Critical Everton move fast in transfer window

Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti has confirmed the Blues top brass will be meeting early next week to discuss their targets with the summer transfer window just around the corner.

This transfer window is a hugely important one for Everton. In fact as I’ve said before, I think it is perhaps the most important one in many a year.

The situation the club and team are in, is another wasted season of underachievement and instability, with three managers in a year and a bottom half finish to boot.

If the Toffees don’t get their recruitment right this summer, then I can’t see Everton returning to a position of competitiveness in the Premier League, regardless of how illustrious their manager is.

And in fact it could be a campaign of struggle nearer to the relegation zone than European qualification. After the events of this week and all we’ve had to endure this season, I’m really not sure I can face that prospect!

So the Blues hierarchy must get the right players in and also ship out as much of the dead wood from within the existing squad as they possibly can.

But while they have to get the recruitment right, they also need to try and act quickly to secure those players.

Too often in past transfer windows, Everton have seemed slow to make their moves while other clubs act fast and sign players early.

Obviously ensuring you sign the ‘right’ players is more important than just getting your signings done quickly for the sake of it. But I feel that the Blues need to be aggressively pursuing the individuals they want.

There has been some indication that this is what’s happening now. The Blues management seemed to be very quick off the blocks to try and seal a deal for Lille’s Brazilian centre-back Gaberiel Magahales, who was supposedly a key target of Ancelotti.

Some reports suggested Everton had in fact agreed terms with him, more or less, before the Covid crisis put everything on hold.

And a similar situation might be happening in the case of Southampton midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg at the moment. Although I’m not convinced he’s the type of player the Blues need.

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However, in past transfer windows the Toffees have waited often to the end of the window to make some of their biggest moves and this has led to some erratic recruitment.

This seems to to be something that Marcel Brands is quite content to do. In two summer windows, he has made many of his signings on deadline day.

In 2018, this led to Everton acquiring Bernard, Yerry Mina, Andre Gomes and Kurt Zouma in the final hours and minutes of the window. Last summer the major acquisition was Arsenal’s Alex Iwobi.

None of these signings have been an unqualified success, although to be fair, Zouma was only on a season-long loan and went back to Chelsea at the end of the 2018-19 campaign.

Mina and Gomes have had an inconsistent and injury-hit time at Goodison Park while Bernard and Iwobi, despite their talent, have ultimately proved to be major disappointments.

With Everton having no European football to offer, there is going to be plenty of competition for some of the players that Ancelotti might have earmarked as ones he wants. So moving rapidly to try to get deals done might well be crucial.