Everton squad shouldn’t be judged as 6th-costliest in Premier League

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Everton have a Premier League squad worth £338m, according to reports. But that value isn’t everything that it initially seems.

Everton, along with the 19 other clubs, formally submitted their squad list to the Premier League on Tuesday. There’s weren’t any real surprises on it, unlike certain other places (Arsenal and Chelsea took the new in that regard).

And so Wednesday saw the Mirror rank every squad in the league on their cost. i.e The amount each club paid for the 25 players submitted on their list.

Everton rank sixth on the list with a cost of £388m – £3m more than Tottenham Hotspur in seventh. Although, Liverpool are still some ways off fifth, with a Virgil van Dijk-less Liverpool squad costing £454m.

Despite that fairly high ranking, though, we shouldn’t judge Everton as expecting to compete at the very top end of the league. There’s still work to be done.

Long-term

For one, a huge chunk of that value came before Carlo Ancelotti took over. And Ancelotti is no ordinary manager. He’s one of the biggest in the sport and as a result, he’s someone you invest in long-term.

Everton will want to give him a squad he can entirely call his. They’re not at that point just yet. There are too many expensive players still in the squad that the club may not have signed if Ancelotti were leading things.

And on that long-term idea, this is also a young squad. The star striker, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, is still only 23 and the summer’s biggest signing, Ben Godfrey, is just 22. Both will take time before they’re up to the Champions League-standard Everton will hope for.

So this club still needs time. Other clubs at the top end have either got far higher wage structures or, like Leicester City, are much further along in their projects.

Everton are barely into theirs. But given more time, there’s no doubt that this group can achieve special things.