Pundit Alex McLeish has criticised Everton’s lack of spark.
Pundit Alex McLeish has told Sky Sports’ The Debate that Everton’s struggles bedding in so many new signings after losing Romelu Lukaku reminds him of Tottenham’s predicament back in 2013.
Everton went into the summer transfer window full of hope and ambition, with majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri backing manager Ronald Koeman with the signings of Jordan Pickford, Cuco Martina, Michael Keane, Davy Klaassen, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Nikola Vlasic, Wayne Rooney and Sandro Ramirez.
However, Everton have made a dismal start to the season, with Sunday’s 1-0 loss against Burnley their fourth defeat of the season in just seven Premier League games – piling the pressure on manager Koeman.
Koeman has a number of problems, from his disjointed defence to his pedestrian attack, but it’s clear that Everton are living to regret not splashing the cash on a new striker to replace Romelu Lukaku.
The Belgian hitman, who smashed 25 league goals last season, completed a big-money move to Manchester United over the summer, and has already starred at Old Trafford with seven goals in seven Premier League games.
Comparatively, Everton have scored just four times in their seven games, and they appear to be the latest club to find that replacing a star player with a host of signings doesn’t always work.
Tottenham are often used as the example, as after selling Gareth Bale to Real Madrid in a then-world-record deal in 2013, they snapped up the likes of Vlad Chiriches, Paulinho, Etienne Capoue, Christian Eriksen, Nacer Chadli Erik Lamela and Roberto Soldado, with limited success.
Now, pundit and former manager Alex McLeish has told Sky Sports’ The Debate that he thinks Everton are lacking one vital aspect, in that they don’t have a spark going forward – and he compared Everton to Spurs, but not the Spurs you see under Mauricio Pochettino, rather the Spurs from 2013, who couldn’t recover from losing a key player by signing a number of new faces.
“You go back to Gareth Bale, when Spurs sold him for £80million,” said McLeish. “They bought a whole bunch of players, and you think getting new players is brilliant, it’s going to improve the team, but it’s amazing what one man can do. You lose Lukaku, bring in five or six others, and it’s just not gelled at the moment. I saw the game at the weekend, and they did give everything, as Ronald Koeman said, but they lacked a spark, and that’s so vital,” he added.
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