Ronald Koeman has rejected suggestions that he is at Everton only because it may be a stepping stone towards a potential move towards Barcelona.

The 53-year-old took over at Goodison Park in the summer. He replaced Roberto Martinez on a three-year contract. The move was surprising considering that he spent only two seasons at Southampton. In both campaigns, the Dutch manager enhanced his reputation by ensuring that Southampton overcame their financial troubles and still finished strongly in the Premier League. Since he has made an even better start at Everton, there are suggestions that he is on the lookout for a top managerial job, preferably Barcelona.

As a player,Koeman had his most successful spell with the Spanish club after spending six years at the Camp Nou. He was one of the main players in the Johan Cruyff styled Barcelona from 1989 to 1995. He made more than 150 league appearances for the club during this period. His Barcelona roots have even helped him become a manager. Upon finishing his career with Feyenoord in 1997, Koeman developed his first experience of club football management while serving as the assistant manager at Barcelona from 1998 to 2000.

This led to his first managerial job at Vitesse Arnhem.

It is not surprising if he is linked with the managerial job at Barcelona at some point in the future. “One time when I went to Valencia. They always speak about Koeman and Barcelona.

Everyone knows I have a relationship with Barcelona. Everyone says, ‘One day Koeman will be the coach in Barcelona’. You can’t say, ‘I go to Everton in one or two years, I go to Barcelona’. No. Why? Maybe Everton will be bigger than it now is. Maybe Luis Enrique is doing a fantastic job for the next three years and they don’t need a coach,” said Koeman.

Labour MP for Chester, Chris Matheson has accused Sir Philip Green of being a shadow director at Everton.

He spoke at a Culture, Media and Sport committee on governance of football. The Everton season-ticket holder made the revelation when he discussed “offshore entities” involved with football clubs while addressing the chairman of the English Football Association.

“I understand that Sir Philip Green had something of a role of shadow director at Everton, including having PwC [big four accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers] conduct an audit of the club and summoning the chief executive and the team manager to BHS headquarters to discuss transfer budgets,” Matheson said.

Green is facing serious calls that he be stripped of his knighthood due to the collapse of one of his former firms BHS.

“If someone has paid for some shares through someone else and through an entity in the British Virgin Islands, but isn’t a director, would that be a problem?” Matheson asked. Chief executive Robert Elstone has addressed the issue before saying:

“Those questions were wrong and shouldn’t be asked. To repeatedly be asked about where we lend from and where Philip Green is in all this is just wrong.”

Elstone made the comment during the club’s general meeting late last year as the club steadfastly denies links to Green. Matheson also asked Clarke about offshore companies that were linked with Everton.

“Do you know who or what is Vibrac? Do you know who or what is BCR Sports? Vibrac is an offshore entity… which I believe provided finance to Everton, West Ham, Fulham, Reading and Southampton.

“And I understand it has provided £150 million worth of finance to European clubs, including those clubs I just stated in 2013,” he said.

Matheson made other revelations about the offshore companies but Clarke denied being aware of the companies.

The Netherlands man Ronald Koeman believes some aspects of the team is fine by him but not the aspect showed against Bournemouth on Saturday’s 1-0 awful loss.

“I like several aspects of the team, I don’t like some and we will change that,” said Koeman.

His first taste of defeat in the English Premiership with Everton was an unexpected one. He declined to publicly pore over the various things that went wrong during the 1-0 loss on the South Coast, but he knows there are several challenges to overcome. If the Blues rise to second in the table gave anyone outside Goodison the impression they could stay there or thereabouts, this seemed to be the reality check.

The Toffees boss feels he needs more bodies, more options and more clarity on some of the issues affecting the side of the team, such as the best position to play Barkley and how to get the best out of Kevin Mirallas regularly with visible improvement.

Koeman realizes that the squad needs further fine-tuning; both on the training ground and when transfer period comes in January. He never expected his men to lose to Bournemouth and not any tougher team, considering past results against other teams in the league. He feels if Bournemouth could defeat them, then he has a lot to do both in improving the performance of the players and also addition of new able men. Koeman will need all their strength of character to triumph as he looks to curb the ‘sluggish starts’ that mean Everton’s otherwise fine beginning to this season.

