Premier League Deadline Day Preview: What transfers to expect at Everton

Transfer Deadline Day, especially the summer version, is basically like Christmas Day. You hope you’re going to get something nice, but you have to be ready for a complete dud as well. If you’re particularly lucky, you’re getting a number of shiny new gifts and even if a couple suck you’re better off overall.

After Marcel Brands took over as Director of Football, it felt like this summer would be one of transfer market austerity as he cleared out the deadwood and pared down the roster. However, with the arrival of Marco Silva came certain promises to the manager that the club would be somewhat competitive this season, so we’ve seen a couple of players already added and the promise a few more.

What time does the transfer window close

For the uninitiated, deadline day is the last day of the transfer window, and basically when some teams and players pretty much lose their minds. Often it’s driven by desperation on the part of teams that have been unable to get their transfer targets nailed, and pay for it by parting with astronomical sums of money for talent that usually doesn’t deserve it.

The summer transfer window closes at 5pm BST (12pm EST, 9am PST) on Thursday, August 9th. Clubs who submit deal sheets to the Premier League by that time have another two hours to close the deal. This year it’s a little different however, because only the window in England closes on the 9th while the rest of the world still has their transfer windows close at the end of the month as usual.

The difference is happening because England were attempting to have the window close before the season starts, something the rest of Europe are yet to catch on to. What this means though is that English teams could still lose players until the end of the month, but cannot sign replacements anymore.

How to watch the action

Sky Sports News will be covering it all starting at 6am BST (1am EST, 10pm PST), here’s info from their website on how to watch.

This being the Social Media Age, follow us on Twitter where we’ll be bringing you up-to-date information as we receive it. Like the last couple of years, we’ll be maintaining a live tracker on the website as well for you to stay up to the minute with.

What to expect from Everton today

While Brands has been trying to reduce the club’s wages paid, he’s also actively looking to improve the roster in some key positions, bring down the average age of the squad and improve team speed as a whole.

Outgoing

Some of the players who will leave the club today, likely on loans due to inflated wages or youth, will happen late only when adequate replacements have been signed sealed and delivered.

Callum Connolly, Matthew Pennington and Nikola Vlasic are probably going out on loan. Connolly has been linked with Wigan Athletic. Pennington could go back to Leeds or join Connolly and Antonee Robinson under Joe Royle at Wigan. Vlasic has received some interest from Newcastle.

Yannick Bolasie wants to stay in the Premier League despite Middlesbrough’s interest, with a return to Crystal Palace or joining another Toffees winger Aaron Lennon at Burnley. Muhamed Besic and Sandro Ramirez could leave if better backups come in, and Cuco Martina, well, who knows.

Incoming

Bernard showed up at Finch Farm today so at least we know he’s for real. Hopefully now we can sign him up and make it official - though yesterday we discovered even that might not be enough as one-time Everton target Joe Bryan spurned Aston Villa quite spectacularly after doing the photoshoots and eating their food before bolting for Premier League Fulham, must’ve been the egg salad we say.

Sources in Spain are claiming that Yerry Mina is done and dusted, but we don’t want to be too confident until we see him at Finch Farm. Same reasoning as above regarding making it official.

There is also the matter of Kurt Zouma - is he a Mina Plan B, or in addition to? To be honest, we need five Premier League calibre centrehalves, so we’d hope we’re still in for the Chelsea man, on loan or outright.

We’ve also been linked with four central midfielders - Andre Gomes, Badou N’Diaye, Tiemoue Bakayoko, and Danny Drinkwater - so let’s see how this works out.