Can Everton really afford a James transfer gamble?
Given the level of investment, Everton finished miles off where they should have last season. Again. Carlo Ancelotti is set to be given a similar transfer fund to the £100million Marco Silva spent and wasted on players last summer, but the Toffees cannot keep throwing money around indefinitely; they at some point have to make smart transfer decisions with immediate pay-offs. Is now the time?
Of the major Everton signings made last summer, only Andre Gomes could be considered a success, and even he was better before his permanent move to Goodison Park. Very brief, early signs suggested Jean-Philippe Gbamin was a useful addition before injury cruelly kept him out for the season; he will come again.
But even those with Tigger-like levels of positivity would be stretched to go so far as to describe the performances of Moise Kean, Fabian Delph and Alex Iwobi as ‘inconsistent’, leaving the Eeyore realists among us to point out that they were in fact of course a complete waste of money.
Iwobi was the weirdest signing, and has been undeniably the worst. Why would you buy another right-footed winger when you’ve already got two others and no left-footed option? It’s easy to feel sorry for a club spending £27million on a player if that individual significantly underachieves, but when you sign someone with such an infamously poor end product, notions of sympathy are impossible. He scored one goal and claimed no assists last season; that’s about right. No transfer is a guaranteed success, but for f***’s sake give yourselves a chance.
The crop Everton are being linked with this summer do at least offer hope.
Abdoulaye Doucoure is a proven Premier League midfielder and the sort of player Everton are missing. Andre Gomes keeps them ticking, Tom Davies is a try-hard, but neither can pick up the ball, drive through challenges and initiate attacks like Doucoure. Watford reportedly rejected a £36.7m Everton offer for the Frenchman last summer, but are now thought to be willing to entertain offers short of that mark.
Another roving midfielder, Napoli’s Allan – who has been compared favourably with Arturo Vidal – is also said to have held talks with Everton. Ancelotti is a big fan of the Brazilian, having coached him during his time in Naples, but the Serie A club’s president, Aurelio de Laurentiis, has warned the Everton “buzzards” over attempting to lure Allan through their “impenetrable armour”.
Fikayo Tomori has been linked with a loan move, which seems like a deal to suit all parties. Everton, Chelsea and Kurt Zouma all benefited from a similar deal in the 2018/19 season, and with Thiago Silva set for a Chelsea medical on Thursday, Tomori would likely find himself even further from the first team were he to stick it out at Stamford Bridge. The centre-back has immense talent; Chelsea’s loss would very much be Everton’s gain.
And then there’s the proposed marquee signing. The sort of level of ridiculousness we were all waiting for – James Rodriguez has huge, mouth-watering flop potential.
Ancelotti bought him for Real Madrid and took him in his suitcase as he moved to Bayern Munich. And he does know how to get the best out of the Colombian, with his most prolific season coming under the Italian at Real Madrid in 2014/15, when he scored 13 goals and provided 13 assists.
But he’s started just 67 league games in the five seasons since; 18 in the last two. The 2014 World Cup Golden Boot winner is now the forgotten man.
Could he rediscover his form and turn out to be a smart £30million bit of business for Everton? Sure, he could. And they may claim he’s a risk worth taking. Why not bung a load of chips on a single number when you’ve spread the rest evenly and sensibly across the felt?
The problem is Everton aren’t currently in a position to gamble; they need all these transfers to be sure things. At best, James is a luxury they are currently ill-equipped to carry, and at worst he’s could cause the ethos of the team to suffer as he picks up a huge wage packet through doing very little.
He is the opposite of a safe bet – a one-in-ten pie-in-the-sky flirt with illusory prosperity who will far more likely turn out to be another expensive disaster.
Will Ford is on Twitter