Allardyce reveals he tried to sign PL all-star for Everton
The list of near-miss signings for Everton, like any other Premier League club, is extensive, and can be painful to acknowledge for supporters.
It’s always tough knowing that your team had the opportunity to sign a top-class player but ultimately failed to do so.
When the player in question went on to sign for a top flight rival and performed out of their skin for them, it’s all the more frustrating.
Still, this is an occupational hazard of being a football fan. Sometimes you miss out on a big name – it happens.
For Everton supporters, though, the latest reveal from former Blues boss Sam Allardyce may be rather difficult to stomach.
“I tried to buy him at Everton, yeah,” he said on talkSPORT while discussing Arsenal captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
“£60million or £70million, I don’t think we could go that far at the time. We were searching for goals since [Romelu] Lukaku went.
“We had a shout that he was that desperate to get away from Germany and get into the Premier League, apparently… we didn’t get very far.”
Aubameyang would’ve been great at Everton, wouldn’t he?
He certainly would have, but he was never really a realistic signing for a club like Everton. He was always destined for a ‘bigger’ team.
But 60 goals in 95 games for the Gunners speaks for itself, and that’s a level of production that the Toffees haven’t had from their strikers.
In fact, you get the impression that the team are only now beginning to really replace Lukaku through the emergence of the Dominic Calvert-Lewin-Richarlison strike partnership.
Aubameyang is a world class frontman, but it was folly to think that the Toffees could have afforded him.
In other Everton news, the club are thought to be in the race for a £25million-rated centre back.