In my post just now mate, I'm omitting the fact we could indeed do 'both' this season, but as the Gordon sale has supposedly been about raising money to fund transfers (with greater ability to offer more up front - for specifically this season only) I was trying to point out that we can raise 23m (without me quoting silly numbers but trying to keep it low end realistic in terms of deals).
That's 23m we can use to make payments THIS season not full spend - but just to be able to offer more attractive offers to clubs (again why Gordon leaving is being said by some to be necessary to allow a higher calibre of player to be targeted)
@BlueToff interested in your take on have i got this completely wrong
My take, and I believe I'm correct here but I'm not a financial expert so others feel free to jump in, is that Everton have funds available, they just cannot spend the majority of them because of the limits of P&L. The owner would, for his many faults, pump a bit more money into the squad if he could. But really we don't want him to do that, we want to be sustainable and that means player trading. If we'd have been able to sell Richarlison like we can if we sell Gordon, we would have been okay this summer, but as it is that Richarlison money had to be used to offset some of the losses made over the last three years, and not all of it could be reinvested into the squad, which is why we are where we are.
If we had a sale of Gordon, it doesn't matter how much money is up front (though obviously more cash into the coffers right now would be great), it's still £50m (if that's the deal) of pure profit that we can count in this financial year. Gordon has no 'book value' as he was not bought, he's a homegrown talent and so it's all profit. That is absolutely huge for P&L. You can then throw in the money we are getting for Kean, which will already be accounted for in the 22-23 books, but obviously unlike this Gordon deal, not all of it is profit.
I won't pretend to know if it'll definitely mean Everton are in the clear but we would certainly be in a much stronger financial position to be able to spend more right now, and as long as that reinvestment was made smartly - so not going overboard with up front payments like paying £20m up front for MGW or something daft, or a £45m fee for a player - then it'd be a very sensible move, and we'd not find it too hard to replace Gordon's actual output.
You can also factor in Dele, which is probably money we accounted for paying (we don't know that for sure, though, because maybe the club always planned to move him on before the 20 game mark?) in this financial year. So that £10m fee - again we don't know how that had to be paid but there was a suggestion it was a lump sum - would no longer be counted for and thus might free us up further too, plus you have big wages off the books.
Selling Gordon would definitely, 100%, open up more opportunities to spend not just now, but also in January and next summer, we'd look a lot healthier on the books. But, I can see the concern that it'd be leaving it too late this window to go and get that quality in. I will repeat, though, that as talented as Gordon is, it really shouldn't be hard to replace his output. The same can't be said for Richarlison, who delivered in end product (goal contributions, basically).
I think we'll do business regardless, which is why I want to see us push on with moves for a striker right now. If Gordon goes, then we think about that when it happens, but as of right now for me it does not change what the urgent need in the squad is, and that has to be addressed regardless of his future. That only changes IMO if we were to push Chelsea to loan us Broja as part of the Gordon deal.