Having spent just £1.6m on five players in the summer heading into this season, Everton have dropped £28m in the opening five days of the January transfer window.
The Blues were hamstrung going into the current Premier League campaign owing to skirting close to the Financial Fair Play threshold having posted three successive loss-making accounts, partly due to the pandemic and partly down to the willingness of owner Farhad Moshiri to invest in the club.
Everton's heavy spend under Moshiri to try and make up the gap between themselves and the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur meant that the risk of breaching FFP regulations was very real.
The latest loss-making set of accounts, to the tune of £139.8m, came on the back of two previous accounting periods that showed £13.1m and £111.8m losses.
The spending that was emboldened by the willingness of Moshiri to bring silverware to the club as they headed towards a new era at the now green lit Bramley Moore Dock Stadium development, set to be ready for 2024, did come at the risk of breaching the Premier League's own profit and sustainability rules, where clubs are allowed to lose a maximum of £105m over three years.
Potentially breaching these thresholds was a driving force behind why the Toffees went into the current campaign having had to do their shopping on a shoestring, with Andros Townsend, Salomon Rondon, Asmir Begovic and Andy Lonergan all arriving on free transfers, while Demarai Gray's £1.6m move from Bayer Leverkusen was the only piece of business for boss Rafa Benitez that involved a fee.
This week saw Benitez get the green light to move in the market, adding 22-year-old Ukrainian left back Vitaliy Mykolenko from Dynamo Kyiv for £17m, and Glasgow Rangers' highly rated 20-year-old right back Nathan Patterson for £11m.
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So what has changed for Everton to be making waves in this window, with two more reportedly being eyed, and having to spend the previous summer in the build up to the Premier League seeking bargains?
As UEFA did with their FFP rules, allowing for clubs to roll one year into two in an attempt to help ease the FFP burden, so too did the Premier League make changes.
They extended the three-year assessment period to include an extra year owing to the pandemic.
As part of this assessment a calculation gives adjusted earnings before tax for the current and previous seasons, with the current four-year assessment taking an average from two the two COVID-19 affected financial periods.
Everton had to plan accordingly to give themselves the best chance of being able to return to investing in the on-field product by curbing spending, although it austerity that was self-inflicted and not simply down to the impact of the pandemic.
When Everton were conducting their summer business they still had to be mindful that moving players on and lightening the load on the wage bill was an absolute must. Without that security then it would have to be a case of cutting their cloth accordingly.
Moise Kean left on deadline day on a two-year loan for Juventus to alleviate some pressure on the wage bill, with that deal potentially becoming permanent, but it was only after the window closed that the real work was done in driving down the wage bill, with James Rodriguez departing for Qatari side Al-Rayyan in September.
Those departures provided some room for manoeuvre when it came to additions in this window, although the Blues will have been emboldened to get the deals for Mykolenko and Patterson over the line due to the likely exit of Lucas Digne this month, with the French international full back having a price tag of around £30m set and no shortage of admirers.
Digne hasn't been a fringe player at Everton and at 28 is a player whose market value is high. The fallout that occurred in recent months isn't something that was factored in over the summer and his hastened departure wasn't on the agenda.
But with the club likely to be able to rely on a sizeable chunk of money coming their way from a Digne sale, especially with both club and player keen to expedite the situation, then Blues chiefs have been willing to roll the dice on Mykolenko and Patterson.
There will be further heavy losses incurred by Everton when they publish their accounts in the coming weeks, with the impact of a full season played behind closed doors meaning that almost all of their matchday income would have been wiped out.
The financial accounts set to be published are for the year ending June 2021. The current accounting period, which ends in June 2022, will be the one that takes into account the business that has been done this season, and with Everton keen to try and make headway in driving down losses and easing their FFP worries, their transfer approach has been far more measured than it has been in previous seasons.
The additions of Mykolenko and Patterson, whose profile as young talents ready to take their game to the next level fits the mould that Everton want when looking to their future progression, point to the club beginning to emerge from the transfer wilderness.
But having spent so much for such little return in recent seasons it won't be a swift return to the big spending of some seasons and there will have to be some smart moves made in the market.
In recent times that hasn't been Everton's forte, and that is something that has to be addressed.
