Everton Needed To Sell Lucas Digne Regardless Of Rift With Rafa Bentiez

Everton sacked their manager Rafael Benitez today following a string of poor results and even worse performances.

They did so a day after Lucas Digne, a player Benitez fell out with before Everton sold him to Aston Villa for $34 million, impressed on his debut for his new club.

This has led to suggestions that the sale was unnecessary and if Benitez had gone first, Digne might have stayed. But this isn’t necessarily the case.

Everton are in an awkward financial position after years of mismanagement off as well as on the pitch and a lack of cohesion in the transfer market.

This inevitably leads to a disjointed appearance on the pitch, and that has never been more evident than during the past few months under Benitez.

It was obvious they needed another rebuild in terms of the playing personnel, but they had run out of money—maybe not in terms of the riches of their ownership, but in terms of what they would be permitted to spend under financial fair play (FFP) regulations.

A chart published by the Daily Mail towards the end of last year showed how much the 20 Premier League sides have to work with in terms of transfer spend while still complying with FFP.

This chart doesn’t necessarily show a club’s available transfer funds, but how much “wiggle room” they had within FFP constraints.

Everton are the only club with a negative balance, which backs up rumours from some quarters that had FFP rules not been relaxed due to the financial problems brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, the club may have found themselves in trouble with football’s governing bodies.

In the five seasons prior to the 2021/22 campaign, only Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Manchester City have spent more on transfers than Everton.

And given one of Everton’s long-term aims is to qualify for Europe, as unrealistic as that may now seem, they need to have an eye on complying with UEFA’s FFP rules as well as the Premier League’s.

When a squad needs to be rebuilt in multiple positions and there is no money available, a club can either look for free or low-price transfers or sell good players in order to bring in funds.

In the summer of 2021, Everton went with the former strategy. Benitez brought in Salomon Rondon and Andros Townsend on free transfers, along with Demarai Gray who cost just $2.3 million.

It was obvious this shopping for bargains would only go so far, and not as far as required for a rebuild.

So Everton needed to sell one of their better players in order to fund signings, and the most obvious candidate to leave was Digne.

It was either him, or someone like Abdoulaye Doucoure, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, or Richarlison, and though it wouldn’t be a surprise to see another of these names leave in the summer for the same reasons, Digne made the most sense at this moment in time.

Though Digne’s performances have dipped in recent times, at his best he was one of the most creative full-backs in Europe. Everton weren’t selling the 28-year-old Frenchman because they thought he was a bad player no longer of use to them, they were selling him precisely because he was a good player.

They knew clubs would be interested in Digne despite his reasonably high wage, and they knew they would get a decent fee for him.

And this is what happened. It’s actually one of the few sensible decisions Everton have made in recent times, even though they shouldn’t have reached a situation where they had to sell one of their better players.

Whether those in charge at the club can be trusted to use the money well is a different matter, and recent history suggests they won’t do a very good job of it, but this is a separate subject.

In order to rebuild, sign new players, and improve in more than one position, the club needed to sell Digne to make space on the wage bill and also receive a transfer fee. If it wasn’t Digne it would have had to have been another good player as no clubs will likely be interested in the fringe players currently at the club — another sign of Everton’s bad business.

This sale will likely have happened regardless of who was in charge, and Benitez’s falling-out with Digne was just a sideshow which, if anything, will have accelerated any transfer deal.

Though this sale solves one problem, it doesn’t solve the major problems the club have had for a number of years. Neither does the sacking of Benitez, even though there was no case to be made for him to remain following the recent run of poor performances and poor results culminating in defeat to Norwich this weekend.

There has been a clear-out at the club under Benitez which might benefit Everton in the long run as long as they have a sound plan going forward, especially at the end of this season.

The recent past suggests such sound planning and execution will not happen under the current ownership, but if the ongoing strategic football review is done properly, and its suggestions heeded, then they’ll have a chance to remain a strong Premer League club by the time they move into their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock in several years time. 

The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about, but with Everton six points off the relegation zone it’s becoming a real possibility. The decisions made in the next six months will be hugely important to the club’s future and looking at the bigger picture, the decision to sell Digne made sense regardless of how it came about.