Everton can now look ahead to a transfer window with optimism for the first time in years. The club continued to be held back by financial constraints in January, with both Sean Dyche and then his replacement David Moyes speaking candidly about how it would be another month in which the Blues would have to operate with caution.

Against that backdrop, the addition of Carlos Alcaraz was the only new arrival as the attacking midfielder joined on loan from Flamengo.

But attention can now turn to the future and the summer represents a major opportunity for the first team squad to be overhauled. While the backing of new owners The Friedkin Group will be crucial to that, the ability to be more proactive in the market is rooted in the progress made behind-the-scenes despite the turbulence of recent years.

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The state-of-play they have inherited will be one key factor that will influence TFG as they consider the future of director of football Kevin Thelwell. Following the closure of the winter window, it is easier to attempt to assess the six windows he has led the club through as TFG weigh up whether to give him the chance to be part of the summer reset by offering him a new deal.

Thelwell’s three years at Everton have taken place during a period of turmoil, with the club lurching between crises. While the trouble facing the club appeared unclear when he was appointed in February 2022, he has since had to answer for the problems he largely inherited - both by trying to slash costs while maintaining a squad that could stay in the Premier League and by having to give evidence at the regulatory tribunals that led to the club receiving two unprecedented points deductions for breaches of financial rules.

While the second breach covered a summer in which he oversaw spending on a spate of players, the breaches were based in the excess of the Farhad Moshiri years that preceded his arrival.

His tenure has been one of having to be the first director of football to deal with the consequences of the spending spree Moshiri embarked on - rather than being able to benefit from the resources and regulatory freedom those before him thought they had. Everton have only spent more than the club brought in once under Thelwell, and that window was partially funded by the sale of talisman Richarlison and included the signing of Amadou Onana, since sold for a healthy profit.

Transfer windows such as the most recent, when Everton had to carefully assess the impact of any penny spent, have therefore been common.

Over the six windows overseen by Thelwell, Everton are the only club to have recorded a positive net spend, according to transfer data made available through Transfermarkt. The club has committed to spending just over £144m on players in that period. Over the same time, Chelsea spent more than £1bn and every other team that has also been ever-present in the top flight has splashed the cash to a greater extent than the Blues. In fact, every other club has spent at least twice as much as Everton apart from Brentford, Fulham, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth.

When player sales are taken into account, Everton have brought in around £244m. That means Everton have made £80m over a time in which the next best performing club was Wolverhampton Wanderers, who lost £43m.

The impact has been keenly felt on the pitch. The club is yet to adequately replace the biggest sale of all - Richarlison to Tottenham Hotspur in the summer of 2022. It was hoped that would be a deal that would prevent the club from recording its first regulatory breach and having to sell in the hope of compliance became a theme over the coming windows.

The following January saw Anthony Gordon depart for Newcastle United for around £40m and then, six months later, Alex Iwobi was a deadline day sale that ripped a hole in the first team of then manager Sean Dyche. His departure followed that of academy players Tom Cannon, Ellis Simms and Ishe Samuels-Smith as the youth set-up felt the toll of past efforts to improve the first team according to the whims of ever-changing managers and directors of football.

Even last summer became a window of ducking and diving with strengthening the first team playing second fiddle to the priority of bringing in fees that would help the club’s position in relation to Profit and Sustainability Regulations (PSR). That mission led to the sales of Ben Godfrey and Lewis Dobbin in a series of June manoeuvres that helped Everton to comply with PSR for the first time in three years - something that was confirmed last month.

January of this year was transformative for many reasons. While it did not allow for the squad building that Moyes hoped for - and believed was necessary - the news the club was PSR compliant was followed by the boost that an outstanding financial dispute with the Premier League had been shelved. While the club denied wrongdoing, its presence represented a threat of further pain should Everton have fallen on the wrong end of a judgement. That uncertainty is now over.

The year to date has also seen TFG start to settle in as new owners and Moyes lead an upturn in fortunes that has moved Everton to the cusp of safety.

The gap to the bottom three created with Saturday’s win over Leicester City gave Everton the chance to avoid spending precious money for the sake of it. Moyes has spoken with candour over recent weeks about having not previously understood the depth of Everton’s PSR position nor the extent to which it curtailed the club’s activity following his arrival.

