Everton manager Sean Dyche has outlined the challenges he and director of football Kevin Thelwell face in the transfer market
Everton manager Sean Dyche and (inset) director of football Kevin ThelwellEverton manager Sean Dyche outlined the difficulties his club faces in the transfer market and has backed the efforts of director of football Kevin Thelwell.
Dyche was confirmed as Blues boss on January 30, just a day before the winter window closed and despite having raised £45million through the sale of Anthony Gordon that month, the club were unable to get any deals over the line.
Everton were able to bring in five new faces this summer though in the shape of loan pair Arnaut Danjuma and Jack Harrison, free transfer Ashley Young, Youssef Chermiti and Beto but the latter, their biggest outlay of the window at £25.6million, did not arrive until the final week.
Speaking on the BBC’s Everton: Nothing Will Be The Same series in a recording made before any of the arrivals, Dyche was asked about his working relationship with Thelwell. He said: “It’s been good all the time. At the end of the day you still need the finance of the club to be right, you still need that to be planned out and mapped out in the right manner.
“Kev, his team of scouts and recruitment on the technical side are working very hard, they always have been. People forget that, it’s hard to explain but because you don’t sign every player you’re linked with – and there are lots of those – people presume they’re not doing their job.
“Of course they are, they’re working incredibly hard. Deals are very difficult in modern football.
“They always were but they’ve got way harder now – way, way harder. So we are active with certain situations, Kev and many others are working very hard on situations to open them up and make them right.
“It’s just a very difficult industry and usually money wins the day. At some point, money wins the day – that’s the reality of this industry.”
While wantaway owner Farhad Moshiri last year admitted that Everton “have not always spent large amounts of money wisely” throughout his tenure, after their previous years of profligacy, Financial Fair Play restrictions have curbed the Blues’ spending of late. Although Dyche doesn’t feel it would be preferable for the fanbase to grasp the situation inside out, he believes there should still be something of a reality check when it comes to the parameters the club are currently operating in.
The 52-year-old said: “It would ruin it for fans to understand every inch of what we do. It would take it away because there would be too much sense.
“In the stadium there would be no atmosphere because they’d all be going ‘I see what he tried to do there, that player was unlucky or I believe in this deal there were so many things went wrong.’ But fans also need to understand it’s not just a case of ‘Oh, do you want to sign for us? Yes, okay then.’ That’s it, end of.
“There are advisors, there’s another club don’t forget, there’s people trying to make a market, there’s people moving and shaking with the players, there’s other agents trying to get involved in the deal sometimes. There is all sorts going on to try and make a deal happen and usually, the bigger the deal, the more that’s going on.
“That’s the reality of it. It’s not an easy thing to get the players anyway and to get the right players is a difficult task.”
