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Ronald Koeman has rejected suggestions that he is at Everton only because it may be a stepping stone towards a potential move towards Barcelona.

The 53-year-old took over at Goodison Park in the summer. He replaced Roberto Martinez on a three-year contract. The move was surprising considering that he spent only two seasons at Southampton. In both campaigns, the Dutch manager enhanced his reputation by ensuring that Southampton overcame their financial troubles and still finished strongly in the Premier League. Since he has made an even better start at Everton, there are suggestions that he is on the lookout for a top managerial job, preferably Barcelona.

As a player,Koeman had his most successful spell with the Spanish club after spending six years at the Camp Nou. He was one of the main players in the Johan Cruyff styled Barcelona from 1989 to 1995. He made more than 150 league appearances for the club during this period. His Barcelona roots have even helped him become a manager. Upon finishing his career with Feyenoord in 1997, Koeman developed his first experience of club football management while serving as the assistant manager at Barcelona from 1998 to 2000.

This led to his first managerial job at Vitesse Arnhem.

It is not surprising if he is linked with the managerial job at Barcelona at some point in the future. “One time when I went to Valencia. They always speak about Koeman and Barcelona.

Everyone knows I have a relationship with Barcelona. Everyone says, ‘One day Koeman will be the coach in Barcelona’. You can’t say, ‘I go to Everton in one or two years, I go to Barcelona’. No. Why? Maybe Everton will be bigger than it now is. Maybe Luis Enrique is doing a fantastic job for the next three years and they don’t need a coach,” said Koeman.

Labour MP for Chester, Chris Matheson has accused Sir Philip Green of being a shadow director at Everton.

He spoke at a Culture, Media and Sport committee on governance of football. The Everton season-ticket holder made the revelation when he discussed “offshore entities” involved with football clubs while addressing the chairman of the English Football Association.

“I understand that Sir Philip Green had something of a role of shadow director at Everton, including having PwC [big four accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers] conduct an audit of the club and summoning the chief executive and the team manager to BHS headquarters to discuss transfer budgets,” Matheson said.

Green is facing serious calls that he be stripped of his knighthood due to the collapse of one of his former firms BHS.

“If someone has paid for some shares through someone else and through an entity in the British Virgin Islands, but isn’t a director, would that be a problem?” Matheson asked. Chief executive Robert Elstone has addressed the issue before saying:

“Those questions were wrong and shouldn’t be asked. To repeatedly be asked about where we lend from and where Philip Green is in all this is just wrong.”

Elstone made the comment during the club’s general meeting late last year as the club steadfastly denies links to Green. Matheson also asked Clarke about offshore companies that were linked with Everton.

“Do you know who or what is Vibrac? Do you know who or what is BCR Sports? Vibrac is an offshore entity… which I believe provided finance to Everton, West Ham, Fulham, Reading and Southampton.

“And I understand it has provided £150 million worth of finance to European clubs, including those clubs I just stated in 2013,” he said.

Matheson made other revelations about the offshore companies but Clarke denied being aware of the companies.

The Netherlands man Ronald Koeman believes some aspects of the team is fine by him but not the aspect showed against Bournemouth on Saturday’s 1-0 awful loss.

“I like several aspects of the team, I don’t like some and we will change that,” said Koeman.

His first taste of defeat in the English Premiership with Everton was an unexpected one. He declined to publicly pore over the various things that went wrong during the 1-0 loss on the South Coast, but he knows there are several challenges to overcome. If the Blues rise to second in the table gave anyone outside Goodison the impression they could stay there or thereabouts, this seemed to be the reality check.

The Toffees boss feels he needs more bodies, more options and more clarity on some of the issues affecting the side of the team, such as the best position to play Barkley and how to get the best out of Kevin Mirallas regularly with visible improvement.

Koeman realizes that the squad needs further fine-tuning; both on the training ground and when transfer period comes in January. He never expected his men to lose to Bournemouth and not any tougher team, considering past results against other teams in the league. He feels if Bournemouth could defeat them, then he has a lot to do both in improving the performance of the players and also addition of new able men. Koeman will need all their strength of character to triumph as he looks to curb the ‘sluggish starts’ that mean Everton’s otherwise fine beginning to this season.

Before the defeat, Everton were in second place, behind Manchester City. City have maintained their perfect start in the Premier League this term. Everton’s loss means Spurs are new runners-up behind City.

Everton continued the unbeaten start to the new season with a 1-0 win over Stoke City, but manager Ronald Koeman said that he wanted to strengthen their squad even further before the end of the transfer deadline day.

