The BBC has republished an astonishing attack on Everton despite the article containing several factual inaccuracies and a distinct lack of contact.
In an attempt to smear the club, the BBC posted an article claiming Everton have spent £160m on 17 strikers in a decade trying to replace Romelu Lukaku – but the article contains some astonishing claims that do not stack up.
While being only slightly less than Liverpool spent on misfiring striker Alexander Isak, who has no Premier League goals to his name this year, the figure works out at just £10m a season in that period and completely fails to explain that Everton actually have a huge positive net spend on strikers in that period.
The club took the hit on disastrous moves for Cenk Tosun but actually made a profit on the likes of Moise Kean and Neal Maupay despite their poor performance. It also sold Romelu Lukaku for a huge profit of around £60m and Richarlison, who rarely played as a striker for the club, for a profit close to £20m.
Ellis Simms and Tom Cannon, youth team players who did not break in to the first team, were sold for a combined £16m in that time too.
Instead, the article lists Everton’s top four net spends in a transfer window in the hope to frame the club as big spenders. Everton are one of a very small number of Premier League clubs to turn a net profit in the transfer market in the last five years due to ownership mismanagement.
The article gleefully explains Everton have signed 17 strikers since Lukaku and failed to replace him. While the latter point may be true, the number is categorically untrue.
When Everton sold Lukaku they brought in Sandro Ramirez as their only striker signing, adding Cenk Tosun later that year.
Everton didn’t sign another striker until Moise Kean in 2019, followed by Solomon Rondon in 2021. Neal Maupay, Beto, Youssuf Chermiti and Thierno Barry have all arrived since. That makes eight strikers bought since Lukaku left Everton. Armando Broja probably counts too despite only arriving on loan.
Of course, the BBC could argue Richarlison counts but the only way to reach 17 would be to include the likes of Josh King and Theo Walcott, who are quite clearly wingers, as well as Wayne Rooney, who was famously a number 10 signing.
Desperate BBC writers may also have included left winger Henry Onyekuru or Arnaut Danjuma to bump up the entirely misleading figure and hint at a scattergun approach to strikers.
Even with the completely inaccurate figures being bandied about, the article has several other spins that lack so much context they can only be intentionally misleading.
For example, it is true Beto and Barry have scored one goal between them this season but framing it as ‘in 19 appearances’ is a baffling method considering a five minutes cameo would count as one. For context, Barry has played a little over three full games worth of football and has an expected goal tally of around one. It does not really point to a massive underperformance.
While the article describes Barry as ‘not good enough’ – a quote from former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher – it is interesting to compare coverage to a £115m signing not too far from here.
Despite costing three times that of Barry, Florian Wirtz has yet to score and has regularly been left out of the team after some shocking performances as Liverpool lost six games in seven.
Since the beginning of October the BBC has written nine articles about Wirtz. “Wirtz will be unbelievable’ says Berbatov in the latest headline. Add that to Klopp and Nagelsmann ‘defending his form’ in another article. Or a second article about Nagelsmann defending his form, just in case you missed the first one.
We’ve got an article headlined ‘Wirtz boasts promising numbers’ and a lengthy analysis on why ‘Liverpool aren’t getting the best from Wirtz yet’.
Another article confidently says: “there’s a very good chance he and his gaffer will still be able to look back and laugh at all this over some silverware and champagne.”
Chief football writer has also waded in. He says: “Wirtz deserves a lot more time before anyone makes any judgement, certainly the judgement that he is a flop.”
It seems while Wirtz gets an astonishing nine articles (that’s nearly three a week) defending his poor form Thierno Barry deserves no such support from the BBC. And they’re willing to twist the facts to make sure he doesn’t.
Interestingly, the same author wrote a baffling article in the summer claiming Everton had ‘wasted’ £200m in transfers. The article added up players sold at a loss across an entire decade to come to a figure of £188m – not actually £200m – and to this day it is the only time I’ve seen that sort of metric used in football journalism.
Nearly every player listed was signed more than half a decade ago. In the time since Everton have made a net profit in the transfer market – a fact not mentioned in the strange article.