Read Everton
Read Everton
Angus Kinnear did the full media circuit yesterday, and credit where it’s due — the man talks a good game.
Revenue up to £265m, apparently now top-third money in the Premier League. Recruitment as a collaboration, not a diktat. A “healthy tension” on the transfer committee between developing kids and buying to win now. All delivered with the polish of someone who’s done all this before, because he has.
Here’s the problem. None of it squares with a summer where Everton still don’t have a right-back a full six months after everyone agreed we needed one.
The numbers are real. The action isn’t.
I don’t doubt the revenue figures. The Hill Dickinson is generating money Goodison never could, and I believe the events business — Magic Weekend and whatever else gets booked in on a Tuesday night — will feed back into the squad eventually. Fine.
But “top third of the Premier League” is a bold old claim. Newcastle – also in the top third – have spent like Newcastle this summer. We spent like Everton — carefully, mostly under £25m a time, by Kinnear’s own admission.
No blowing the (bloody) doors off. His words.
I understand why. Years of PSR trouble don’t vanish because the accounts have turned a corner. Nobody’s asking for a reckless £100m marquee signing to prove a point. But there’s a difference between financial discipline and financial timidity, and we’ve settled comfortably into the second while describing it as the former.
A deal that shouldn’t need this much talking about
Kinnear’s line on Grealish was that he “was definitely loved” here.
Nice sentiment.
Doesn’t move a single conversation forward.
What we actually know: Grealish chose to rehab his injury on Merseyside last season when he didn’t have to. He’s fallen for the club, in Kinnear’s own phrase.
City, meanwhile, have made it about as clear as a club can that he’s surplus to requirements — a few minutes in the Community Shield but clearly not in Maresca’s plans, and they’ve shipped out Bernardo Silva, Rodri and reportedly Nico González from the same midfield he can’t get near.
This is not a player City are fighting to keep. This is a player they’d like off the wage bill.
That should, in theory, be the easiest deal in English football. A club that wants him, a player who wants them, a selling club actively looking to move him on, and a player who’s reportedly said he’s winning to take a pay cut.
Instead we get “remained in contact” and vague noises about financial considerations, as though the wages are some immovable object rather than a figure two willing parties can negotiate if they actually want it done.
What ambition would actually look like
Maybe there’s more happening behind the scenes than Kinnear’s letting on — there usually is. But from where I sit, this is exactly the deal a club with real ambition goes and gets over the line, loudly, and points to as proof things have changed.
The revenue’s there, apparently. There’s enough financial headroom, apparently. Yet the intent isn’t matching it yet.
Kinnear talks like a club planning to compete.
I’d like to see Everton buy like one — starting with the player who’s already told us that he wants to be here.
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