Silva reveals reasons for Everton’s transfer inactivity

Bury are having themselves quite the preseason, having held the two Merseyside Premier League rivals to draws at Gigg Lane.

Everton fans on the other hand are getting quite hot under the collar with the lack of signings after the club overhauled the management side of things earlier in the summer, bringing in Marcel Brands and Marco Silva.

Brands, the Director of Football, had made it clear right from the outset that his primary task this summer was to trim the bloated squad of 38 players down to a manageable 25-30. While that explained the initial inactivity, the transfer window is starting to close with just three weeks or so left before the beginning of the Premier League season.

After the draw yesterday, manager Silva spoke to the media about the lack of signings which was causing all the consternation in the fanbase -

“We know and it is clear for us what we need. It’s clear for me as well, our board and our owner, it is clear they know what we need. It is clear what our targets and where we want to improve our squad well.

“The boys are working well and really hard but, like all the other teams, we want to improve our squad and be more competitive as well. Now we are working and they know what we want and what we need.”

He understood the requirement that the squad needed to be reduced first, but despite not having any incoming players Silva insisted there was activity going on behind the scenes.

“Of course, we want a normal number in our squad and we are working on both sides.

“After the next weekend I will start taking some decisions as well because we will have finalised the third week of pre-season and that is the moment to take some important decisions about our players as well.

“And we expect in the next few days the new players we need will start to arrive.”

The manager struck a positive note when asked if he was concerned about missing out on targeted players.

“I’m confident.

“It is not the perfect situation. This season the market will close early; this is new for us.

“In a normal situation we have maybe already signed one or two players, we haven’t signed anybody yet but we have until the end of the market to sign our targets and it is something we have to do because we need and we need to give a signal for our team and for our fans what we want for the season.”

That is indeed a relief to hear from the manager, but until we see a couple of players at least holding up the royal blue jersey at Finch Farm, there will continue to be murmurs all around.