How on earth has it come to this?
I fell asleep just after midnight, angry about another transfer day in which Everton once again left it late to do their business. A deadline day of twists, turns, rejections and last-minute trolley dashes around the not-so-bargain bin section has shown what sort of club Everton are to the watching football world.
Iliman NDiaye, Beto, Tim Iroegbunam, Beto, Adam Aznou and Nathan Patterson out.
Jack Grealish, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Folarin Balogun in.
It was a remarkably underwhelming end to the transfer window and one that has left Everton with one left back, one right back (who isn’t really a right back) and two senior strikers. I was sad that we wouldn’t be seeing Richarlison in an Everton shirt again and the squad looked more depleted than ever.
However, there was still worse to come.
I annoyingly woke up at 2am and rather than try to get back to sleep, did what I shouldn’t do and checked my phone.
‘Folarin Balogun walks away from a deal at Everton’
What? Is this actually happening? Are we seriously about to go into a Premier League season with one senior striker?
Balogun had spent the day at Finch Farm finalising a deal with Everton. The USA striker has not played a competitive game since appearing at the World Cup and a medical had raised an issue that Everton felt meant the deal with Monaco needed to be renegotiated. Hours passed and the deal was off. Then it was on. Then it was off again. Then we tried contacting Manchester United about a £10 million loan move for Joshua Zirkee – a striker allergic to scoring goals. Then there was a tentative enquiry for Aston Villa’s Tammy Abraham, who took one look at us and thought ‘no thanks’. This all unfolded in full view in front of the footballing world and exposed Everton’s incompetence for all to see.
And no one had a better view of proceedings than Folarin Balogun himself, who had seen all that he needed to see and, after being flown to the club from France on a private jet earlier that day, literally walked out of the building in the early hours of the morning. Deal off.
Evertonians and disappointment on deadline day is an all-too-familiar feeling. Season after season, fans are left baffled by Everton’s willingness to go to the wire to complete their transfer business. Yes, it can be exciting, like 2013 when we signed Gareth Barry, James McCarthy and Romelu Lukaku, but do you see well-run clubs like Brighton and Brentford doing this? No, you don’t. Because relying on everything coming together on deadline day is a sign of desperation and incompetence.
But that’s what the people running Everton Football Club are. Incompetent.
Angus Kinnear had fronted up before the season started, saying that 70% of business is done in the last week of the transfer window. He promised a specialist right back and one worth waiting for. He stressed that Everton’s finances were in good health and that all money gained from sales would be reinvested in the playing squad. Fast forward ten days and the owners were ready to accept a bid for Harrison Armstrong – Everton’s brightest young talent in over two decades – for £40 million from Nottingham Forest. Fan anger and disbelief rightly caused the owners to see sense on that issue, but now we were being told that a sale was necessary in order for the club to do any further business this summer.
How many sales were exactly needed wasn’t specified, but suddenly Everton were losing players at an alarming rate. Over £100 million was brought in from the sales of Iliman Ndiaye, Beto and Tim Iroegbunam. That would be enough, right?
For only £4 million of that to be reinvested in Ainsley Maitland-Niles, a player we were forced to settle on after moves for Guela Doue, Daniel Munoz, Alistair Johnston, Matty Cash, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Timothy Castagne and Kenny Tete didn’t come to fruition, is bordering on criminal. A specialist right back is what we were promised. Yes, Maitland-Niles has played right back for the last few seasons at Lyon, but ‘specialist’ wouldn’t be a word you’d ever use to describe him.
“We have to sign a right back”
This was the talk all summer from Evertonians, including Prime Minister Andy Burnham. It had been square pegs in round holes with Jake O’Brien being forced to play there for the last 18 months. The baton was then passed to central midfielder Merlin Rohl.
The situation was comedic, even bordering on parody at times. But to now be left with one recognised striker in the squad is like something out of a horror film. It’s a sorry state of affairs when you’re scrolling down Transfermarkt at 2:22am looking at the strikers available as free agents.
“I wonder if Karim Benzema would fancy a season at the Hill Dicko?”
”I reckon a 39 year old Jamie Vardy still has the legs to come on in the last ten minutes of a Premier League game.”
”Danny Ings was a tidy little player about ten years ago.”
These are actual thoughts that run through your head because this is the state of things at Everton Football Club. How has it been allowed to come to this?
There have been enough red flags and poor decisions made now for fans to step up their action. If Angus Kinnear, Mark Watts, Nick Hammond and Nick Cox had anything about them, they’d be offering their resignations this week.
As for The Friedkin Group (TFG), they clearly don’t have a clue about how to run a football club. I thought that the days of mad ownership were behind us when Farhad Moshiri sold the club to TFG in late 2024. There had been rumblings of discontent at the group’s other club, AS Roma, at how they were being run, but surely these were better than the prospect of extremely questionable 777? Surely, we can now push on as a club with a brand new stadium, challenge for things and be excited about the future.
The answer to that is no. This is Everton Football Club. Nil Satis Nisi Optimum (Nothing but the best is good enough) is just a nice little motto to put on the badge of an overpriced Castore shirt. It has no place being used at a club like Everton. For far too long we have trudged through the swamp of mediocrity and for far too long, it’s just been allowed to happen without consequence.
The time for mass protest is now. Stop buying the overpriced pints and cookies. Any anger you feel about this situation needs to be directed at the ownership and kept away from the players and manager. They are going to need us now more than ever.