Everton Football Club haven’t been in a good place for a while, and, as with many teams that find themselves in trouble, a lot of blame has to be pointed towards the recruitment team.
The Toffees have gotten so many transfers wrong in recent years. They’ve overspent on underperforming and injury-prone players, and they’ve made a number of unnecessary additions.
The Merseyside club have had no direction and no plan when it comes to recruitment in recent years, and that was never more evident than during the 2017/18 summer transfer window.
Everton had received their biggest transfer windfall ever after selling Romelu Lukaku to Manchester United for £75m, so how did they choose to spend that money? They splurged on no fewer than four attacking midfielders.
Gylfi Sigurdsson, Davy Klaassen, Wayne Rooney and Nikola Vlasic were all signed that summer, while Ross Barkley was already at the club.
This left Everton with no fewer than five attacking midfielders who were all either signed for big money or on big wages, and there was no way to fit them all into the team.
Simply put, a lot of money went down the drain on players Everton didn’t need, and that window has acted as a true example of what not to do when rebuilding your squad.
However, one team that seemingly haven’t heeded that warning is Arsenal as they look set to repeat that same error.
Indeed, the Gunners are now being linked with a big-money move for Lucas Paqueta, and while the attacking midfielder is a very good footballer, he would be a truly unnecessary signing.
Arsenal already have Martin Odegaard, Fabio Vieira and Emile Smith Rowe in their squad, and unless they plan on selling one of Odegaard or Smith Rowe, the addition of Paqueta would be overkill.
Let’s be honest, Odegaard and Smith Rowe aren’t going anywhere. Odegaard is seemingly about to be appointed as Arsenal’s captain and Smith Rowe was one of the club’s top scorers and most promising young players last season, so a move for Paqueta just wouldn’t make sense at this point.
Unless Arsenal have a clear plan on how they’re going to utilise all four of these players, they need to steer clear of a move for Paqueta.
The Gunners could be about to repeat Everton’s big mistake from 2017.
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