Kean completes his permanent move to Juventus

Romeo Agresti from GOAL says the fee is €28m (£24.9m). He initially signed for Juventus in 2021 on a 2-year loan.

That's the best news I have heard all season; Moise Kean makes Neal Maupay look good.

Mind you, I don't think we should be spending big on young talents. No more than about £15m.

I think you are right. The Board believes they have a divine right to stay in the Premier League. This is what they have believed for years and they have got away with it.

However watching him with the naked eye, he was a million miles from it. Raw is the kind thing to say, lacking the basics of touch, awareness and movement.

I thought he was bloody awful at £30M, and wondered if we had actually watched him or just picked a name from a squad list.

Tosun, Kean, Niasse, Rondon, etc, all brought in to be the striker, it's damning they're all not good enough to play even as a backup.

You'd expect at least one signing out of the many to be at the average standard level of say Watkins, Ings, Mitrovic, someone who can actually score in the Premier League. Just one! – And we'd be in a much stronger position.

The Paul the Esk analysis seems to broadly corroborate that. The problems with Premier League financial rules etc seem to corroborate that too.

Does anyone really believe that people like Thelwell had the money but just didn't get organised in time?

Whatever the case, failure to buy in January was entirely financial. We couldn't pull together a financial package to get the Danjuma deal over the line. We couldn't compete with Saints for Onuachu and Sulemana and we couldn't compete with Bournemouth for Outtara and Jackson.

Nothing new, it's been like this since January 2021.

Going for £30m, means a profit of £18m. And that to £45m cleared for Gordon, that's North of £60m towards ffp.

Bolasie (age 27) bought for £26m and sold for next to nothing. (Could have chose a number of examples here)

As Robert says buying highly rated youngsters usually means they retain some value even after flopping. And the upside if they deliver on their potential is good (Lukaku, Richarlison). Spending significant transfer fees on 27/28 years olds must be consigned to our history.

Ask Manchester United fans if they think spending £60 million on 30-year-old Casemiro was a good idea and you’ll see your argument go up in smoke. As always, recruitment should be treated on a case by case basis as there just isn’t a system/formula that guarantees success.

And as for Moise Kean, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the decision that brought him to Everton - and now return him to Juventus - wasn’t some strange case of financial musical chairs that meant that there was some mutual back-scratching going on. I hope that the Moise Kean saga does not end up hurting this club any more than having valuable funds tied up on a striker that this club has been missing for the last three years is hurting our squad right now.

But the rule stands. You buy guys in their late 20s if they're particularly good value or if you think they can kick you onto something. We're not in that boat. Buying young gives you a chance of making your money back or better.

But Andrew, Sam is correct that we overpaid. Bolasie wasn't consistently impressive at Palace -- he showed flashes, like the way he destroyed Heitinga, but he also showed the same poor crossing and rushed decisions that he showed for us before the injury.

As for Moise Kean, no conspiracy theory there. He was a good gamble based on his speed and purple patch as a 20-year-old, turned out to be an ass, and getting £31m for him is absolutely brilliant.

Kind of agree with you all. We paid way over the top for Bolasie but before he got injured he was playing well and linking up with Lukaku particularly. Also, I respect him as a guy who started in the football basement and worked his way up to the prem against all odds. I personally wouldn’t have signed him as he was too inconsistent plus the fee was outrageous. But if all our expensive signings, he (unlike Schneid, Gomes etc) seemed to give 100 percent every game. As I say, the quality wasn’t there but the heart was. These other fuckers were the opposite, playing well within themselves.

As for Kean, based on snippets as a sub I thought he might be a real gem. In truth he was an over hyped mediocre player who benefited from being surrounded by excellent Juve team mates. But given that he was a flop yet we made our money back then that has to count as a win.

He was never good enough was he, lazy, self obsessed and basically nowhere near as good as the man he was signed to replace in Romelu Lukaku.

Whatever happened to Moshiri's "Our own Fab Four"?

In fact I think Kean, hit and miss though he is, would thrive in the current set up where we're getting the ball in the box early.

I think we, the collective we, fans and managers, possibly judged a player too early. A player that was struggling to settle in a foreign country at a young age in a club that was in turmoil.

Time will tell, but I still think he will come good.. It just won't be with Everton, but I'll keep an eye on him.

I don't know if this makes sense and I never compare players identically as they're all different even if similar. But he kind of reminds me of Lukaku. He will frustrate as much as he will please. And it took Lukaku a few loans to establish himself.

I'll be honest, I've not really tracked Kean at Juventus, so don't know how he's got on.or how many goals he's scored.

A shame in my opinion, but he's not Everton anymore, so we move on.

