Everton boss coy about more player signings in transfer window

After adding five new players so far in the current transfer window, there seems little immediate prospect of the club making any further signings before the window closes.

Coventry City v Everton - Pre-Season Friendly
Coventry City v Everton - Pre-Season Friendly | Catherine Ivill - AMA/GettyImages

Sean Dyche has responded to questions about whether Everton will go back into the transfer window again before the end of the month.

His comments seem to indicate that the Toffees have basically done their incoming transfer business and are probably unlikely to make any further moves for new players... well at least for now.

So far, the Blues have brought in five players: Jack Harrison, Tim Iroegbunam, Iliman Ndiaye, Jesper Lindstrom and Jake O'Brien.

The majority of those players - Harrison, Ndiaye and Lindstrom - represent an attempt to strengthen the team's anemic attack, which managed a paltry forty goals last season. Meanwhile, Iroegbunam is a midfielder and O'Brien a centre-back.

So, it is a fairly balanced set of additions, with an understandable and needed focus on trying to ensure Everton score more goals during the upcoming campaign.

This early and decisive activity perhaps took many Blues supporters by surprise, as all the talk going into the transfer window had been about the club's terrible finances, a possible player fire-sale and all the uncertainty about the future ownership too.

That ownership issue looked as though it might finally get resolved when The Friedkin Group agreed an exclusivity deal with Farhad Moshiri early in July.

There seemed good reason to think that at last things could be moving in a positive direction after so many false dawns over the last few years.

However, all that optimism proved to be misplaced again as the deal eventually fell through leaving Everton still without a resolution to this obviously critical problem.

Despite this, there had already been a couple of early outgoings after Lewis Dobbin left for Aston Villa followed by Ben Godfrey's move to Atalanta, which raised much-needed cash.

Those player sales together with income from TV and the Premier League have stabalised the Toffees finances and avoided a cash crisis this summer.

As a result the club were able to move to secure their main targets early on and given Sean Dyche and his coaching staff the maximum amount of time to integrate their new signings into the squad.

Early pre-season matches would seem to indicate that is certainly needed with the Blues failing to win either of the games, having to come from behind to draw with Sligo Rovers and then being decisively beaten 3-0 at Coventry City.

Of course pre-season games are notoriously difficult to assess with many reserve players brought in and the focus being mainly on fitness for others returning from the summer break.

Having said that though, Everton do look a little worryingly under-cooked - especially up front - and need to find a bit of form soon.

While the current squad does look better balanced, at least on paper than last season's, I would ideally like to see another forward - preferably a striker - one more central midfielder and a reliable and injury-free right-back signed.

It seems highly unlikely I will get all my wish-list granted, but it is still very possible the Blues will move for another player or two if affordable and probably loan deals, can be done.