Ancelotti hints no more big spending from Everton

Carlo Ancelotti has been speaking about future transfer windows and the Everton boss has hinted that the days of big spending are over.

Ancelotti thinks that Everton don’t need to shell out a lot of money to continue to strengthen the squad over the next two summer windows. This situation is largly the result of the Covid situation, which has severely reduced income.

The Toffees manager spent around £60 million last summer, whcih was a lot compared to many Premier League clubs. He brought in Allan, Abdoulaye Doucoure, James Rodriguez and Ben Godfrey. However, James Rodriguez it turns out, was a free transfer so most of that money went on the other three.

These have all been excellent signings overall with Doucoure and Godfrey in particular having hugely impressive seasons so far.

As usual the Blues are again being linked with a seemingly endless number of players and this has continued both before and after the recent January transfer window. Now Ancelotti is trying to dampen down expectation of another big summer of spending.

This season has though underlined once more that there is still quite a lot of surgery needed to this squad to make the team truly competitive at the top of the Premier League.

The regular and now almost predictable home defeats to sides that are on paper anyway, weaker than Everton, underline the inconsistent nature of many of the players Ancelotti has at his disposal.

While simply signing new players won’t necessarily deal with a problem, which seems as much at times mental as a question of talent, I think there is still a lot of improvements needed.

The key areas of the team that still need strengthening are right-back, centre midfield and the forward options. I would also say that Everton need to sort out who is the first-choice goalkeeper as well as I’m not sure Robin Olsen is a long-term alternative to the always erratic Jordan Pickford.

The Toffees need a long-term replacement for Seamus Coleman. The right full-back position has been a problem for a while and has forced Ancelotti to improvise using Mason Holgate often recently. So Everton do need a player like say Tariq Lamptey or perhaps Max Aarons.

In central midfield the Blues are over-reliant already on Allan and Doucoure, who have both been oustanding. Ancelotti has struggled to find a third midfielder to make his preferred 4-3-3 work using Andre Gomes, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Tom Davies.

One player strongly linked with Everton again is the Juventus player Adrien Rabiot. The Frenchman would at his best seem to be an excellent addition, providing further defensive solidity but most importantly quality attacking creativity too.

Together with a recently rejuvenated Davies and perhaps too a finally fit Jean-Philippe Gbamin, the Toffees might have enough additional central midfield support for their two summer signings. Then the Blues could consider selling players who have consistently under-performed recently like Gomes and Sigurdsson.

The major problems with Rabiot is he has a reputation for being difficult and the fee being quoted for him would seem to rule out a deal, if what Ancelotti is saying is correct.

Then we come to the team’s forwards. This season Everton have been overly dependent on Dominic Calvert-Lewin for goals and with the currently temporary but perhaps permanent exit on loan of Moise Kean and Cenk Tosun, there is a lack of depth and options behind him. Richarlison has also had a much poorer campaign and his goals have dried up significantly.

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The other forwards James Rodriguez and Alex Iwobi have not added a huge amount in terms of goals and the Toffees desparately need more pace up front.

A whole host of potential additions have been mentioned including Wilfried Zaha, Leon Bailey and Arkaduisz Milik.

I think ideally the Blues need both a forward versatile enough to operate wide and up front and an orthodox centre-forward to back-up Calvert-Lewin too. New signing Josh King might help solve this issue we will see.

Then finally what to do about the seemingly endless goalkeeping problem? I’m not convinced that Pickford can ever be the answer and although Olsen has been generally solid, he’s also not truly world-class. If Everton want to reach the top they do need a genuinely outstanding keeper.

So all this is a very big shopping list. If Ancelotti is correct and the Blues won’t be spending significantly in future windows, then it will take a lot of time, the pulling power of Ancelotti and some exceptionally good negotiating skills from Marcel Brands to secure all these additions.