I always said you would judge the window on September 1st and in all likelihood September 5th when you’ve had a few days to let it sink in. That is never more so than with this window. There needs to be an evaluation of the processes, and an evaluation of the playing staff and I suspect differing conclusions will be drawn. Below I will focus on the processes of the window (it will be longer I apologise, feel free to not read).
The key questions aims of this window were two fold- firstly the “come out of the window stronger than we entered” which is a useful mission statement from Martinez. A second one emerged though which was “make the football world take notice”. That is going to be more what I focus on today as I would say that is the fairer immediate question. Frankly anyone could have improved on how we ended last season.
It is hard not to judge the window as an unmitigated disaster. In isolation it must go down as one of the worst windows ever. When you consider the clubs context I don’t think I’ve ever felt as let down as I do this morning. 2/3’s of premier league clubs broke their transfer records this window. I haven’t looked but I imagine most will show a positive net spend. That is the context we exist in, money is awash in English football. That alongside Everton having a new owner looking to kick Everton on back to where we want to be and offering suitable finance to do so. Yet we have a negligible net spend (potentially no net spend depending on how you read add on fees).
I could run a chronological look at the window but sense it would be dryer than it end up being. It seems to make more sense to focus. The first mistake from what I can see was briefing the press of our spending plans. The 100 million figure was thrown around in too many outlets with too many people for it not to have been briefed. In business you learn never to promise anything that you can’t deliver.
Allowing such figures to get out, slogans such as “nothing will ever be the same” heightened expectations well beyond either the capability or intention of the current board. They placed undue pressure on themselves which was naïve.
I’m sure there will be some with the hard luck stories and saying we were unlucky. We may well have been. It sounds like Napoli and Porto behaved badly. So why put ourselves in that situation? Again in business you should avoid putting yourself in a position with negotiations where you are over the barrel. Why was there not more urgency earlier in the window? I strongly suspect we thought we’d get it done on the last day as we have before. It’s a needless and unprofessional risk that has now left us majorly light in key areas.
Perhaps the most disappointing and saddest part of the window is whats happened with John Stones, who at City looks to be excelling and there is already talk of him being a captain. The plan was to sell Stones to release wage funds to spend on big players as
@The Esk indicated. Is this what we sold John Stones for? To loan Enner Valencia?
The reality is we could have done all of our business we wanted too without selling Stones. We may have had to have shifted Cleverley or McCarthy but it could have been done. We sold a future England captain and not only that we lowered our price in order to do so. Had we intended to use the funds to buy Williams, Valencia and Bolasie we should have demanded crazy money for Stones, 70 million or something daft.
What happens next summer? Who will we sell to have to fund our spending spree then? It seems inevitable either Lukaku or Barkley will have to go. Will we do any better than signing a West Ham reject on loan with the funds we have?
There has been a lack of planning and complacency from day 1. The fact we let Koeman take an extra week off after he signed. That we let him delay signing for a number of weeks. That we took so long to get Walsh in. That we didn’t pursue our targets and put bids in until deadline day. That we took so long to sack Martinez. All of it is complacent and has cost us big time. I had kept quiet on most of it, as I always thought it was reasonable to give the new running of the club the entirety of a summer before making judgement. However the performance in player recruitment is worse than anyone could have forecast.
Unfortunately this does reflect badly on Moshiri. We can’t get away from that. In his defence it looks as if he has placed his trust in others and they should shoulder the brunt of the blame (I will come onto them) but ultimately the buck stops with him. If he is serious about Everton he now needs to stop pussyfooting around the issue and act. People have been given the entirety of the window and have simply not performed to anything approaching the standards required. Forget challenging the top 6 we were left begging mid table clubs to loan us their cast offs. He can’t directly be blamed for this as this wasn’t his decision, but a failure to act makes him complicit in this.
What does acting look like? For me Elstone now needs to go and Kenwright needs to be bought out and have nothing to do with Everton Football Club again. I have my suspicions who was leaking the figures to the press and stuff around signing “marquee” players and there is only one idiot who would crave the limelight and have suitable ego to do that. If he or Elstone are anywhere near Everton come the next window it would be a major negative.
I am really not interested in excuses any longer. We have been asked to show undue patience around the delays in getting Koeman signed and started, getting a DOF and then having to sell Stones. No more excuses. People now need to be working on deals today ready for January 1st. If we haven’t got people ready to go for that date, it will not be good enough.
The biggest damage done is our perception to players and agents. We are now the laughing stock of the rest of the premier league. I can’t imagine Lukaku or Koeman, brought in on a premise will be happy at whats ensued. Lads like Barkley may start to reconsider.
We had 4 main priority areas in the summer. Back up striker, extra defensive cover, goalkeeper and a creative midfielder. The best you can say is we may have covered one of those areas. We may get lucky with Stekelenberg. I know it’s a cliché but it won’t wash. We have failed to address 3 of the main 4 areas.
The ball is now firmly in Moshiri’s court. This isn’t a debatable issue it is cast iron incompetence. If he has any desire for Everton to be better than we are decisive action needs to be taken swiftly. We will see what he is all about over the next couple of weeks in what happens with the board. If Kenwright continues on, for me my support for him will match what I felt for Kenwright.
