Everton is poised to repeat Tottenham’s Gareth Bale mistake with Romelu Lukaku

Everton needs to learn from Tottenham’s failings in the aftermath of selling Gareth Bale

Romelu Lukaku is fresh off a master-class performance in Everton’s 2-0 win over Chelsea in the FA Cup that thrilled the Toffee faithful to no end. Unfortunately, reality has come crashing down around the club with manager Roberto Martinez’s admission that a Lukaku sale might be unavoidable this summer.

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The Guardian reports that Martinez believes selling Lukaku might just be a symptom of the “modern game.” He goes on to add that if Everton is forced to sell one of their high-priced stars, they can make up for it buy purchasing “three or four” players in return. This philosophy sounds great in principle, but as Tottenham proved after selling Gareth Bale, it doesn’t work in real life.

As you’ll recall, Tottenham sold Gareth Bale to Real Madrid for a record transfer fee and promptly reinvested the proceeds in purchasing seven players in the same transfer window. Only three of the seven remain at White Hart Lane two seasons later, and only one, Danish midfielder Christian Eriksen, can be ruled as an unquestioned success. The group certainly did not come close to making up for the loss of the world-class wide man.

Of course Tottenham and Bale aren’t the only example of this theory not working in practice. Liverpool’s purchases in the aftermath of the Luis Suarez sale were also an exceedingly mixed bag. Brendan Rodgers lost his job largely as a result of that massive roster change.

The reason for the difficulty in making the exchange work are varied. Firstly, it’s a huge challenge to correctly multiple players in one transfer window. In Everton’s case, Romelu Lukaku would be leaving as a sure thing, while the players they acquire would all come in with some amount of risk. Even if your scouting department is excellent, you’re likely to be wrong on half of the incoming players. You simply can’t afford to miss out on any replacements for a world-class star.

There’s also factual truth in the theory that star players can’t be replaced by a group of above-average players. World class stars demand a huge premium on the transfer market for a reason. Their abilities are the most rare in the world. When a player like Bale or Lukaku leave a club, it leaves a void in their wake. All of the sudden it becomes much easier to mark everyone else on the pitch without needing to focus on a world-class superstar.

Given Everton’s shaky transfer record under Martinez, the thought of selling Lukaku should terrify Toffee fans. The Belgian striker has been an immense success for them all season long by anyone’s definition. Even though Everton hasn’t experienced the type of success their fans would like as a team, they can’t blame Lukaku for any of those failings.

If Everton gives in and sells any of their world-class trio of Lukaku, John Stones or Ross Barkley and hopes to replace them with the purchase of multiple players, the results could be disastrous. In fact, it could be the final coffin in the managerial reign of Roberto Martinez at Merseyside.