Will Everton bring in a right-back this summer?

While Rafa Benitez moved quickly to bolster the wide attacking options for his Everton team, there has still been no concrete moves by the club to sign a right-back.

This position has been a priority and a problem for successive Everton managers. Despite the ongoing issues with finding a long-term successor to Seamus Coleman, given his age and injury history, the Toffees have been unable to find a replacement for the veteran Irishman.

Last season the problems of finding an effective balanced right side to the team contributed to the inconsistent performances. we witnessed far too often.

Having failed to sign a new right-back last summer, the Blues have been strongly linked again with a move for several new full-backs including Max Aarons and then after his strong showing in the Euros, Dutch international Denzel Dumfries.

There were plenty of rumours that the Toffees wanted to sign the Netherlands defender but recently those stories have gone very quiet.

Now we are hearing that perhaps Everton simply can’t afford the PSV player because of Financial Fair Play rules and the need to sell a number of squad players first.

This situation is the consequence of several years of reckless heavy spending on mediocre players like Gylfi Sigurdsson, Theo Walcott and Alex Iwobi, which has left the club with a lot of underperfoming footballers on huge salaries and increasing levels of debt.

Then following the Covid shutdowns, the financial consequences of which were huge, the Blues find themselves massively in the red.

There are two responses to this situation. Either simply ignore the rules on this and spend what you want and take the consequences, probably a fine possibly a European ban for a year. Or spend within those constraints and make improving the squad a much harder, longer process.

The events of the past few years surrounding FFP and club’s transfer spending culminated with the fiasco over the breakaway attempted European Super League by the continents self-styled ‘top’ clubs late last season.

This was a contemptuous attempt to create a guaranteed income for the richest and most successful European clubs in direct opposition to UEFA and circumvent the FFP rules. Unsurprisingly, those clubs have not paid any significant price for this blatant piece of self-serving behaviour, which almost ruined football.

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Given all this, I have been tempted to say ignore these rules that appear to have been so obviously selectively applied in the past. But the club doesn’t seem inclined to do so.

Anyway, whatever the real truth, it does look as though the Toffees are unwilling or unable to fork out what it takes to secure Dumfries’ signature, even though his price seems to have fallen. So we are no nearer to knowing what is going to happen this summer.

Then there is also the fact that Everton have given club captain Coleman a new contract extension.

I have no problem with that as the Irishman has been a great servant of the Blues over the past ten years or so, but it’s obvious he’s not a long-term answer given his age and all those injury problems.

But does this decision and the lack of movement in the transfer market, mean that he is likely to be Everton’s starting right-back again when the next campaign kicks off in three weeks time?

Well whatever is the outcome there, I hope it doesn’t mean that the Blues fail to bring in a new player in that position before the window closes as they did last summer, because that could have a hugely negative impact on next season.