Kevin Thelwell’s biggest Everton blunder was failing to sign £85m star last summer

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Everton have made some almighty blunders in recent years, but hiring Kevin Thelwell was not one of them.

The former Director of Football for Wolverhampton Wanderers arrived with a great reputation in the sport, having packed up his life in New York to return to Merseyside and work for the club his father supports.

With skin in the game and a direct link to someone who knows just how big a task this rebuild would be, he seemed like the perfect man to manage their turnaround.

And thus far, he has worked admirably.

Offloading high earners whilst acquiring shrewd targets in the transfer market, the wage bill has seen a dramatic decrease whilst the club has actually started making net profits across recent summer and January windows.

There have been very few mistakes made by the 50-year-old, but arguably his biggest came from something he didn’t do rather than an error he did make.

Kevin Thelwell made his biggest Everton mistake last summer

Operating on a strict transfer budget, the fact that they managed to get anyone of note in last summer was a miracle.

After all, they had no propensity to invest in transfers, despite offloading Alex Iwobi late on in the market.

However, that could have been changed with his sale, as well as the pure profit earned with Ellis Simms, Tom Cannon and most of Demarai Gray’s exits as well.

In total, these four sales accumulated approximately £42.5m, which was over half what Sporting CP paid for Viktor Gyokeres. The Swedish striker was a long-term target of Everton’s, yet their inability to pay seemingly pushed him into the arms of the Portuguese giants, where he is now making Thelwell regret not pushing harder…

Everton would be thriving with Viktor Gyokeres

Were Sean Dyche to have had a domineering, elite and ‘lethal’ striker in his ranks, as described by journalist Brian Fonseca, Everton would certainly be far from the relegation zone.

After all, this has largely been a season of positive progression on the pitch, merely offset by the financial turmoil which has seen six points deducted.

This is exhibited in the underlying numbers, with the Toffees having only scored 29 Premier League goals despite accumulating an expected goals tally of 48.95.

They are underperforming that metric by more than any side in the division, with Dominic Calvert-Lewin statistically the worst finisher in the whole league too.

Meanwhile, Gyokeres has a mouth-watering 36 goals and 14 assists in just 39 games across all competitions, and has amassed a price tag of £85m.

So, had Everton taken a chance and invested in him back in the summer, they would have the favourable decision of keeping ahold of this unstoppable forward, or offloading him for a huge fee to fix their PSR woes.