Sean Dyche is looking forward to his first transfer window in which he does not have to contend with losing players to help Everton’s financial position. His tenure on Merseyside has been dominated by off-field issues and the need to play his part in addressing them - typically through having to deal with the sale of some of his best players to help improve club accounts.

Following the takeover by The Friedkin Group, completed last month, those concerns are now gone. And while the Premier League's Profit and Sustainability Regulations [PSR], which the club has twice fallen foul of, will restrict efforts to improve his team, he is at least content he will not see it weakened for reasons outside his control.

Dyche was appointed in January 2023 with the club in a perilous position on the pitch that was worsened by the sale of academy product Anthony Gordon days before his arrival.

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The following summer, having led Everton to safety, he saw the deadline day departure of trusted midfielder Alex Iwobi among other exits.

“We had to juggle right before the deadline”, he reflected. “Beto came in because of the money we backlogged. This summer was making numbers work. [The sale of Amadou] Onana, lowering the wage bill and all that stuff. Apart from the PSR thing, the stability is there so that has changed.

“There’s not that need but you still have to work the right market. These guys [TFG] are certainly not wanting to weaken us. It’s the rules, not the intent… we are not under any pressure to get weaker by selling players.”

Whether anything can be done to improve the current squad is the big issue now. For all of the progress off the pitch through the takeover and the impending move to a new stadium, and the stability Dyche has provided on it, Everton enter the final half of this season just two points clear of the relegation zone and with reasons to look over their shoulder.

Bringing in players will be tough, however. While Everton believe they have come through the threat of further PSR sanctions they still have to be cautious this month. The expectation is that from July 1 and the beginning of the new football accounting year they will finally have more freedom to spend - they just need to get there while still in the top flight.

Dyche said: “January is a really hard month, you can have all the money you want but it is a really hard month. We don’t just say it. I’ve been doing it for a long time, here and at other clubs. It is a really tough window, unless you get a snippet or a domino effect when a player leaves one club and it leads to another. Often it is a very tricky market.”

Everton's options are further limited due to the club having used up its domestic loan slots through the deals that have brought Jack Harrison and Armando Broja to the Blues this season.

The constraints in terms of incomings means that for a second January in a row, the departure of any senior player on loan will have to be carefully considered.

The likes of Beto, Youssef Chermiti, Jake O’Brien and Nathan Patterson are in need of minutes but may be needed to provide depth to Dyche’s slim squad.

He said: “At the end of the day, our situation here is that we certainly will not be letting anyone go unless we need to. Unless, of course, we can swap and change. We want to keep the squad, we have had injuries and been very stretched. We are certainly not looking to have players going out.”