Silva explains Everton’s lack of transfer activity

Everton are certainly leaving their transfer market activity late this summer. After Marcel Brands and Marco Silva had stated earlier that the priority would be to offload deadwood and build a younger, faster squad, the Blues have only signed Richarlison and Lucas Digne so far, with Yerry Mina looking close.

In an interview with the Guardian over the weekend, Silva insisted he knew when he started what positions he wanted to strengthen -

“It is not the best thing to do to wait until the last days but the market is really difficult.

“When we started we knew more or less what were our targets. I know what positions I have to improve and I have started to make more decisions to be sure about everything. But in some positions it was clear in my mind what we needed from the first day.”

He went on to clarify the situation with Mason Holgate, who hasn’t featured since the first game of Everton’s preseason with an unnamed injury.

“Since the first day if I want to put one central defender in the game we don’t have any. Mason Holgate has been injured since the first week of pre-season. We lost others [Ashley Williams]. It is one position and it is easy to understand how many we need in that position. We have to sign new players there.”

In what appeared to a dig at the previous summer’s regime at the Blues, Silva went on to say that he and Marcel brands wanted to be sure that any incoming players would strengthen the squad.

“It is not easy for us as a club to sign some players because in normal situations they ask a lot of money and also we have to make the right decisions. We have to really improve our squad. It is not important if you change 10 players but if you bring in five or six they need to improve our squad.”

It looks like we’re going to let the quality of incoming players determine whether Silva’s assessment of the squad was accurate or not, and whether Brands’ scouting network guided him well, or not.