Rafael Benitez has taken a fresh swipe at Lucas Digne after selling the France international, a move he says has allowed Everton to balance both his squad and the financial books at Goodison Park.
Digne joined Aston Villa on Thursday in a deal rising to £25million after falling out with Toffees boss Benitez.
The left-back took a parting shot at Benitez as the transfer went through, saying on social media: “Sometimes it only takes one person from outside to destroy a beautiful love affair.”
Benitez, speaking for the first time on Digne’s departure, said: “I am the manager and I take the responsibilities of my decisions.
“It is to think of the team and the future of the club, and we have to move forward and think about that.
“If you’re in a boat and someone is not rowing with the strength that you are expecting then you have to make your decision.
“The realities are when you have a player that is thinking to leave and then you have an offer, a possibility.
“We brought in a couple of good young players, hungry players. I’m sure they will be good now and better in the future.
“It’s something positive for the club to sell a player who will be 29 years of age this year and bring in players of 20/22 and in positions we needed to balance.
“We are balancing the squad, improving the competition, and economically it is good business.”
Anwar El Ghazi made the opposite journey to Digne on Thursday by joining on loan from Villa for the rest of the season.
The Dutch winger became Everton’s third January addition following the arrivals of full-backs Vitalii Mykolenko and Nathan Patterson on permanent deals.
“It was part of the deal with Digne when we started the conversations,” said Benitez, speaking ahead of Saturday’s Premier League game at Norwich.
“We were thinking about the Covid situation, possible injuries, the Africa Cup of Nations with (Alex) Iwobi away and bringing in someone with quality who could give us different options.
“It is good because it is a loan with an option and the player has to prove himself.
“We can see him, so I think it’s a win-win situation. If he’s doing well everyone will be happy and he has told me he has come to fight and show his level.”
Everton have dropped to 15th in the table after managing only one league win since the end of September.
But they have games in hand on most of the teams directly above them and Benitez says his squad is now close to full-strength.
Only midfielder Tom Davies, sidelined after hamstring surgery, is set to miss out at bottom-placed Norwich, although Benitez said there “may be one Covid case” in his squad.
“We have players coming back, still not fully fit and people have to understand that match fitness comes with games,” he added.
“We are quite confident that we have people coming back, and if we have some wins we will be in a much better position and play the way we want to play.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here