuayi on deadline day yesterday, never seemed really convincing, at least to me.
To me it seemed like Everton were allowing rumours of a move for him to circulate in order to assuage doubts and frustrations some supporters have felt at the club’s lack of transfer activity.
The club apparently were reluctant to buy the player outright and the fee being quoted of around £35 million was absurdly high.
And as the Blues already have a Chelsea player on loan, Kurt Zouma, they couldn’t take Batshuayi on loan. So in the end he went to Crystal Palace.
The Belgian international wouldn’t necessarily have been the complete answer to Everton’s goal scoring problems.
However if it had been possible, he might have been worth bringing in on-loan, to see if he could fulfil the potential he has sporadically showed.
But the Blues go into the latter part of the season without having solved this problem for the team.
I have been interested by recent comments from owner Farhad Moshiri about the cost of wages and the money spent etc on players.
Obviously if you buy a Premier League football club and want that club to be competitive with the leading sides in the league, you’re going to have to spend a serious amount of money.
Now it’s true Moshiri has provided plenty of funds over the past few years for various managers, Ronald Koeman, Sam Allardyce and Silva.
But the truth is that Everton are still a very long way from competing for trophies let alone a top-four place and Champions League football. This season has surely underlined that point again clearly.
So if you are serious about bring back success to a club you may have to spend money for several seasons in a row without perhaps seeing any tangible reward at first. Yes keeping control of finances is important but I think that a football club is a little different from more traditional businesses.
Most businesses count their health and success essentially in terms of the money they make and if they are profitable. But for a football club, at least as far as its fans are concerned, what matters is trophies and on-field success.
I reckon most supporters are not too worried if the club is making a profit year-on-year if the silverware keeps coming in. The point of having a very rich owner is so that he (or she) can underwrite such spending and sustain some degree of loss-making.
If we’re going to return to a situation where Everton basically don’t spend money on strengthening the team without selling other players first, what’s the point of an owner like Moshiri?
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What Everton have to ensure is that when, or if, the Toffees do move into the proposed new stadium in Bramley Moore dock, the team must be competitive. Because it will be virtually impossible to strengthen on the field when the financial pressures and need to fill that new ground take precedence.
Tottenham approach is the model to follow. The north London club invested heavily in the team to ensure they were consistently competitive before they made their (belated) move into the new White Hart Lane stadium.
This is the challenge that Moshiri and the Blues board have to confront and tightening the purse strings now doesn’t seem the right strategy. This also appears significant at the moment given that Moshiri has spent so much of his time and money to bring Silva to Everton.