Rafa's only success: Everton struck transfer gold with "tireless" £48k-p/w machine - opinion

Everton have become renowned for their bad transfer decisions, with Farhad Moshiri spending over £600 million on signings over the last six years just for the club to go backwards and find themselves in the bottom half of the table.

Rafa Benitez joined the club in the summer, clearly tasked with trying to put a stop to the reckless spending of the past by signing Demarai Gray for £1.7m and Andros Townsend on a free transfer, with both signings paying off as the pair are the first and second top goal scorers for the club this season.

When you look at Townsend’s impact in particular, Everton really struck gold with this signing, especially when the odds were stacked against him joining a team with a prolific goal scoring partnership of Richarlison and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

However, the 30 year old clearly felt he had a point to prove, and so far he has definitely proved it.

Following multiple injuries to both Richarlison and Calvert-Lewin, Townsend who was praised for being  “tireless” by podcaster Dan Cook, has seized the opportunity to replace their attacking threat in the forward line, and as a result is club’s the top goal-scorer with seven and has also got three assists across all competitions.

When you consider that he was brought into the club on a free transfer and is at one of his lowest market values of £6.3 million since he was at Tottenham Hotspur over eight years ago (£4.5 million), according to Transfermarkt, he is achieving beyond expectations.

Although Everton fans don’t have much to thank Benitez for after he sold one of their best players to Aston Villa, and only managed to record five Premier League wins in his 20 games in charge, it is hard to ignore that the signing of the £48k-p/w forward was a