Sold for £27.5m, now worth just £4m: Everton played a blinder with £362k-p/w dud - opinion

It seems that Everton both bought and sold Belgian midfielder Marouane Fellaini at the perfect time.

Whilst they broke their club record transfer fee at the time for the £15m acquisition of Fellaini, it turned out to be an astute move, with the Toffees getting the best out of him and shipping him onto Manchester United for a tidy profit in what was a player at the very start of his decline.

After rejecting advances from Manchester United and bypassing reported interest from the likes of Aston Villa, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Tottenham Hotspur, Fellaini put pen to paper on a five-year deal to play for Everton in the year 2008.

He was 20-years-of-age at the time and arrived in England with a playing identity of a box-to-box midfielder and soon managed to prove his attacking proficiency with what turned out to be a seamless integration into England’s top flight.

In his first season, Fellaini ended his first campaign with 13 attacking contributions in 35 appearances, bagging a total of nine goals and four assists. Perhaps the most demonstrative indicator of the Belgian-Morrocan midfielder’s playing style was his total of 13 yellow cards. He did well to end on this number, having been booked ten times in his first 17 games.

At Everton, Fellaini made himself a star and left for £27.5m, having scored an impressive 11 goals in the Premier League for the Toffees, to reunite with former Everton boss David Moyes at Manchester United. This was the start of his decline.

Despite his goalscoring feat for Everton the season prior, the 2013/2014 season saw Fellaini score a total of zero goals with an assist total of one in the Premier League, as he saw his minutes cut in half at the Old Trafford side.

Fellaini never managed to