The club has had some crucial signings which have massively improved the quality on offer. Fans will be satisfied with the way the club reinvested much of the £ 47 million received from the sale of John Stones to Manchester City.Koeman may have already changed the look of the squad by fielding all four summer signings in the game against Stoke City.

Yannick Bolasie, Maarten Stekelenburg, Williams, and IdrissaGueye were on the pitch against Stoke and they made a telling contribution. One of the few issues for the club are right now may be the inability to score goals as freely as Koeman would like. However, it is not an issue for the Dutch manager as one of the key picking up points every weekend. He managed to create a stellar season with Southampton largely by virtue of picking narrow 1-0 victories. It was also the primary reason behind Southampton failing to qualify for the Champions League back then.Koeman wants to avoid the mistake of the same nature and he is targeting a couple of signings to increase quality even further.

“Yes we are still working on that and if we don’t sign any player before Wednesday then I will be a little bit disappointed.It’s difficult with the numbers of money teams are paying for players and with the Euros everybody was starting late.If you look at all the teams in the Premier League everybody needs maybe one or two or more players.That is a big example that maybe the most busy time will come in the last few days of this window,” said Koeman.

Everton failed to snatch a European position in the 2015-16 season of the Premier League as they had to settle with the 11th spot in what was a very underwhelming campaign for the English club and this led to Roberto Martinez being removed from his managerial position in the team as he was replaced by Ronald Koeman.

The recently appointed manager, Ronald Koeman wants to return Everton to the top 8 spots of the Premier League and help them get back into European competition but in order to do this, a number of signings might be needed to be done and the Dutch manager is expecting to make it happen.
The assistant of Ronald Koeman, Erwin Koeman has revealed details concerning the transfer activities of the club as he said: ‘’Ronald and the chairman are very busy with that. We can talk about a lot of things but in two weeks the league starts and we have to be ready. Not one team in the Premier League is ready for the moment. In two weeks the circus will start’’

From the looks of it, Ronald Koeman is working to sign a few players but that it might take some time before it actually happens.

Bruno Martins of Porto FC is one of the summer targets that is being linked with a possible move to Everton as the 24 year old defender has already worked alongside Ronald Koeman when both of them were part of the team of Netherlands.

Ronald Koeman guided Netherlands into the semi-finals of the 2014 World Cup and Bruno Martins was part of this team. It’s believed that an offer in the region of £12.5million might be enough to secure his services.

Bruno Martins has made over 20 appearances with Porto FC and has shown what he is capable of doing as he is a centre-back who is capable of performing as a left-back as well.

Another player that has been linked with Everton is Southampton’s Jose Fonte but it might be difficult signing him as Manchester United is also interested in signing him.

Roberto Martinez was sacked from Everton on May of 2016 and at this point in time, the Spanish manager still had 3 more years remaining in his contract.

The 42 year old manager was earning £3.5million per year in charge of the Premier League club and considering that he was removed from his position prematurely, there was a pretty hefty amount of money that Martinez wants to get paid and now Martinez and Everton are in a compensation battle.

Everton is not a club that is known for splashing out major amounts of cash in signing top players and having to offload around £10 million in settlement to Roberto Martinez is a big blow for the Premier League club that would probably utilize that cash in signing new players and reinforcing the squad.

An independent hearing is expected to be made in the next few weeks as the legal team of Roberto Martinez is putting pressure to Everton so that the contract of the Spanish manager can be paid off fully as soon as possible.

One of the factors that might help out Everton is if whether or not there performance terms were written in the contract of Roberto Martinez. When a club signs a new player, on many occasions the wages of that new player is decided partly on what he is able to accomplish. If the club is able to reach a specific stage or round in a big tournament, that player will receive an extra cash injection and the same thing can happen with managers.

If a manager is able to guide a club to a big tournament or to the finals, semi-finals or anything of this nature then that coach receives a bigger salary or more cash but considering how disastrously Everton performed under the charge of Roberto Martinez in the last season, it might help out the Premier League in relation to the amount of money that the Spanish manager receives if he does indeed win this legal battle that has recently emerged.

It doesn’t really come as a surprise to hear that Roberto Martinez was sacked from his managerial position in Everton as this season has been a complete disaster for the Spanish coach as he has guided the Premier League club to 13 defeats, 14 draws and only 10 victories in this season.

Roberto Martinez has gone from pushing Everton to the 5th position of the Premier League in his debut season as the head coach of the English club to experiencing a seriously underwhelming season that has seen Everton being positioned in the bottom spots of the English league which is hugely disappointing, especially taking into consideration that Martinez had vowed to take them to the Champions League.

