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Everton paying for ditching a transfer policy that was bearing fruit

Action Images via Reuters/Lee Smith

Given that George Springer clutched Greg Bird's flyball shortly before 4:30 a.m. local time on Merseyside, it's unlikely that Ronald Koeman saw the Houston Astros confirm their route into the World Series.

What he would've seen is a team that endured lean years to produce what is now a formidable franchise. A team built with plenty of young talent, which then spent big on salaries when silverware came into view. A team that, through the hitting exploits of its batters at the bottom of the order, has proved it has fathoms upon fathoms of depth.

Koeman might've belatedly learnt a thing or two from the Astros had he been in front of the television early on Sunday morning, hours before his Everton side slumped to a 5-2 home loss to Arsenal. The result dropped the Toffees into the relegation zone.

For a while, Everton's transfer policy was one of the shrewdest and most prudent in the Premier League. Like the Astros, the focus was on the future with John Stones, Brendan Galloway, Mason Holgate, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, and Ademola Lookman plucked from the lower leagues, and intended to mature with academy products Ross Barkley, Tyias Browning, Tom Davies, and Jonjoe Kenny.

Everton's business in the 2017 summer window - overseen by Koeman, Steve Walsh, the transfer guru of Leicester City when it unexpectedly captured the 2015-16 Premier League title, and majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri - initially adopted a similar route. Young players with top-flight pedigree were brought aboard in the shape of future England No. 1 Jordan Pickford, three-time Eredivisie champion Davy Klaassen, former Manchester United trainee Michael Keane, and Sandro Ramirez, who was a snip at around €6 million after scoring a commendable 14 league goals for Malaga in the previous campaign. They were pricier acquisitions than those that had preceded them, but again looked to satisfy a long-term and steady build.

The two standout unveilings that followed took an entirely different tact. The huge salary of Wayne Rooney - a player who nowadays can only prosper when given several yards of space - was added to the payroll, and he was trailed in mid-August by Gylfi Sigurdsson for a princely sum of £45 million. The fact that Everton then had three No. 10s - Klaassen, Rooney, and Sigurdsson - with little pace is well-documented, and used as evidence for Koeman signing players with no discernible plan as to how they could be fielded. They've only started two matches together: a 3-0 home loss to Tottenham Hotspur, and a 2-1 home defeat of Bournemouth. The latter tilt was given life by Davies, a gifted midfielder marginalised by the heavy recruitment, and Oumar Niasse, formerly shoved out of the picture by Koeman, replacing Klaassen and Rooney after 55 minutes.

It was the signing of Cuco Martina that showed the biggest reversal in Everton's transfer business, though. The right-back made only six league starts for Southampton in the 2016-17 season, and his arrival on Merseyside robbed the likes of Kenny and Holgate extended opportunities during the absence of Seamus Coleman through injury.

An Everton carefully constructed and improved with developing players was abandoned, and the Toffees seemed to be hiring for the hell of it.

Maybe Moshiri should be held partly accountable for instilling an impatient three-year plan to secure Champions League football under Koeman - a blinkered aim given the spending power and huge head starts of those above. Nevertheless, it will be Koeman, with his voiced admiration for Liverpool and unabashed, unrealistic fawning for a post at Barcelona, who will shoulder most of the blame. The sluggish and confused displays by an expensively assembled squad have smacked of short-sightedness and, in wildly buying what he could, an arrogance in the transfer market that can only pay off in FIFA video games.

"That's why I left Southampton," Koeman revealed to The Mirror's Simon Mullock in Dec. 2016. "The financial power is bigger here than at Southampton. Financially, we can compete with a club like Tottenham Hotspur. That says enough."

The irony of Koeman comparing Everton's weighty piggy bank to Tottenham's - a club which certainly looked to the future when framing one of the best sides in its history - serves as just another condemnation to the 54-year-old's spluttering spell.

If Koeman is given the boot by Everton - or if he's somehow given a few more matches to correct things - he should park himself in front of the World Series meeting between the patient Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers. Cutting corners by prematurely splurging on experience when the top four was so far away was mindless, and watching the Astros may make it dawn on Koeman that Everton can write history with Calvert-Lewin, Lookman, and Davies - not the lavishly paid Rooney.

(Photos courtesy: Action Images)

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