I’d hope tbh that transfer lists would have aligned. Considering where we are as a club, what we need moving forward, the budget available to us, the wages we can pay, there’s probably only a certain number of names in each position that are genuine viable targets. If Benitez came in and said ‘I want this player’ and the scouting department were like ‘never seen him before mate’ I’d be extremely worried as to what we’ve been doing for the last 7 years. Every player Benitez mentions should have to some level been scouted by Everton.
Considering the removal of Brands and Steinsson though, I somehow doubt that Benitez is accepting previously arranged deals that they put in place, or blindly accepting their scouting tips for Moshiri and Bill to progress. Never in a million years.
Benitez signed off on Patterson in the summer mate - we bid £5m for him. Would have gone up to £8m but that's all we had available because at that stage James hadn't gone and the Kean deal wasn't confirmed either.
I think we're overpaying for the lad but it's a good long-term signing.
I reckon it was always pretty likely we'd go back in for Patterson. Consider that against AMN, who was the option on loan for us. Benitez didn't want anything but a loan for him (which is fair enough) and there was never any talk of us going back in for him in January.
As I said in my other post, the only downside to the
Mykolenko deal for me is the way the Digne situation has been handled. What Benitez did the other day was a travesty. Not against the player himself, he's a big boy on a lot of money, but it cost the team, for the sake of making a point (which was I'm going to put you on the bench but not bring you on when it's clear you're needed, and actually play a system that would allow your natural game to show). And that's a disgrace. From any manager. But Benitez has form for it.
The issue with doing stuff like that is it weakens our bargaining power completely when it comes to clubs taking Digne. We should be looking at £30m to sell a player of his quality in the middle of the season, had everything been handled correctly. Instead we'll be lucky to get any obligation to buy.