For the past few weeks, supporters of Everton have been displaying their desire to see Roberto Martinez being sacked and it was finally done but the next manager that gets appointed with the managerial position at Goodison Park has a huge mountain to climb if he wants to get Everton back on track.

Throughout the entirety of the season, Everton has been performing at an underwhelming level but this has become even more evident in their recent matches against: Sunderland, Leicester City and Manchester United, all of which they lost.

The next manager that is appointed has to spark life back into the squad as well as try to keep hold of the key figures of Everton. After such a disastrous season, there are rumors going on claiming that many players want to leave and this is something that the successor of Roberto Martinez wants to avoid happen.

John Stones and Ross Barkley are some of the highest-rated young figures in the Premier League and they are likely to receive offers from other clubs during the summer transfer window.

Roberto Martinez is not confident about other teams managing to replicate the success of Leicester City in the 2015-16 season because he thinks this is just an exception.

Leicester City managed to win the league title – only the fifth different team to do so since the inception of the Premier League – on a shoestring budget of just under £ 70 million. They have one of the lowest wage bills in the division and the team was considered as favourites for relegation at the start of the campaign. The arrival of Claudio Ranieri, who did not achieve much success in the English league before, was also not seen as a sign of positivity.

However, the Italian has managed to combine well with an already present coaching staff in order to provide huge changes to the team and build on the success achieved by Nigel Pearson towards the end of 2014-15 season. The title success by Leicester City remains a fairytale story that surprised the world, but it is unlikely to happen again according to Martinez. The Everton manager reckons that the Premier League top four are so strong that it is almost unimaginable that all teams will slip up like they have in this campaign.

Manchester City, United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea have all been poor this season. “It has been incredible to see them play with that tempo and intensity for 10 months with the same group of players – it has been fantastic to watch. It is a great fairytale story and everyone will congratulate their achievement. Everyone will follow what they can do in the Champions League because it is a phenomenal story. If they can play with the same intensity, tempo and the same goalscoring threat, they should be able to challenge against anyone,” said Martinez will congratulating Leicester.

Former England defender Danny Mills says that Roberto Martinez will be able to remain in the job at Everton only if he wins the FA Cup this season.

The club have endured a disappointing league campaign in which they are to finish outside the top 10. This does not read well for the Spaniard, who has been allowed to spend substantial sums of money in recent transfer windows. Players like Romelu Lukaku have arrived for club record fees. They have certainly performed well as individuals, but the team has been let down on a collective front.

Conceding 43 goals in the 32 league matches does not make for a good reading and it has been one of the primary reasons behind Everton being unable to make a wish for European qualification. Everton recently underwent an ownership change with new investment coming in from the Middle East. Often when the new owners, managers are not given enough time to prove their credentials since the new owners will want to bring their own man to the job. At this point, Martinez to perform exceedingly well in order to convince the new owners – even though they have given their backing to the Spaniard – according to Mills.

Everton can win a major trophy for the first time since the 94-95 season by lifting the FA Cup. They are in the semi-finals against Manchester United.“In the same way that a Manchester United FA Cup victory would paper over the cracks at the club, Everton winning the trophy would veil some of the problems at Everton.It could be vital to Martinez’s relationship with the owners and may be his only salvation in keeping his job into next season. Everton have a great deal of quality in that squad and that makes their underachievement this season harder to bear for the fans,” said Martinez.

Ian Wright says that Romelu Lukaku is well within its limits to express his desire to play Champions League football.

The Everton striker recently spoke about playing in this European competition on a regular basis. This has been interpreted as a desire to leave Everton at the end of the campaign since the Merseyside outfit are far from qualifying for this competition. Even though the club received new investment in the form of a billionaire owner, it remains to be seen if this move will translate into investment on the player front.

Lukaku desperately needs more support from his teammates in order to push for a top four place. The former Chelsea striker has already scored 25 goals for the club this season. He is considerably ahead of his teammates when it comes to number of goals scored. Any club would be interested in a player who can find the back of the net with such alarming consistency. The 22-year-old has been linked with Manchester United and Real Madrid. His father recently supported a move to United, which could see him reunited with José Mourinho. The Portuguese is odds-on favourite to take over from Louis van Gaal in the summer.

Lukaku, though, confirmed that he has no issues about working with Mourinho in the future.“The goals that he’s scoring and the rate he’s scoring, Everton should be around the top four and I think Martinez has a lot to answer for.If they carry on it that respect, why should Lukaku [stay]?I don’t think he’s been out of order. He’s scored his goals to fire them where they should be, but they’ve not got there and that’s down to the manager. His scoring the goals to warrant them [the comments],” said the former Arsenal striker giving his support to Lukaku.