Busted

Whatever way you look at it, however the misguided fans attempt to put a positive spin on Everton’s late entry into the transfer market, yesterday was a bad day for Everton Football Club.  In pure squad numbers terms, we have one fewer player in an already poorly-sized squad.  In quality terms, the disparity is even greater.  In the last 12 months Everton has sold two of their best players and the only truly creative ones we have.  Bad timing; bad management. 

Losing Arteta is plain daft.  Yes he’s 29 and has endured a couple of injured-plagued seasons, but to my mind he was the only Everton player capable of putting his foot on the ball and making things happen.  We just committed creative, ball-playing suicide.  More importantly, Arteta was an icon for the fans, regarded by most opposing fans as our best player.  The statement Kenwright and co made by allowing Arteta to leave tells all fans that we’re bust.

And don’t give me all this shite about ‘player power’ and Arteta wanted to leave.  If they wanted to, they could have just thought about the ramifications of losing such a key player and said no.  No Mikel, you’re under contract, one of our key players and we need you more than Arsenal.  End.

At the same time, we bade farewell to two of our four strikers.  One being our top goalscorer last season.  Amongst most other regulars, I shared much frustration at Beckford’s limitations last season.  He was having to learn to play at the highest level on his feet and clearly struggled.  He also seemed at times to be disengaged from the club, the manager and other players.  At Brentford in the cup for example, after half-time Beckford actually walked across the pitch with the Brentford bench players.  But ultimately, he scored 10 goals and for the final third of the campaign was our number one forward.  So we sold him.

Yakubu finally left too.  At least that one had been on the cards for some time as Phil Neville pointed out this morning. 

It leaves Everton with just Louis Saha and Victor Anichebe as our forwards.  One permanently injured, the other incapable of scoring.  Adding the Argentinian may prove to be some masterstroke but it is highly unlikely.  If he was any good, the European scouts would have been all over him years ago.  Even if Stracqualursi is good, he’ll take a significant time to adapt to England in a playing and living sense.  Moyes doesn’t have form in developing such players.  Take a look at the three forwards who came in last year.  Vellios, Gueye and Joao Silva.  Hardly given a sniff.

Drenthe (Arteta’s replacement) at least has plenty of experience in Europe.  He started a lot of games at Real Madrid in the first couple of years of his time there but Mourinho hasn’t used him.  From a distance it could be Seedorf.  From a distance.  Presumably he’ll link up on the left flank with Baines and you cannot help but feel he has to be an upgrade on any of our other left-sided options.

But I really don’t care enough. 

Everton has reached a point where they have a collection of key squad players on good contracts.  With insufficient income being generated over the next few years because of our facilities and our ownership unable to move themselves on, we will have to continue selling assets to fund those contracts and any other salaries we incur when borrowing players from elsewhere.  Arteta went but it could have been Jagielka, Rodwell, Baines, Howard or Fellaini.  Expect one or more of them to go next summer.  As to Fellaini’s new contract, that seems as likely as Barkley being at Everton on his 20th birthday.

The club should be open and honest with the fanbase.  The journalists seem to finally have worked out just how skint we are, the club should do the same with the fans.  If the papers suggest we sold Arteta for £10m and Beckford for £4m, you can bet it’s significantly lower.  Arsenal are probably paying us half that up front and the rest on installments.  Leicester’s initial deal was just £3m. 

The squad continues to be run down, Kenwright and his cohorts attempt to keep the ship afloat and once again Moyes is having to make do whilst watching other mid-table teams add numbers and quality to their squads.  Stoke, QPR, Villa and Sunderland all improved themselves yesterday.  We’re more reliant than ever on David Moyes’ ability to pull large rabbits from hats.

Shambles.