Deadline day was devastating for Evertonians. On the whole, this transfer window has seen many Evertonians walk the line between extreme frustration and veritable despondency. Deadline day swept many of those who were hanging on to trust in the Everton chairman over the edge. Out with the summer went Jermaine Beckford (£2.5 million), Yakubu (£1.5 million) and Mikel Arteta (£10 million).

Let’s get Jermaine and Yak out of the way quickly. There is no doubt in my mind Jermaine was sold because of a personality conflict with David Moyes. Cast your mind back to Everton’s thrashing of Wolves at Molineux last April. Even with Everton ahead 3-0 after goals from Beckford, Neville (screamer) and Bilyaletdinov (screamer), Moyes pulled Beckford off with 20 minutes to go and the two had a ‘quite public spat’ regarding the substitution. Moyes apparently didn’t care for Beckford’s work rate that day and, I suspect, didn’t care for Beckford’s attitude in general.

Everton also tends to try to make what profit they can from former free transfers. In January 2010, we shipped free transfer Lucas Neill off to Turkey for about £750k after Everton had snapped him up in mid-September 2009. Beckford came on a free last summer, so apparently the club decided that making £2.5 million (it really is chump change) was more important than the goals he would no doubt score this season.

Whatever profit we made by sending Beckford to live with uncle Sven at Leceister City was immediately destroyed by the transfer of Yakubu. Everton let Yakubu go for all-you-can-eat chicken at Ewood Park for £1.5 million. I’ll say that again, £1.5 million. This sum is notable because Yakubu was Everton’s former record signing, joining the club in 2007 for £11.25 million from Middlesbrough . OK, I know that he’s been a shadow of himself (ever increasing in size) since his Achilles injury and that he’s probably six years older than we think he is but that’s a loss of.....(sorry math hurts my head).. £9.75 million. That £9.75 million got us 25 goals in 4 years. That’s steep but there is no doubt that Yak had to go because Moyes wasn’t going to let him near the team (he was worried about him eating little Leon Osman).

For a team who fielded the least number of players in the Premier League and struggled on many occasions to turn good build-up play into goals last season, the idea of sending away our strikers on deadline day seems a bit odd. I mean, Beckford scored 10 goals last year. Yakubu scored...err...1. Fortunately, Everton did sign striker Denis (and let me make sure I copy and paste this) Stracqualursi from Argentinian side Tigre on a season long loan. I know nothing about him apart from that he was the joint top scorer in Argentina’s Primera División Apertura last year. Again, I know nothing about Argentinean football and shall withhold judgment on him until I get to watch him play. (Though, I must admit that I am concerned by a nasty rumor that Denis recently had a trial at Leceister City where he failed to impress.)

Nevertheless, I must question whether we need to be ditching a striker who has proven that he can score 10 goals for a Premier League club for a completely unproven player. After deadline day, Everton is left with three strikers who have played in the Premier League: Saha (who will get injured), Anichebe (who will not score), and Vellios (who has played for about 5 minutes). I hope Stracqualursi is good, because if he’s not we’ll be back to playing Cahill up top when injuries start to mount. 

This brings me to the most painful aspect of deadline day. We sent Mikel Arteta to Arsenal for £10 million. Don’t worry Arsenal supporters, I don’t hate you. It’s not Arsenal that I’m angry with after that transfer. In fact, I would have been fine with sending Mikel to Arsenal if the decision didn’t make Everton’s transfer policy seem devoid of planning and choked by a debt that our chairman cannot even begin to pay.

Since January, Everton has disposed of its two best creative midfielders for relatively paltry sums. Steven Pienaar went to Spurs for £3 million and now we’ve sold Arteta to Arsenal. The question that’s been plaguing me since deadline day is why we had to sell both of our best two midfielders. Pienaar has been the real engine in our team for the past couple of years. However, he refused to sign a new contract so we sold him to uncle ‘arry at Tottenham. Reports indicated that one of the reasons that Pienaar didn’t sign the new contract was because he wanted the same pay as Arteta (Everton’s former co-top-earner). Pienaar felt as if the club did not value him (and may have been told as much) when Arteta was signed to a new long-term deal and the same terms were not offered to him. So, off to London with Pienaar. 

Flash-forward just over seven months to deadline day, Everton sells Mikel Arteta to Arsenal. Either the bank has us (figuratively) by the balls or Everton has just stopped planning for the future and is living day to day. It is madness to think that we would sell Pienaar because we couldn’t match his wage demands and then turn around and sell the player that is on our highest wages. Essentially, what I’m saying is that, if we were going to sell Arteta, we didn’t have to sell Pienaar. Now, they’re both gone. That’s not a strategy, that’s a disaster.

Arteta was nominally replaced by Royston Drenthe from Real Madrid who we secured on season long loan. He’s pacy and I’m told from a source in the know that he likes to go forward a lot. He hasn’t played much in the past couple of years. I hope he pans out, but Everton is rolling the dice with his loan if they’re expecting a replacement for either Arteta or Pienaar.

Deadline day was devastating because Everton’s decline under Bill Kenwright accelerated before my eyes. I hope the team’s performances improve. Otherwise, it will be a long wait until January where we will try to use the part of the transfer fees that the bank hasn’t gobbled up by then. If there was a strategy in our moves this summer I don’t see it, unless Kenwright’s trying to get Moyes to resign to avoid having to pay out the rest of his contract.

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