Howard is, and at the £3million or thereabouts that Everton paid for him, his signature represents one of the best bits of business David Moyes has ever done.

And on the subject of business, a number of stories are doing the rounds about the Blues being involved in all sorts of wheeling and dealing.

One Sunday newspaper seems quite adamant that a takeover is on the cards, and went as far as to suggest that a deal with a Middle Eastern royal family is likely to be done before the end of the year.

Plenty of other clubs, Newcastle and Liverpool for instance, are also meant to be in negotiations with groups of mysterious sheikhs, which makes you wonder exactly how many Arabian entrepreneurs there are out there with a taste for the English football.

And if everyone has a billionaire owner – or even trillionaire now, the stakes have been raised so high – will the Premier League’s status quo remain unchanged, except for transfer fees and wages for exactly the same players being inflated to even more grotesque levels?

It seems odd to think that a deal could be done before the end of the year, as suggested, as it assumes that negotiations are already pretty advanced, what with due diligence – whatever that means, it just seems to be one of those phrases people bandy round in football as if we’re all financial whizzes.

There’s been little indication as to the identity of any prospective owners, and in the gossipy world of football it’s unusual for information of that significance to be remain confidential for any length of time.

On the other hand, maybe talks have only just begun and the new people are desperate to take charge. After all, the price must be going up every week, the way Everton keep winning and veritably storming up that league table.