Sports writer Matthew Davies has stated that the upper limit for Ellis Simms to come to Swansea is ten million pounds. Or should we say that’s what has been indicated. Stating he spoke to the Liverpool Echo regards Simms and Joel Piroe this figure is an exceptionally high fee for a player nowhere near the quality of Joel Piroe.

It seems a bizarre figure to conjure up when a week ago around three or four million pounds seemed the asking price. However Everton do have significant financial concerns and it’s eye watering the figures owed. The Guardian reported recently - Everton’s combined losses over the past three financial years stand at £305.5m and a staggering £417.3m over the past four years. The club is under investigation by the Premier League for an alleged breach of its profit and sustainability rules, owes about £150m to an opaque lender called Rights and Media Funding Limited and needs around £300m to complete the new stadium being built at Bramley-Moore Dock.

Building hasn’t stalled but it’s not going as predicted with huge sums required to complete the stadium, so you can understand why Everton are penny pinching everywhere they can.

If Everton are as keen as is being reported to sign Joel Piroe and of course the Swans on Ellis Simms a swap deal is the obvious solution. There is an issue there, if Simms is say ten million then Piroe is Twenty million. Then of course if Simms is five million then Piroe is fifteen million. The Swans won’t be bullied that much we know, and things can slow down to a dead stop at times, but if the club did secure Simms then surely there is a ten million pounds gap between the two forwards ?

That’s how it has to play out, Everton want Piroe more than the Swans need Simms.

It’s pure conjecture of course, the Swans may not want to deal in this way, but really it does make good business sense. The issue with Simms is although he played seventeen games for Sunderland last season and scored seven goals he returned to Everton and scored one in twelve although only two of those games were starts. Dyche said of him at the end of the season. "He’s still got a lot to improve. These players know the things they have got to do, it is just a strange situation and they need guidance, someone to say ‘yeah you are right so therefore take ownership and do it’. I thought the Chelsea game was a good sign of that, of the difference in his physicality. He is quick, he is strong and he used it. We started him at Liverpool, he found it too tough but it was a great learning curve and I said he would learn from it”

With all due respects that doesn’t sound like a player of a similar age to Piroe who is on an equal footing. In fact it sounds like a player who needs far more development than Piroe needed when he came to Swansea.

Not a chance.

Photographs licensed from Reuters

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