Before the defeat, Everton were in second place, behind Manchester City. City have maintained their perfect start in the Premier League this term. Everton’s loss means Spurs are new runners-up behind City.

Everton continued the unbeaten start to the new season with a 1-0 win over Stoke City, but manager Ronald Koeman said that he wanted to strengthen their squad even further before the end of the transfer deadline day.

The club has had some crucial signings which have massively improved the quality on offer. Fans will be satisfied with the way the club reinvested much of the £ 47 million received from the sale of John Stones to Manchester City.Koeman may have already changed the look of the squad by fielding all four summer signings in the game against Stoke City.

Yannick Bolasie, Maarten Stekelenburg, Williams, and IdrissaGueye were on the pitch against Stoke and they made a telling contribution. One of the few issues for the club are right now may be the inability to score goals as freely as Koeman would like. However, it is not an issue for the Dutch manager as one of the key picking up points every weekend. He managed to create a stellar season with Southampton largely by virtue of picking narrow 1-0 victories. It was also the primary reason behind Southampton failing to qualify for the Champions League back then.Koeman wants to avoid the mistake of the same nature and he is targeting a couple of signings to increase quality even further.

“Yes we are still working on that and if we don’t sign any player before Wednesday then I will be a little bit disappointed.It’s difficult with the numbers of money teams are paying for players and with the Euros everybody was starting late.If you look at all the teams in the Premier League everybody needs maybe one or two or more players.That is a big example that maybe the most busy time will come in the last few days of this window,” said Koeman.

Everton failed to snatch a European position in the 2015-16 season of the Premier League as they had to settle with the 11th spot in what was a very underwhelming campaign for the English club and this led to Roberto Martinez being removed from his managerial position in the team as he was replaced by Ronald Koeman.

The recently appointed manager, Ronald Koeman wants to return Everton to the top 8 spots of the Premier League and help them get back into European competition but in order to do this, a number of signings might be needed to be done and the Dutch manager is expecting to make it happen.
The assistant of Ronald Koeman, Erwin Koeman has revealed details concerning the transfer activities of the club as he said: ‘’Ronald and the chairman are very busy with that. We can talk about a lot of things but in two weeks the league starts and we have to be ready. Not one team in the Premier League is ready for the moment. In two weeks the circus will start’’

From the looks of it, Ronald Koeman is working to sign a few players but that it might take some time before it actually happens.

Bruno Martins of Porto FC is one of the summer targets that is being linked with a possible move to Everton as the 24 year old defender has already worked alongside Ronald Koeman when both of them were part of the team of Netherlands.

Ronald Koeman guided Netherlands into the semi-finals of the 2014 World Cup and Bruno Martins was part of this team. It’s believed that an offer in the region of £12.5million might be enough to secure his services.

Bruno Martins has made over 20 appearances with Porto FC and has shown what he is capable of doing as he is a centre-back who is capable of performing as a left-back as well.

Another player that has been linked with Everton is Southampton’s Jose Fonte but it might be difficult signing him as Manchester United is also interested in signing him.

Jose Mourinho has asked Juan Mata to remain at the club in a shock move, according to reports making the rounds. The Portuguese tactician blocked any move that will allow the player be the play maker at Everton FC this summer. Everton were gearing to make the Spaniard the creative one in the team they are rebuilding one and off the pitch.

The move was similar to the one made by Pep Guardiola at Manchester City as he asked that the widely speculated move of Yaya Toure to Inter Milan be cancelled. Mourinho also asked that Mata remain at the club despite being the one that sold him to the Red Devils two years ago when he was at the helms at Chelsea.

When asked if there was space for the player at the club, he said: “Yes, there is a space here for Juan. It is a strange question because I don’t understand why he doesn’t have a future.

“First of all, I think maybe all of you misunderstood what happened in our previous club because I never told Mata to leave. I never pressed the club to sell him.”

He continued saying that it was his decision to leave and he didn’t like the idea of players wanting to leave. He said he isn’t one to hold back any player when they want to leave so he allowed the deal to go through. He said Mata wasn’t happy as he was not his first choice and he wanted to be playing every game, so when the good offer from Man United came they decided to sell and not hold back because they were selling to a direct competitor.

He said not selling to another club because of direct competition was old fashioned. On an endnote, he said he wants the player to keep fighting for his shirt and that there is space for everyone as there are many games all through the season.