Everton's Summer Transfer Plans: Targeting Hayden Hackney
Everton’s summer has not yet caught fire, but the smoke is already drifting in thick from East London.
The transfer window opens with Sean Dyche’s squad still untouched, no deals across the line, yet the rumour mill is running at full tilt. At the centre of it all: a familiar pipeline between David Moyes and his former club West Ham United, now trying to plot a way out of the Championship without losing their best players.
Hackney the priority, West Ham the obsession
For all the noise around West Ham, Everton’s clearest target sits elsewhere. Hayden Hackney, Middlesbrough’s midfield metronome and reigning Championship Player of the Season, has made it known he wants Goodison Park. Everton want him too. The problem, as ever, is the fee.
Talks continue over what it will take to pull the 22-year-old away from his boyhood club. He is the type of signing Dyche has lacked: legs, energy, and a high ceiling in the middle of the pitch. Until that is resolved, though, most of what surrounds Everton is conjecture and positioning.
And a lot of that conjecture keeps circling back to relegated West Ham.
Moyes’ history at the London Stadium and the make-up of West Ham’s squad make the link obvious. Their dressing room is stacked with the sort of profiles Everton crave: athletic, Premier League-tested, and in some cases, entering their prime. On paper, a club falling into the second tier looks ripe for opportunistic bids.
Reality might not be so simple.
Soucek, Wan-Bissaka and a changing plan
Everton’s interest in certain West Ham names has already flickered once. Tomas Soucek, the seasoned midfielder Moyes tried to bring to Merseyside last summer, sits in that bracket. With Hackney now a live target, it is unclear whether Dyche will push again for a 29-year-old whose best work has come as a box-crashing presence rather than a playmaker.
Right-back remains a priority position, but recent reporting has cooled talk of Aaron Wan-Bissaka. Despite long-standing admiration for his one‑v‑one defending, Everton were not pursuing him at that stage. Wages, style, age profile – it all matters when margins are tight.
On the left, the picture is more adventurous. The Blues have been linked with attacking full-back El Hadji Malick Diouf, a player who would offer something very different to Vitalii Mykolenko. The Ukrainian, fresh from signing a new three-year deal, brings reliability and defensive discipline. Diouf, if Everton move, would bring thrust and chaos on the overlap.
Those are the sort of contrasts Dyche needs if he is to evolve this team beyond simply surviving.
Bowen, Summerville and the hunt for pace
Jarrod Bowen is another name that refuses to go away. Moyes knows exactly what he would get from the West Ham captain: relentless work rate, goals from wide, and a player who can carry a team through difficult spells. It is no surprise the Everton manager would love to work with him again.
The problem is obvious. Bowen will not be short of offers. Relegation has not dimmed his standing, and West Ham are under no pressure to sell their talisman on the cheap.
The same applies, in a different way, to Crysencio Summerville. The winger, already admired for his pace and direct running, only boosted his profile further with a sharp finish for Ronald Koeman’s Netherlands in their World Cup opener against Japan on Sunday night. He ticks every box Everton have been missing out wide: speed, goal threat, and the ability to change a game in one moment.
Players like that cost money. Serious money.
Striker search meets hard reality
Everton are willing to look at the striker market again, but there is a clear-eyed understanding inside the club: proven centre-forwards are scarce, expensive, and heavily courted.
The stance is pragmatic. If an affordable option appears, they will move. If not, they will not chase a name for the sake of it.
Taty Castellanos is one of the forwards under discussion. The Guardian linked the 27-year-old Argentina international with a possible move after he scored seven times in 22 games for West Ham following his January switch from Lazio. He did not save them from relegation, yet those numbers in a struggling side hint at a player who could grow with the right service.
Again, though, any move depends on price, competition and, crucially, West Ham’s willingness to deal.
Kretinsky’s stance changes the landscape
For weeks, the assumption around the league was simple: West Ham drop, West Ham sell. Big-name players would be picked off, the wage bill trimmed, and a rebuild forced on the club.
Daniel Kretinsky has pushed back hard against that narrative.
On Saturday, it emerged that the Czech billionaire had agreed a deal with the family of the late David Gold to acquire more of their shares. If completed, the move would lift his stake in the club to 43 per cent and cement his influence over their future.
Speaking to The Times, Kretinsky set out his position in blunt terms. He wants to keep the core of the squad together. He does not intend to sell for financial reasons. His message to manager Nuno Espirito Santo is clear: promotion, immediately, is the only target.
“We have a very credible strategy. We don’t need to sell the players for financial reasons. We are doing this to make sure we are promoted back to the Premier League immediately. That is our only goal,” he said.
“Key players are waiting for us. They want to see there is a real chance of keeping the squad together. What matters is funding, strategy and consistency.
“We have spoken to all of them. They need to see that our project is real and serious. Promotion is our only goal.”
That stance stiffens West Ham’s resolve. It also complicates life for Everton and any other club circling their assets. This will not be a fire sale. If anything, Kretinsky’s words sound like a warning: if you want our best players, you will have to pay top-flight prices for a second-tier club.
For Dyche and Everton, the message is stark. The West Ham well may not be as easy to draw from as many imagined. If Goodison Park is to see new faces this summer, they may have to come from smarter deals, from Hackney’s generation, and from markets where ambition counts as much as budget.
The window is open. The question now is whether Everton can move quickly enough, and boldly enough, to turn all this smoke into something real.
