Everton may have avoided relegation from the Premier League once again this season, but Sean Dyche has a major job on his hands this summer to take the Merseyside outfit back into the top half of the Premier League next term.
Retaining their top-flight status came despite being deducted eight points after breaching several financial fair play regulations, which means they will have to be clever during the summer transfer window.
This could suggest Dyche may need to move a player or two on during the transfer window in order to balance the books, especially if he is looking to make several signings of his own.
It won't be the first time Everton have had to move on their most prized assets, that’s for sure, as the likes of Wayne Rooney, Richarlison, Romelu Lukaku and John Stones have all been snapped up by bigger clubs due to their financial clout, leaving the Toffees short of a wonderful player, yet with a major profit being secured.
Dyche has plenty of young talent who he could sell to raise funds, especially Jarrad Branthwaite and Amadou Onana, who could bolster the club’s coffers, no doubt about it.
One of the most profitable pieces of transfer business the club have conducted since the turn of the century was that of selling Joleon Lescott to Manchester City back in 2009.
Joleon Lescott’s Everton statistics
The centre-back made his senior breakthrough at Wolverhampton Wanderers during the 2000/01 season, going on to eventually make 227 appearances for the Old Gold before making the move to Everton.
The Goodison Park side signed the defender for a fee in the region of £5m, which certainly looked like a bargain given how much he had shone at Wolves over the years.
David Moyes even hailed him as the “best centre-half in the Championship” giving glowing praise to the then 23-year-old as the manager bolstered his defence with the signing of Lescott.
Season
Games
Goals
Minutes
2008/09
46
5
4,154
2007/08
54
10
4,800
2006/07
42
2
3,677
Despite struggling with knee injuries in the past, Lescott emerged as a consistent member of the starting XI during his time on Merseyside, missing just two Premier League games across his three full seasons.
While Moyes managed to make Everton a team who were extremely difficult to beat, even leading them to a fourth-place finish in the 2004/05 campaign, Lescott failed to win any silverware during his spell with the Toffees, losing the 2009 FA Cup final to Chelsea.
Overall, the former Wolves titan made nearly 150 competitive appearances for Everton and his reliability along with remarkable consistency saw him attract attention from other teams heading into the summer of 2009.
There is no doubt Moyes was looking to make a profit on the player, but how much would Everton sell him for?
How much would Joleon Lescott be worth in 2024 money
Lescott was hitting his peak when Manchester City began making advances to sign the Everton defender ahead of the 2009/10 season.
Moyes turned down initial bids of £15m and £18m for the defender while going as far as dropping Lescott due to his “bad attitude” following an opening day 6-1 defeat to Arsenal, and it was clear there was no way back for him after that.
City eventually signed their man for a fee of £22m, which represented a wonderful £17m profit after just three years on Merseyside, not a bad piece of business at all from Moyes.
How much would this £22m transfer fee from 15 years ago be worth in 2024? Well, we have the answer.
Totally Money have taken the 100 most expensive transfers of all time across each season since 1992 in Europe's top five leagues. Armed with plenty of historical financial data they have calculated what footballers of yesteryear would be worth in the present day after taking into account the remarkable rate of inflation.
The deal taking Lescott from Everton to City in 2009 would now be worth a staggering £57m, according to a conversion tool from the Totally Money Transfer Index, which measures transfer fees from the previous 30 years and adjusts them for inflation in today’s market.
Not only is this an eyewatering sum and proves Moyes was right to hold out for a fee of over £20m, but his value in today’s market is currently more than some of the current Everton players, most notably Onana.
Indeed, according to Football Insider, the 22-year-old may be allowed to depart for £50m this summer – amid interest from Bayern Munich – albeit with that figure still falling short of Lescott's mammoth deal from almost 15 years ago.
What Joleon Lescott did after leaving Everton
Despite arriving at City clearly approaching his peak years, the former England international failed to demonstrate the consistency that had allowed him to shine at Everton.
Across five full seasons, Lescott made over 30 Premier League appearances just once, the 2011/12 campaign, which saw the club finally win the title after a 44-year drought.
After two league titles, an FA Cup and League Cup winners medal, the centre-back departed the Etihad in the summer of 2014, moving to West Bromwich Albion, yet his senior career would last only another three seasons before he retired at the end of the 2016/17 campaign following a brief spell with Sunderland.
At his peak, Lescott was one of the finest defenders in the country, evidenced by the fact he also won 26 caps for England, scoring once at Euro 2012 against France.
Moyes certainly brought out the best in the player, however, as he developed into a solid figure at the heart of the Everton defence between 2006 and 2009.
Everton hit the jackpot with Joleon Lescott
Everton certainly hit the jackpot with Joleon Lescott, who they bought for cheap and sold onto Manchester City for big money.
The Scotsman was a shrewd operator in the transfer window and there is no doubt moving on the defender when he was at his peak surely goes down as one of his best-ever decisions.