You've hinted at this a lot since the last day of the window. To me, it seems the failure to sign Batshuayi was the catalyst for everything that went wrong with summer recruitment. Marseille were willing to sell him for 28 million pounds. It seems clear we tried to use their difficult financial position to barter down the price. When we did that, we gave Chelsea a chance to come in and swoop for him after they realized that Lukaku and Morata were too expensive for them. This is something that is never mentioned here. Chelsea were not in for Batshuayi early on. He was a fall-back option and they only landed him because we dithered. It's obvious Poch wanted Batshuayi, as Bielsa went to bat for him, and he tended to fit the profile of the dynamic striker Poch likes better than Janssen.
Once Batshuayi got away, you likely had an annoyed Poch settling for less than what he wanted. Come the end of the window, Poch is looking at his squad and outside of Wanyama, sees no new additions that he trusts to cope with a brutal season with heightened expectations. Levy likely panics and acquiesces to pressure from Poch to sign Sissoko. Had we signed Batshuayi, I'm 100% certain Sissoko would be at Everton right now.
Our recruitment has been poor these last two summers, and I've warned people repeatedly that Paul Mitchell and the group of analysts the club brought in were not worthy of nearly universal adoration like they've done nothing but recruit gems everywhere they'd been.
