Everton’s Transfer Pursuit: Hackney and West Ham's Impact
Everton’s summer has not yet caught fire, but the smoke is starting to billow.
The transfer window opened today with the club still to land their first signing, yet the rumour mill around Finch Farm is already in full roar. At the centre of it all: a familiar hunting ground and a manager with unfinished business.
Hackney the priority – for now
The clearest target on Everton’s radar is not in claret and blue at all, but in red. Hayden Hackney, Middlesbrough’s midfield lynchpin and the Championship’s Player of the Season, is understood to be keen on a move to Goodison Park. Everton want him. He wants Everton. The sticking point is the number on the cheque.
Middlesbrough know exactly what they have: a homegrown talent, technically sharp, press-resistant and still with years ahead of him. Talks are ongoing over the fee it will take to pull him away from his boyhood club, and until that is settled, everything else around Everton’s midfield feels like background noise.
But only up to a point.
Moyes, West Ham and a tempting market
Once you move beyond Hackney, the gossip keeps circling back to the same place: relegated West Ham United.
It is not hard to see why. David Moyes knows the club intimately, knows the dressing room, knows which characters can handle a fight and which profiles his Everton squad currently lack. When a Premier League squad drops into the Championship, the assumption is always the same – bargain hunt.
The reality might be more complicated.
Everton’s long-standing interest in Tomas Soucek lingers in the background. Moyes tried to bring the experienced Czech midfielder to Merseyside last summer. With Hackney now in the frame, it is unclear whether that door will open again, but the link refuses to disappear.
At right-back, the picture is clearer. Despite the position being a priority, Aaron Wan-Bissaka is not on the active shortlist at this stage, as reported last month. That narrows the field and underlines the club’s insistence on value and fit, not just reputation.
Full-back contrast and Bowen dreams
On the left, Everton have already secured stability. Vitalii Mykolenko signed a new three-year contract last week, a nod to his reliability and defensive nous. Yet the club are also exploring a different flavour on that flank.
Attacking left-back El Hadji Malick Diouf has been linked as a more adventurous option, someone who could drive high up the pitch and offer a sharper cutting edge in the final third. Mykolenko locks down his side; Diouf, if a deal ever materialised, would stretch it.
Then there is Jarrod Bowen.
Moyes would love to work with the West Ham captain again. That much is no secret. Bowen’s energy, direct running and eye for goal would transform Everton’s forward line. But this is the kind of fantasy that collides with cold market reality. A player of his stature, even after relegation, will attract a queue of suitors, many of them with deeper pockets and European football on the table.
Pace out wide and a nod from the World Cup
Everton’s search for width and speed does not stop there. Crysencio Summerville sits firmly in that category – a winger who brings raw pace and direct threat.
He has just underlined his credentials on the biggest stage, scoring a fine goal for Ronald Koeman’s Netherlands in their World Cup opener against Japan on Sunday night. Performances like that do not lower a price tag. They inflate it. Any move for Summerville would mean stepping into a competitive, expensive market, but he fits the profile Everton so clearly lack: someone who can flip a game in a single sprint.
Striker conundrum and the Castellanos question
Up front, the picture is more cautious. Everton are open to exploring the striker market, but there is a hard acceptance inside the club: proven centre-forwards cost serious money and everyone wants one.
They will not force it. If an affordable, credible option emerges, they will move. If not, they will not gamble for the sake of headlines.
One name has surfaced as a possible opportunity. The Guardian reported at the weekend that Taty Castellanos could be on Everton’s radar. The 27-year-old Argentina international only joined West Ham in January from Lazio. Seven goals in 22 appearances could not keep the Hammers in the Premier League, but it did show he can adapt quickly and carry a threat.
On paper, a recently relegated striker might look like a chance to pounce. In practice, West Ham’s stance may shut that door before Everton even knock.
Kretinsky’s message: no fire sale
The assumption after West Ham’s relegation was simple: they would have to sell. Big names, big wages, big exits. A squad stripped for parts by Premier League vultures.
Daniel Kretinsky has other ideas.
On Saturday, the Czech billionaire agreed a deal with the family of the late David Gold to buy a portion of their shares. If completed, the move will take his stake in West Ham to 43 per cent. With that, he has stepped forward as the key powerbroker in east London – and his first public message was pointed.
In an interview with The Times, Kretinsky insisted he wants to keep the majority of the squad together and arm Nuno Espirito Santo with the tools to go straight back up.
“We have a very credible strategy. We don’t need to sell the players for financial reasons. We are doing this to make sure we are promoted back to the Premier League immediately. That is our only goal.
“Key players are waiting for us. They want to see there is a real chance of keeping the squad together. What matters is funding, strategy and consistency.
“We have spoken to all of them. They need to see that our project is real and serious. Promotion is our only goal.”
That is not the language of a club preparing a clearance sale. It is a warning to would-be buyers that any deal for West Ham’s best will be on their terms, not at knockdown prices.
Everton’s tightrope
For Everton, the message from London complicates an already delicate summer. Moyes knows where he would like to shop, but West Ham’s resolve and Kretinsky’s money make those aisles far less accessible.
So the club walks a tightrope. Push hard for Hackney and the right wide players. Monitor the striker market without blinking first. Keep an eye on any crack that might appear in West Ham’s stance, while accepting that Kretinsky might hold his line all the way to May.
The window has only just opened. The question now is whether Everton can turn this swirl of names and old connections into the kind of hard, decisive business that changes a season – or whether they will watch others move first while the players they want are told to stay exactly where they are.
