With their “biggest signing” of 2024, Everton hopes he won’t even be able to play for them.
The club is appealing the process and outcome that led to it receiving the largest sporting sanction in 135 years of English top-flight football, so forget about the non-event that was the January sales.
Everton’s future is being formed by events that take place away from the spotlight of Sky Sports.
Is it possible that the Premier League’s other teams were deterred from making big purchases during one of the least exciting winter transfer windows in history by the Blues’ 10-point deduction for violating Financial Fair Play regulations and their second PSR charge of the season?
It appears that way.
While the £34.8 million spent in 2010 (another month that Everton didn’t sign anyone) remains the all-time low when it comes to Premier League winter windows, this year’s outlay was a mere £100 million, representing a massive decrease on the record-breaking £815 million splurged by English top-flight clubs 12 months ago.
The largest single deal was Radu Dragusin’s £25.9 million move from Genoa, which is controlled by 777 Partners, to Tottenham Hotspur.
The latter is still waiting on approval to purchase Farhad Moshiri’s 94.1% share of the Blues. That presents a completely different problem.
Nonetheless, as Everton manager Sean Dyche has noted, the Blues have not had an on-pitch advantage at Goodison Park, finishing third in a net spend table for the previous five years and second for the previous three and one year, despite receiving an on-pitch sanction.
Applying the brakes on transfer spending is in stark contrast to Nottingham Forest’s actions, which were also charged last month after breaking the bank by spending over 25 million pounds on over 40 new players since returning to the Premier League for the first time in 23 years in 2022.
Nottingham Forest reportedly made a £15 million bid for Liverpool’s reserve goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher on deadline day and announced the £5 million signing of Matz Sels of Strasbourg to take that position approximately seven minutes after the deadline had passed.
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