Everton sign £32m Arsenal star in surprising summer transfer window predictionplaceholder image
Everton sign £32m Arsenal star in surprising summer transfer window prediction | Getty Images
Everton’s summer transfer window could be a strange one - according to Football Manager.
Everton’s new owners have kept the club’s purse strings relatively tight since taking over, largely because their team is still navigating its way through the financial issues created by the previous ownership – but could they make a bigger splash in the summer transfer market?
The Toffees are likely to bring a number of new players on board, but will they spend big or continue to build slowly and sensibly? We decided to take a peek into the summer using the most realistic simulation of the footballing future available to us: Football Manager 2026. We span a save a year into the future to see what Everton might get up to in a few months’ time – with some intriguing results.
£32m Arsenal star among this summer’s Everton signings – according to Football Manager
It’s fair to say that Everton’s board still weren’t prepared to spend too freely in our virtual summer, with a relatively lean £80m spent on transfers. But there was one rather surprising and splashy addition to the ranks.
Arsenal’s Leandro Trossard is apparently set to make the switch to the Hill Dickinson Stadium, with a £32m offer enough to snatch the versatile Belgian forward away from the Gunners and hand him to David Moyes. Given that Arsenal recently extended Trossard’s contract in real life, it’s doubtful whether this represents a realistic deal – but it wouldn’t be surprising to see a similar splash made in the final third.
The need to sign Trossard in our game, however, can be explained in part by the decision not to buy Jack Grealish after his loan spell – although Everton did spend £20m to make Merlin Röhl’s move from Freiburg permanent. The only other attacking player was budget-friendly buy Santiago Pierotti from Lecce, a player who looks likely to be little more than a back-up.
The Toffees were rather busier in defence. Adrian Barišić arrives from Basel in a deal worth just £3.2m, speedy Angolan right-back Aurélio Buta signs on a free transfer, and AS Roma’s Zeki Çelik arrives on a loan-to-buy deal worth £7.5m. None of them cost very much, and none of them look especially likely to offer Everton more than useful depth.
Another familiar face who signs in a busy if not necessarily thrilling transfer window is Brentford’s experienced midfielder Mathias Jensen, who signs for £10m and becomes an immediate starter, while £5m was all it took to get hold of Angers’ Himad Abdelli – pound-for-pound, perhaps the best bit of business done here based on his promising stats.
All in all, that’s seven players signed and perhaps not all that much of a difference made in terms of raw quality, although the added depth would surely be welcome. We’d assume that the real life Everton will be a little more adventurous, although some of the more budget-conscious deals here would certainly be a sensible starting point…
£46m wonderkid departs as Everton raise funds
Only two first-team players ended up leaving Merseyside in our save, with the likes of Jarrad Branthwaite staying put despite speculation that other Premier League sides might be interested – but one of the sales would certainly raise a few eyebrows.
Tyler Dibling gets flogged to Chelsea for £46m after an impressive year in our fictional version of football in which he scored six goals in 37 league matches. The real-life Dibling hasn’t yet been quite so productive and we doubt that such a deal takes place this summer – or that Everton would have sold him for quite so little if Chelsea were interested in reality.
Veteran defender Michael Keane is the other player to leave, with Everton letting him go on a free – curiously, not a single club picked him up and he was unemployed a month into the season once we finished our long holiday. We doubt that Keane would be short of offers if he did depart.
And that was that – mostly, a summer of status quo and stability, with the depth problem addressed but few major strides taken towards the construction of a team that will worry the top half of the table. Hopefully the real Everton will be a little more aggressive.
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