Everton go close to budget limit with strong El Bilal Toure bid as sales mooted

Everton don’t have the budget to increase their bid for El Bilal Toure much unless they make sales this summer, according to Paul Brown.

The Almeria striker appears to be one of the Toffees’ primary transfer targets, with the Spanish side’s CEO Mohamed El Assy confirming to Diario de Almeria on 4 July that an offer had been made, and The Mirror (13 July) have reported since it as much as £25million on the table for the 21-year-old.

The Mali international has scored 16 top flight goals across four campaigns in Ligue 1 with Stade de Reims and then in La Liga last term, and Brown believes Everton are close to their financial limit with such a strong offer for an “unproven” talent when there is competition for his services.

Speaking to GIVEMESPORT, the former Daily Star journalist said: “There are other clubs interested. I’m hearing that Atalanta are possibly ahead of Everton in the hunt at the moment, so we shall see.

“I don’t really think, unless there is another sale, that Everton can throw a lot more money at that. They’ve already come up with quite a good package for someone who is unproven in the Premier League.

“So, I don’t think they’d be willing to go much further than they already have.”

Unless Everton pull the emergency chord and sacrifice Amadou Onana this summer it looks like they are going to have a moderate budget to land a headline striker and will likely need to pick up bargains or frees to fill in elsewhere.

The free agent signing of Ashley Young is, as yet, still the only signing of the summer, and indeed since Sean Dyche arrived in January.

Putting £25m on the table is a decent amount of money for a club that are widely reported to have a tight transfer budget, so they need to be sure they are spending on the right man.

Toure is a talent, but if all the money this summer is spent on him and he doesn’t immediately take to the English top flight it might look like a mistake.

Rodrigo from Leeds United was cheap and would have made a lot of sense but the Toffees couldn’t win the race, while they have also been linked with free agents Moussa Dembele and Alfredo Morelos.

If Almeria are holding out for a record fee to sell their main striker, as they are within their rights to do as he only moved their last summer, then it might be time to turn attentions elsewhere and focus on bringing in more affordable options.

In other Everton news, a trio of attacking targets that the Toffees want to sign are all now “actively” pushing to leave their current club.