The feeling at Finch Farm was that money spent now would impact activity in the summer, which will be a defining period for the club and its future.

Everton still need to get there as a Premier League outfit. Key in the win over Leicester were the likes of James Tarkowski, an ever-present since he became the first signing on Thelwell’s watch, summer arrival Iliman Ndiaye, and Beto.

Not all of the signings of the past three years have been a success, with expensive misses such as Neal Maupay adding to Everton’s problems rather than helping to resolve them. Where Beto falls will largely depend on how he fares over the coming weeks, when he will be the only fit senior striker available to Moyes. The 27-year-old has struggled since joining from Udinese 18 months ago on the kind of buy now, pay later deal that has become crucial to Everton’s transfer approach because of spending constraints. It is not too late for him to wrestle control of his own story and build on the emotional brace he scored at the weekend.

The first weeks since Moyes’ return have begun to cast new light on some of the summer signings. While Ndiaye was an instant hit, Jake O’Brien had not been trusted to start a single game in the league by Dyche and Jesper Lindstrom was locked in a torturous battle for form. Both have started each of the last three games - all of which have yielded pivotal victories for Everton.

Another key performer on Saturday was Jarrad Branthwaite, the jewel in Everton’s crown. The young centre back was coveted in the summer but Everton were able to stave off the cut price sale of their brightest star by channelling the transfer market towards other players, including Onana. Onana is the most expensive player to have been signed by Thelwell but was moved on to Aston Villa in a £50m deal that gave Everton substantial profit for a player who was not considered integral to Dyche.

While it weakened an already stretched squad and removed an international starlet from the armoury of whoever was in the Everton dugout, the deal relieved pressure on the club’s budget going into a crucial final season at Goodison Park.

This season has been tougher than expected. There was no complacency the campaign would have its challenges and, while Everton would have finished level on points with Brighton and Hove Albion in 12th place last season without the two deductions, there was an acknowledgement the Seagulls had spent around £200m in the summer and so would not be a fair barometer to judge the Blues’ progress against.

That much was painfully evident when Fabian Hurzeler’s side blew Everton apart on the opening day of the season helped in part by Yankuba Minteh, a winger the south coast club spent tens of millions of pounds on. Everton had hoped to sign him earlier in the summer but could only afford to do so if his club, Newcastle United, was willing to buy Dominic Calvert-Lewin in a deal that eventually collapsed.

The gulf was not so big a fortnight ago when Everton, revived under Moyes, battled to a narrow win at the Amex and that partially underscored the pre-season belief this squad was better than the one Dyche had last season, increasing the frustration it had not performed more impressively over a tough first half of the campaign.

Where Everton go from here is now the question. In the short term there is hope that Alcaraz will be enough to help a small but battle-hardened squad continue to pull away from trouble.

Should it do so then the summer will represent a sea change.

The new financial year that begins on July 1 should signal the start of a summer in which Moyes can tap into TFG’s resources and rebuild a squad that currently stands to lose 15 players. The increased revenue offered by the new stadium and the boosted commercial deals linked to it should also make spending money on the squad sustainable, so long as it is sensible.

Whatever TFG concludes about the job Thelwell has done, there is little doubt the amount of room Everton will have available will be significantly increased because of what has gone on behind the scenes over recent windows. That extends beyond net spend, with the wage bill on players understood to have been reduced by around 15% since the summer of 2022.

The consequences have not all been positive - the years since have been traumatic and Everton have come closer to a disastrous relegation than anyone would have liked.

But barring a catastrophic dip in form or an injury crisis even more severe than the one already afflicting the club, not only will TFG have bought a Premier League outfit in spite of those seasons of chaos, they will find one in much better health when they come to rebuild it in the summer.

When they come to do that, whoever the director of football is, Thelwell’s work will also mean there is a solid core of talent to build around - for all that another cohort of players will leave the club when their contracts expire, the likes of Jordan Pickford, Branthwaite, O’Brien, Ndiaye, Dwight McNeil and James Garner will remain under contract, while Everton can make Lindstrom, Alcaraz and Broja their own should they show enough in the coming months for Moyes to believe they are crucial to his plans.