I would urge a little caution in the frustration of fans. Without any shadow of a doubt there is an attempt to downplay expectations, be much stricter with money and remove many of the players earning bigger salaries off the wage bill. There is some suggestion that a figure around 20-25 million pounds has to be taken off the wage bill, although not a clear indication of whether we can then replenish this value up with new players once done.
How far this is posturing and how far Moshiri has insisted that players must leave before others come in will be open to interpretation and only really clear come the end of the window. What will not be clear is how agreeable this strategy was to Brands/Silva before joining which will certainly be important.
If the position is the wage bill has to be 20 million lower come the start of the season (also say 120 million) then I will say many supporters will be extremely underwhelmed. I am not sure or confident we will be able to shift enough players in time to get to that figure by the start of August, never mind get below to allow for enough flexibility for Brands to add the sort of quality players we need to improve.
Given we ended up with 49 points and a very experienced manager to lead us away from a dogfight it would be an enormous risk in my view, to lose 10/12 players without signing replacements. We saw last season how seasons can spiral and it would take a lot less of a drop for us to get sucked into a dogfight again.
That's very much the doomsday scenario and it may well be that we are tightening, watching every penny closely, moving on lads we don't need and ensuring the ones we bring in provide value. It may be that Silva is very aware of the situation and knows he initially needs to take time to work with players he has and certainly until we get the ship turning in the right direction things will be tight. It may be that the austerity we see this summer is a more long term trend, the "new model" Brands spoke of.
It will be very difficult for Everton to compete to win things with a wage bill around 120 million p/a. It's not impossible though, but for the club to do that it would need to look and act radically different to what it does currently. Players will be moved on more regularly and younger players will be sought more aggressively. Monaco and Athletico use this system though nobody in England has utilised it and it would be extremely brave for a team to try, with likely much anger.
There is a question on Moshiri in all of this. A quick calculation has us spending around 60 million net since he arrived. I am not sure how much the wage bill would have grown by to get to 120 million. However there is a very legitimate point to say, having inherited a club in 11th, to suggest we were just 60 million pounds and a modest increase in wages away from being a top team would have been a ludicrous suggestion. I'm really not sure what his thinking was.
