With the Premier League season now over, the eyes of Everton fans are turning towards the transfer window.
And, as it seems to have been over the last few years, again this seems like being a big summer for the club.
Carlo Ancelotti and Marcel Brands have a lot of work to undertake over the next few months to improve the squad at Goodison park and make sure the club get into Europe next term.
However, there could be some issues in the way of the Blues getting their business done early, as was discussed in the latest edition of our Royal Blue Podcast.
Host Sam Carroll was joined by Adam Jones, Dave Prentice and Gav Buckland to look ahead at the transfer window, the clear obstacle standing in Everton's way and what should be the strategy in the long term.
Listen to the latest episode of the Royal Blue Podcast HERE
Sam: The only way, I think, to turn this mood around in the summer is to move quickly.
This has got to be a summer where Everton get things done nice and early. We can't have another summer of transfer sagas rolling on.
How important do you think it is that Marcel Brands and Carlo Ancelotti, in the next two weeks even, get the ball rolling and start bringing players into the club?
Adam: I think it's crucial isn't it, and it makes things even more important now that we've not secured European football.
There are a lot of teams who either have secured European football or who finished the season much better than us, like Arsenal, who will also be active. We've got to move quicker than them, as we hope those sides will be our rivals next season.
They're all going to be looking for rebuilds of their own and we could be looking for the same profile of player in certain positions as the likes of a Leicester, Chelsea, Arsenal - whoever it is.
We've got to move quickly to make sure that heads potentially don't get turned elsewhere.
Then, of course, you've got the prospect of summer tournaments to consider as well.
That's going to obviously stand in the way of some players making a move, with some thinking that they can have a good tournament and increase their transfer opportunities afterwards.
So I'm not doubting that it's going to be tricky, and there's so much work that goes into making a transfer happen. I've got no doubt that Everton are trying their utmost to do things quickly.
But I do think the pressure is on to get somebody through the door, by the time the transfer window opens on June 9th you'd love to have at least one player in already.
With the way the season ended, I think it would even be amazing in terms of morale for the fanbase if nothing else.
Because otherwise you just stagnate, you have the summer tournaments where I'd be shocked if many signings happened, and you're waiting until mid-July until you can make transfers happen.
That's when you want players back for pre-season, so it becomes fine-tuned as to whether they're going to bed into the squad properly ahead of the campaign getting underway.
It's a really tricky business and I don't envy anybody who's involved in the recruitment side of things for Everton right now. But I really do think it is crucial to get signings through the door as quickly as possible.
Otherwise we run the risk of not only missing out on some top targets, but we run the risk of affecting the start of next season. Everton can't afford that.
Sam: What kind of summer can you foresee Prenno?
It was a mix in terms of youth and experience last time around, and we've been linked with all sorts of names already. But do Everton need to move away from these big-ticket names and go to younger and more hungry stars?.
Dave: It's got to be a mix, a balance.
You want footballers who have that hunger and desire, ideally younger players who still have a point to prove but still have the right quality.
We were talking about this before, this was the strategy Marcel Brands was keen to put into place. Players who were internationals, or were about to be internationals, with the ability to improve at Everton. I'm thinking of Lucas Digne or Yerry Mina,.
But we seem to have moved away from that a little bit now to go for more established footballers, the likes of Allan or Abdoulaye Doucoure. The older side of the spectrum, James Rodriguez as well.
They have the quality, but sometimes you wonder about the hunger and desire of players that have seen it and done it. You want a mix.
Ben Godfrey has been a god-send this season. His quality hasn't been top class all the time, but he overcomes that with his desire and appetite - and you can see he's certainly going to improve as a footballer.
I don't think we're going to get the players in as quickly as we'd like. We've got a European Championship summer, a Copa America - players of quality are going to be involved in those competitions and will be unlikely to want to negotiate during that period.
Unless we can get them in very quickly, in the next two weeks...it's looking unlikely.
It's going to have to be a very busy summer for those who organise these transfers, and we'll have to work very hard to get the players that we want.
Gav: We've got to have some sort of strategy, haven't we?
We're talking about the next transfer window. What we should be thinking about is what we're doing over the next three transfer windows.
You'd hope that conversation would take place. You don't want to have this groundhog day in which every summer is a massive one of activity.
What we want is a structured plan in place for recruitment, for player development, for incorporating the academy into our future plans - we need that for a start.
If we don't have that, then the risk is we just carry on as we are at the moment. Not having a lot of good players, let's bring another load in during the next transfer window on long contracts - and before you know it they're deadwood.
We've got to get recruitment right.
