Everton's Transfer Rumors: Focus on West Ham Players
Everton’s summer has not yet sparked into life, but the rumour mill around Goodison Park is already running hot – and it keeps circling back to relegated West Ham United.
The transfer window opened today with the club still to finalise a first signing, yet the outlines of Sean Dyche’s rebuild are starting to emerge. Central to that is Hayden Hackney, Middlesbrough’s homegrown midfield conductor and the reigning Championship Player of the Season.
Hackney is understood to want the move. Everton want him. The only argument is the price it will take to pull him away from his boyhood club, and those negotiations are still in motion.
While that saga plays out, the rest is noise and possibility. Much of it clings to the same theme: what, and who, can be taken from West Ham’s fall?
Old ties, new targets
The West Ham links are no coincidence. David Moyes’ history in east London, and the profile of players assembled there, make the Hammers an obvious hunting ground for a squad that still feels short of depth and dynamism.
Midfield remains a live question. With Hackney the priority, it is unclear whether Dyche will revive last summer’s interest in Tomas Soucek, the experienced Czech who Moyes previously tried to bring to Merseyside. Soucek would offer legs, height and goals from deep – but any move now sits in the shadow of the Hackney pursuit.
Right-back is another problem area, but not every name floated has stuck. Aaron Wan-Bissaka has been mentioned, yet Everton are not currently pushing for the former Manchester United defender, despite the position being high on the to-do list.
On the left, the picture is different. Vitalii Mykolenko has just committed to a new three-year deal and remains the steady, defensively reliable option. Everton have nonetheless been linked with El Hadji Malick Diouf, an attacking left-back who would bring a more adventurous edge on that flank. It would be a deliberate contrast: one full-back to lock things down, another to tear forward.
Then there is the dream scenario. Jarrod Bowen. Moyes would relish the chance to work with his former talisman again, the West Ham captain who drags teams up the pitch and drags them through games. But Bowen is the kind of player who attracts a queue, not a quiet enquiry, and any move for him would sit in the realms of ambition rather than expectation.
Crysencio Summerville sits in a similar bracket. The winger offers raw pace and direct threat, exactly the injection Everton’s attack often lacks. His stock climbed again with a well-taken goal for Ronald Koeman’s Netherlands in their World Cup opener against Japan on Sunday night. Performances like that do not lower a fee or shorten a list of admirers.
The striker equation
Everton know the striker market is unforgiving. Proven centre-forwards cost serious money, and almost every club wants one. Inside Finch Farm there is an acceptance of that reality, but not a surrender to it. If an affordable, credible option appears, they will move.
Taty Castellanos could fit that description. The Guardian reported at the weekend that the 27-year-old Argentina international is on Everton’s radar. He only arrived at West Ham in January from Lazio, scored seven goals in 22 games, and could not prevent the slide into the Championship. Those numbers, and his profile, make him an intriguing candidate rather than a guaranteed solution.
West Ham’s stance: no fire sale
For weeks, the assumption around the league was simple: West Ham go down, West Ham sell. Big names, big fees, a squad stripped for parts.
Daniel Kretinsky has other ideas.
On Saturday, the Czech billionaire agreed a deal with the family of the late David Gold to buy some of their shares, a move that would lift his stake in the club to 43 per cent. It is a statement of intent, and the message that followed was just as clear.
In an interview with The Times, Kretinsky insisted West Ham do not need to cash in on their best players to balance the books. The plan, he said, is to keep the core of the squad together and hand Nuno Espirito Santo a group strong enough to bounce straight back to the Premier League at the first attempt.
“We don’t need to sell the players for financial reasons,” he said. “We are doing this to make sure we are promoted back to the Premier League immediately. That is our only goal.”
The players, Kretinsky suggested, are listening closely. They want proof that the club will hold its nerve, back its manager and maintain a serious project rather than dismantle it. He spoke of funding, strategy and consistency as the pillars of that push, and stressed that the hierarchy has already spoken to the key figures in the dressing room.
“Key players are waiting for us. They want to see there is a real chance of keeping the squad together,” he said. “Promotion is our only goal.”
For Everton, that stance matters. Every time Kretinsky talks up stability, the prospect of prising Bowen, Soucek or Castellanos out of east London becomes more complicated, more expensive, or both.
So the window opens with a familiar tension. Everton want to strengthen and have identified profiles that fit. West Ham want to rise again without dismantling what they have built. Somewhere between those competing ambitions lies the real story of this summer: who bends first, and who holds their line.
