Roberto Martinez has moved to defend his transfer record at Everton following recent criticisms of January signing Oumar Niasse.
Niasse has struggled for form and fitness since his £13.5 million move from Lokamotiv Moscow, prompting fears that the Blues may well have paid over the odds for the currently unproven Senegalese forward.
But Martinez insists that the 26-year-old, who gave an unconvincing hour-long performance in Saturday’s 2-1 home victory over Bournemouth – his first start for the club- will play an important role for the side once he is fully up to speed.
He said: “We brought Oumar Niasse in, he was voted the best footballer in the Russian league. He is a player who can be very important for us.
“When he arrived in January it was a moment in which he needed to work on his fitness. Finally now we’ve been able to put him on a level in which he’s been able to compete.
“He’s not the finished article because he’ll need a bit of an adaptation period but I thought his contribution was important. It’s going to take a bit of time but it was important for him to start to get that introduction.
“You need to have a belief in all the players that you’ve got in the squad and I’ve got that belief with Oumar.”
New investor Farhad Moshiri is expected to spend big this summer in an attempt to overhaul the current playing squad, and the under-fire Everton boss urged the Blues board to look at his transfer record over his three-year tenure instead of recent failings in the market.
“I arrived at the club in 2013 in a very, very important moment because in that transfer window we lost probably the most important goal scoring threat we had in the team with Marouane Fellaini and Victor Anichebe,” the Catalan added.
“We bought Romelu Lukaku, Gareth Barry and James McCarthy. The average age was 30, now it’s 26.
“The record is there, I don’t think it’s about the last signing, it is on the work that we have done over the last six windows and the way we have developed young players.”