Everton reporter Chris Beesley looks how director of football Kevin Thelwell’s efforts last summer will shape the Blues’ approach to the January transfer window
It took until the final week of last summer to find a solution but the fruits of Kevin Thelwell’s labours going into this season can pay off in January.
Indeed, Thelwell’s quiet work behind the scenes can ensure the Everton director of football’s second January transfer window is hopefully far less fraught than the baptism of fire he endure a year ago.
Having left Major League Soccer outfit New York Red Bulls on February 25, 2022, to return to his native north west of England as Marcel Brands’ successor, Thelwell’s first window in the summer of that year proved to be something of a mixed bag. While costing around £60million between them and eclipsing the money recouped for Richarlison from Tottenham Hotspur, Amadou Onana, Dwight McNeil and James Garner fitted the bill as the kind of signings the club would prefer to bring in – youthful prospects who could improve – and over the 18 months since, all of them have become regulars in the side.
Although considerably older, free transfer James Tarkowski, 31, has proven to be an astute acquisition. Other than the two occasions that club captain Seamus Coleman has taken to the field this season, the centre-back has worn the armband and he has continued the level of consistency demonstrated at previous club Burnley where he played over 30 Premier League games for five seasons in a row including 35 plus in the last four by being an ever-present for the Blues in the competition since signing.
Idrissa Gueye has featured 47 times so far second time around at Everton and while he slotted straight back in where he’d left off to go to Paris Saint-Germain three years earlier, the now 34-year-old who was made a lucrative offer to return, is not as dynamic as he was during his previous spell at Goodison Park.
At first the loan move for Conor Coady from Thelwell’s long-time employers Wolverhampton Wanderers, appeared to be a major coup, with the former Liverpool player returning to his native Merseyside but a dip in form and a change in manager ensured the Blues did not take up their £4.5million option to sign him permanently with the 30-year-old having completed just four of Leicester City’s games in the Championship so far this term.
Ruben Vinagre, now also plying his trade in the second tier at Hull City, just didn’t work out as a left-back option on loan from Sporting CP, totalling a mere 24 minutes of Premier League action in the shape of a brace of substitute appearances in the first month of the season but it was arguably Everton’s main signing up front that proved to be the biggest disappointment.
With continued question marks over Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s fitness, the Blues splashed out £15million on Neal Maupay of Brighton & Hove Albion but not only did he prove to be anything but a like-for-like replacement for their number nine, the Frenchman, used to operating alongside a strike partner, looked a shadow of his former self on Merseyside.
Despite the club hailing Maupay as proven Premier League quality and the player netting the winning goal against West Ham United in only his second game for Everton, that proved to be the solitary strike in 32 outings before he was loaned to Brentford on September 1, last year.
Maupay’s chronic failure to gel left Thelwell desperately searching for alternative options up front and tellingly he stayed back in the UK to work on potential deals when Frank Lampard’s squad headed ‘Down Under’ for the Sydney Super Cup with at least two additions targeted for the winter window.
When January came, even owner Farhad Moshiri proclaimed: “If we need a striker, we will get one,” but after losing out on Arnaut Danjuma who had an 11th hour change of heart when Tottenham Hotspur hijacked Thelwell’s deal – with the player understood to have got off his Merseyside-bound train at Crewe Station to turn around – the Blues, who had just sacked Lampard, were ultimately left empty-handed.
Replacement Sean Dyche arrived in the final week of the window and although the new gaffer personally attested to the work being done by himself, his director of football and chairman in those frantic last couple of days before the window closed and £45million being raised from the sale of Anthony Gordon to Newcastle United, no new faces arrived.
On the one hand, it looked at the time like a dereliction of duty from Everton chiefs to play fast and loose with the club’s Premier League survival by not adding to their numbers, but as Thelwell later admitted, with financial constraints continuing to bite hard, the right calibre of potential signings just wasn’t there and he’d have been forced to bring in substandard bodies just for the sake of it. Despite the purse-strings remaining tight, some of those glaring holes in the squad were able to be filled last summer.
Although attack-minded options remained the priority, with full-back cover also required, Dyche turned to one of his own former team-mates as his first Blues signing when he brought in Ashley Young, who at 38 became the club’s oldest-ever outfield debutant. Thelwell also got Danjuma on loan from Villarreal at the second time of asking, after he was used sparingly during his time in north London.
Everton finally got a striker that at least resembled their number nine in the shape of Youssef Chermiti who came in from Sporting CP in a structured deal that could be worth up to £15million. However, the rookie who had made just 16 top flight appearances for his previous club is more akin to the Calvert-Lewin who arrived from Sheffield United in 2016 when he was also a teenager and still looks a long way off from being an effective force in the Premier League.
On-loan Jack Harrison has provided balance and a touch of class – although more consistency is required – on the right wing in what now looks like a pre-emptive strike to cover Alex Iwobi’s deadline day departure to Fulham but it was only in the final week of the window that Thelwell moved to bring in a bona fide alternative to Calvert-Lewin, who had just suffered a facial injury at Aston Villa on his comeback, in the colossal shape of Beto, the club’s second 6ft 4in Portuguese target man acquired last summer.
A long-standing Everton target, it ultimately required a £25.7million fee to snap up a player who had hit double figures in Serie A for Udinese over the previous two seasons.
Despite a goal on his debut, coming off the bench against League Two Doncaster Rovers in the Carabao Cup just a day after signing, Beto has not been prolific so far and while Dyche actually views the player as offering rather different attributes than Calvert-Lewin, the pair of them can at least be interchanged seamlessly without impacting on the shape or system of the team.
Such solid groundwork and improvements in results this season – although they’re currently just one place and one position above the relegation zone, without the 10-point deduction Everton would be 12th – ensures that the club, still in a state of flux in terms of a proposed takeover by 777 Partners yet to be ratified, can at least approach the January window with a stance that is potentially opportunistic rather than proactive by necessity.
That is a significant step compared to this time a year ago and also provides scope to clear the decks and roll out far more substantial reshaping of the squad this summer.
