Former Everton defender Michael Ball, now an agent, says there's confusion around the club's treansfer policy.

Ball has sympathy for current football chief Kevin Thelwell over his plans for the summer market.

He told the Liverpool Echo: “Kevin had done the rounds with previous posts both in England and the USA but as Evertonians we're left thinking, 'can we get this right with a director of football?' Ever since the post was created at our club, we seem to have gone backwards.

“Our expectations have been raised, thinking we're going to find the next gems from South America like Richarlison before he came to Watford or a Riyad Mahrez/Jamie Vardy, who Steve Walsh helped unearth in his previous role at Leicester City. Instead what we found was lazy recruitment.

“We just threw money at it without looking at the bigger picture or pathways from our academy which suffered. The trend carried on when Marcel Brands came to the football club.

“Marcel was someone I knew having been at another of my former clubs PSV and it took him three or four years to get it right there, which is a long time for them, but he was successful in his last season. Given the connections the Dutch have, I was hoping that we'd be able to utilise the South American market to give their youngsters opportunities but once again we continued to be lazy and brought in Barcelona reserves and other high-value players.

“We were paying Champions League wages for players who weren't Champions League level and found ourselves in a huge mess. Now Kev has come to the football club and we wanted some reassurance that we wouldn't go down that route again but we've probably not been able to anyway because of a lack of funds."