A summer of delight and dissapointment

By Rhys Lewis
September 1 2005

This summer began as one of promise for Evertonians. With the forthcoming champions league qualifier to look forward to and the chance of a higher class of player being signed, Evertonians had every reason to be optimistic. But it didnt all run smoothly as they would have liked.

David Moyes knew he needed to stregnthen his squad from the very beginning of the summer and had several targets lined up as soon as the season had finished. With several players out of contract and uncertain as to whether they would sign the new contracts they were offered, Moyes was looking at an even thinner squad than the previous year. But with the majority of those players signing the contract he could look forward to adding to his squad that finished 4th in the Premier League the season before.

If he thought it would be a simple thing, then he was in for a shock. Everton and their fans soon found out that finishing 4th and having some money to spend didnt gurantee a lot of new signigs quickly. Moyes was able to add Simon Davies very early on for 3.5m along with John Ruddy from Cambridge. But the optimism of the Evertonians was soon short lived with several signings going wrong. First of all Forssel failed a medical and eventually signed for Birmingham. Scott Parker and Emre opted to sign for Newcastle, ignoring the promise of Champions League football and Craig Bellamy signd for Blackburn after a meeting with Moyes where neither party were satisfied. This brought many people down to earth about what type of player Everton could actually buy. This trend continued with the likes of Mohammed Sissoko joining Liverpool after being on the brink of signing for Everton and his Valencia team mate Emiliano Moretti deciding to stay at Valencia for another year. And there were also failed attempts to sign Michael Owen and Dirk Kuyt for 10m. Though these bids are uncertain as to whether they were genuine bids or not.

However Moyes was never deterred by these transfers. He kept going knowing that he would get the players he knew Everton needed. The 5m signing of Per Kroldrup came out of nowhere but the highly rated Dane is expected to have an outstanding season for the blues once returning from injury. Moyes was able to finally capture the signing of Mikel Arteta much to the delight to every Evertonian as Arteta became a favourite while on loan for the 2nd half of last season. Moyes' persistance began to pay off towards the end of the transfer window capturing the signing of the England international Phil Neville, the Italian international Matteo Ferrari on loan, Nuno Valente from Porto and he saved perhaps the best til last on deadline day when he signed Andy van der Meyde from Inter Milan.

People may say it was a summer of dissapointment for David Moyes and Everton because of the failure to capture a striker and because of the number of players that turned him down. However that is complete nonesense. While Moyes would have liked to bring another striker in, if you look at the squad that finished 4th last season, and compare it to the squad now then there is a huge difference in the quality. Moyes has not just added a better class of player, the majority of players he has added are of a young age. He is building a side that are coming into their peak now, something which over the last few years Everton have not done.

This team is finally a team built by David Moyes and not just something he has had to get by with from previous managers. And any Everton fan who is dissapointed with this summer's activity should think back to this time last year, when we had sold our star player, not brought anyone in and were sitting bottom of the table. Now we have a European campaign to look forward to and have added some exciting players to the squad, with some money available for January if it is needed.

There is plenty to look forward to this season.