A good summer for Kevin Thelwell and Everton remains a possibility despite the club’s ongoing financial and ownership issues. The looming transfer window is for the club regardless of a lack of funds, with player sales expected to be set against the backdrop of the best opportunity has had to reshape the patchwork squad he inherited in February 2022. But in order to exploit this chance, the director of football and those around him will have to pull off a highwire juggling act with ’s ambitions at the mercy of other clubs.
This is set to be another window in which the club will have to be savvy if it is to strengthen in a sustainable fashion. At the centre of any plan is creating a squad that is strong enough to ensure the final season at is one that paves the way for the new waterfront stadium to host football when it opens at the start of the 2025/26 campaign. Confidence was boosted by the performance under , who oversaw a season in which the Blues would have mounted a challenge for the top half of the table had it not been for two unprecedented points deductions.
But there is an understanding there can be no room for complacency with little money to spare and, in Leicester City and Southampton, the arrival from the Championship of two clubs with Premier League infrastructures that are expected to provide sterner competition than the three promoted sides that went straight back down this season - and who would have been cut adrift weeks earlier had it not been for the p.
