Carragher tears into two Koeman signings at Everton
You don’t expect a Liverpool legend like Jamie Carragher to have many warm words to say about Everton, and so it usually proves.
However, in his latest newspaper column he was very positive about new Toffees manager Carlo Ancelotti.
He actually admitted that the Italian was the equal of Reds boss Jurgen Klopp in terms of coaching expertise and prestige.
That’s a big claim, but Carragher’s good mood didn’t extend to some of the work done in the transfer market by Ancelotti’s predecessors.
Specifically, the Sky Sports pundit was unimpressed by two signings made by former Toffees boss Ronald Koeman.
“Two signings from that era strike me as symbols of the problem; Gyfli Sigurddson and Yannick Bolasie,” he wrote in his Daily Telegraph column.
“Sigurdsson was £45 million, an extraordinary fee for a 27-year-old who had already struggled when making the step up at Tottenham. To put that into perspective, that was more than even Liverpool had ever paid for a player in 2017.
“Bolasie, also 27 at the time, cost £25m. Although he was unlucky with injury, it always looked a strange deal which smacked of appeasing a manager who was thinking of immediate reinforcement rather than a long-term plan.”
There’s no doubt that recruitment hasn’t exactly been Everton’s strong suit in recent years, but with Ancelotti on board you expect an improvement on the sort of deals Carragher mentions here.
In other Everton news, the Toffees are thought to be one of a clutch of teams chasing a Barcelona centre back.