As for Casemiro I think you well know that no rule should be absolute and anyone can cherry pick counter-examples. United are possibly the one club who has wasted more money than us over the last decade. Casemiro will be worth a 1/3 that price in 3 years time but they can afford the loss with their revenue and he is a world class player who may or may not get them a CL place. We have to be more careful, and find older players who are inexpensive like Gareth Barry.

As poor as Kean has been the club has not lost money on him. The fact that the same cannot be said for Bolasie, Schneiderlin, Allan, Sigurdsson, Williams, Walcott, Tosun etc is a big part of why we are in this mess.

And in Moise Kean's case, we spent £28 million (which is very big bucks for a club like ours) and did not get anything on the pitch. Getting £25 million back plus the loan fees etc, we might end up making a profit on the player. But that was not the point of buying him – we wanted a quality striker, who would score goals for us, which sadly did not happen, and is one of the contributing factors to where we find ourselves now.

Ohh... and you could argue that that disastrous summer transfer window was the reason that Marco Silva ultimately failed at Everton.

Incoming duds like Kean, Gbamin, Iwobi, Delph, Sidibé (loan), the permanent transfer of Andre Gomes (who got injured shortly after and was never the same player again) and the exits of Gana and Zouma left us in a far weaker position than the previous season. No manager could have survived that train wreck.

Of course current performance on the pitch is the primary concern (I don't think I or anyone else has suggested otherwise?) but any good business has to mitigate risk and plan for the future. Good scouting and decision making is key of course and these things are not easy but clearly spending large sums on players over 26 has not worked well for us (in regards to performance on the pitch or future planning).

As for Kean himself, he didn't exactly get a lot of time on the pitch. It seems very likely that he was overrated and that there may still be question marks over his attitude and behaviour but he only got 6 starts for us and has scored something like a goal every 2 matches since (easy at PSG perhaps). He may well fade to obscurity but I wouldn't be surprised if he could prove a useful player to a manger who can settle him somewhere.

The point about player profile is more about managing risk and cost. This is something Moyes did well This is obviously something we've done very badly in recent years - leaving us behind Bournemouth and Saints in spending power this January and unable to improve the team despite dire need.

It's also about providing access to elite quality players – like Stones, Lukaku and Deulofeu. We can't afford ready made excellence but we can afford to develop potential. Martinez was good at this.

No objection to buying older players. But like Barry and Tarkowski it helps if they're free (or very cheap). We just don't have the resources to buy established players of top quality. So we end up with the likes of a deteriorating Allan who gives us 2.5 seasons for a £25m outlay before leaving for free. Lots of reasons to stop doing that again.

Inside Benfica's £1bn talent factory

Problem is, like the club now have trousered over £125 Million in recent transfer activity and we're still struggling for goals!

Only at Everton... sigh!

“You know what? This kid is fucking shit!”

Especially as they had brilliantly engineered him out the door 2 years previously.

I don’t think Moise Keane, is the worst player I’ve ever seen, but I think he epitomised the Marcel Brands era. I personally don’t think Brands, had enough experience of English football, and deals like this prove it, imo.

We get our money back so it’s not all bad, and this possibly proves that buying younger players, is usually much more beneficial than buying older players, but I also agree with what Ajay@36 says, and I still blame the inexperience of Brands, for killing the tenure of the talented Marco Silva?

Reading about Benfica, and the way they treat young talent in their academy system, is very interesting, and the more I watch lower-league football, the more I am convinced that this is where most young talented footballers, should be learning their trade in this country?

One thing of which I’m certain, is that I believe if you can get good people to run the academy, and all of our other scouting systems, then it would yield much better results for the club?

It just seems painfully ironic that he was largely stuck on the bench and subsisting off 10- or 15-minute cameos because Calvert-Lewin was such a workhorse back then, and rarely unavailable.

I always got the impression that Calvert-Lewin became a much better player than everyone was expecting that season, which was bad news for Kean because it robbed him of the games he obviously needed to settle in.

We then got into a pandemic, revolving door of managers, and you can sympathise with a young guy wondering what the hell he was doing at Everton. Probably a far cry from what he'd been promised on signing.

If he'd have gone to Leipzig or Dortmund or Sassuolo etc instead, he'd probably be better placed now.

You're right, obviously I don't think anyone can really put a figure on how much has actually changed hands between us and Juventus over the past three years or so, but the most important figure is £25M, which will show as a “Full payment” into our coffers, and therefore helping us regards the P & S Rules!

Adding in the Richarlison figure of £60M (?) and Gordon figure of £45M (?), it all adds up to £130M showing as “Received in full” which could be useful come next summer.

For the purposes of FFP, these numbers could already be factored into whether we could buy. And we didn't. Not much will have changed in the Summer.

I don't think we'll see Everton spending big under Moshiri again.

