Marcel Brands is set to sign a new contract to remain as Director of Football at Everton. So with that decision made the Dutchman and the club face another big summer in the transfer window.
Brands’ time at Everton has been a mixed one. He has brought in a lot of players some of whom have worked out while others haven’t.
Players like Lucas Digne and Yerry Mina have generally been good, particularly Digne who has been a revelation at left-back.
But on the debit side Andre Gomes has rarely shown the sort of form that he did for a while after he first signed from Barcelona.
Then there is the deal for Moise Kean. The Italian striker signed from Juventus in 2019 in a fanfare deal that brought one of Europe’s top young talents to Goodison Park.
But Kean has struggled to adjust to life in England, he didn’t seem to be given a chance to show what he had to offer by his then manager Marco Silva and although he had a few starts and scored a few goals he couldn’t ever nail down a regular place.
Then whan Silva left first under Duncan Ferguson then Carlo Ancelotti when he came in as Silva’s permanent replacement, Kean still had little opportunity to impress.
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Then last summer there was renewed speculation that the young Italian forward would be leaving during the window. In the end he did leave on loan to PSG just before the window closed.
I didn’t think that this was a decision that made sense. I felt that Kean should have been given more time at Everton to prove whether he could do a job up front.
Anyway he has enjoyed a good time in Paris and been scoring plenty of goals with the French champions. It now seems likely he will stay there when his loan period ends this summer.
Kean’s future is just one of a number of player issues that Brands has to resolve. While the Toffees got a number of players out of the door last month, those were mainly loan deals and the future of a player like Cenk Tosun is still up in the air.
Getting his big wages off the books permanently this summer will be a big challenge and a test of Brands ability to negotiate deals.
Ancelotti has struck up a good relationship with the Dutchman over the past year and so the two of them will hopefully be able to work their magic as they did last summer and secure some more incoming talent that will help the Blues improve further next season.