Everton’s recent transfer activity is not usually tethered to positivity, and the recently concluded January window certainly left little to be desired on Goodison Park.

The Toffees were the only outfit in the Premier League to fail to complete a signing this winter, and despite landing Sean Dyche in the managerial role, the relegation-threatened outfit might just lament their lackadaisical approach come the end of the campaign.

An acquisition or two certainly would not have gone amiss, particularly in the offensive department, with Everton currently 18th and having scored just 16 goals in the division all season, behind only Wolverhampton Wanderers, but there were several panicked and frenetic attempts to bolster the forward firepower in the dying embers of the window that in hindsight might be viewed as a near miss.

With Dyche now at the wheel, and having pulled off a trademark win of resilience and grit in his first outing against none other than runaway league leaders Arsenal, there could finally be light at the end of the tunnel after several years of turmoil and strife within Goodison Park, with the former Burnley boss renowned for utilising the tools at his disposal and instilling cohesive tenacity within his squad.

As such, stricken striking options such as Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Neal Maupay might just rekindle the best of their form as the side looks to ascend from the murky waters at the depths of the top-flight, and recent pursuit of divisional aces such as West Ham United’s Michail Antonio might be viewed as near misses well avoided.

According to the Sunday Mirror (29/01, p78), Antonio was at the centre of interest from several Premier League outfits ahead of the culmination of the January window, with the 32-year-old stalwart’s contract up for expiry at the end of next season.

However, with the Toffees requiring an upturn in productivity and performance this season, it is unlikely that the ageing £85k-per-week forward would have offered more than the current crop on Merseyside.

Indeed, Antonio’s decline this season has coincided with his Irons outfit, with three successive league returns of ten goals a distant memory at present, with the Englishman having plundered just two league strikes all season despite playing 20 times.

And ranking among the bottom 11% of forwards across Europe’s big five leagues for rate of non-penalty goals over the past year, as per FBref, the “complete monster” that Antonio once was, as hailed by journalist Paul Brown, appears to have lost his panache.

In fact, his seasonal Sofascore rating of 6.72 does not exactly evoke confidence, especially when given that he would be trading one relegation battle for another, with the Toffees ostensibly fraught with more danger than the Hammers, who are in European competition and have lost just once across their past four league matches.

With his arrival, Everton might have faced a repeat of the infamous signing of Oumar Niasse, a £13.5m winter deal from Lokomotiv Moscow in 2016 and considered an overt failure after scoring just nine times from 42 appearances and was released at the end of his contract after scoring in just one of his three seasons donning the Blues’ shirt.

BBC Sport’s Phil McNulty once remarked that the deal is “comfortably one of the worst pieces of business Everton have ever conducted”, and there would certainly be fears that Antonio, approaching his twilight years, would bitterly add to such woes in the forward area.

Of course, Everton did not sign a single player and in fact, sold one of their most coveted assets in Anthony Gordon to Newcastle United for £45m, but with the recent victory in Dyche’s debut unrecognisable to the languishing Toffees squad that have sunk so heavily to the bottom of the division, there is hope yet that the ship can be turned around.