Does a club's Financial Year run from July to June the following year, in which case, does that mean that so far in this year our books show as receiving £130M? Hope that makes sense, but yes, we may have seen the last of mega signings for a year or two.

What a return of investment. And the strategy (key word) to combine homegrown complemented with an effective scouting network (key words) on a continuous basis is admirable.

They acknowledge that most of the players won't spend most of their career with them, so they make sure they get good £$ and the scouting seemingly always has others lined up to replace. Sounds like a conveyer belt.

I like the comments about culture and identity. It's so important for any organisation let alone a football club.

And the B Team concept, with the second string playing in 2nd division. The regulars know my thoughts on that. I would love to see that introduced into English football. Playing against Championship, League 1 or League 2 teams in from of crowds has to be better than playing at Finch Farm or Southport in what are pretty much meaningless fixtures. No disrespect to Southport.

I know it's unrealistic that English football would adopt that even though, if I was King for a day, I would restructure football to accommodate that and streamline the professional leagues. But I can't.

As I'm typing, I had a thought. Given we play a lot of our matches at Southport, how about adopting them as our de-facto B Team and pushing our young and fringe players their way? It might be the 6th Tier, but it's competitive football and I'm sure we'd bolster their gates as Evertonians would go along to support. It might also help them progress up the pyramid.

That's more similar to the German model as their B teams only compete in the regional leagues unlike in Spain and Portugal. I'd prefer that rather than scattergun loans, which I don't object to. But if we can get a core of development players playing in the same team and have our coaches in partnership, I think that would be a good initiative.

Just a thought. I know. One I've had many times.

Good read. Thanks again.

That very productive conveyor belt has been noticed - in January alone 3 high-quality young players joined Premier League clubs direct from South America.

5 years ago Danilo (Forest), Alcarez (Saints) and Perrone (City) might have ended up in Portugal as a stepping stone to bigger things.

These sorts of signings (low cost at source), teamed with a good academy, should be a big part of our strategy going forwards.

Probably Siggy is the rare ready-made player that has done things to win matches - for me it means to affect goal difference: stop goals or create goals

Also some freebies have been much better than the 24+ ready-made players with a large fee.

Based on the data, only buy U24s and free or low-fee 24+ players. The club does not have the transfer market intelligence for ready-made players and should never spend big on 24+ players as it results in getting players in with top division level experience but low ability to affect goal difference. £500 million spend figure banded around says the club doesn't know how to do it.

With younger players there's more chance to compete for players at smaller clubs with higher ability to affect goal difference who just need top level division experience.

Could it have been a BBS, special type buy, based on video footage, and feedback from other coach’s across Europe. ?

But Everton, have on face value done some decent business.. where the money goes, remains to be seen.

But it’s positive, and I got a signed photo from Dyche for my lad, so, a decent week to date.

But the Brentford game is nigh, not Waterloo, but it’s a serious skirmish, that Everton must win.

There’s some good signs, of late since Dyche arrived, and hopefully a repeat of the Arsenal performance.

Same Team, as Forest, I think so, as much as I’d like Mina to be playing, but his match fitness, will be lacking and I think it showed as you’d expect, with Michael Keane, early in the game at Forest, but he did get in tune with the game as it progressed, and done pretty well, and I'm one of his critics.

I still will be as I still sense the composure and thinking when he’s in possession and off the ball, is often a risk to the Everton Team.

But there’s also the lack of communication at times between Goal Keeper, defence, midfield and attack, and for any players coming into any Team, getting tuned in can be easier, or tougher than expected.

Keep the ball low, make the angles, get wide and reverse passes, keep turning the Brentford defence, where possible, and attack the near and back post.

Keep the crosses low, and their Beserkers in defence, will soon loose their rag, and it’s time for the whole Team, to take ownership and score and confident of scoring a goal.

It will be a battle, that Everton can and must win, imho. A draw is not the end of the world, but increases the pressure, on the next game.

UTFTs!

If you look at the list of our most expensive signings (£20m+) the only ones worth having are those age 22 and younger.

Otherwise yes it's probably Sigurdsson.

Everton will receive £24.6M (€28M) from Juventus at the end of the season when Moise Kean’s transfer is officially rubber-stamped, according to Fabrizio Romano. The Guardian journalist reported via his personal Twitter account on Friday morning (31 March) that Juve have “already triggered the buy option” to turn Kean’s loan stay in Italy into a permanent one.

So what exactly is going on here? I thought it was odd that this transfer would be 'completed' outside of any window. Maybe Juve notified Everton that they would be 'triggering' the buyout portion of the loan agreement – hence the original piece heading this thread. But the money won't actually hit Everton's painfully parlous penny-jar until the end of the season?

Confused.