Most people at the time felt Evans was an underwhelming short term move. He was decent at WBA, but definitely not at the level he is now. He's still not top class IMO, just good! Reliable, consistent etc. Never gonna be world class though. Back they lots of us wanted something a little more than that. Something ambitious, and that was understandable. Pulling out of the Evans transfer directly lead to the Laporte one, so in the end it wasn't exactly a bad call was it? There's no way we'd have signed Laporte for the money we did in January if we'd just signed Evans. We made the correct choice back then.
I admit Evans has improved at Leicester and looks a good player, but I don't regret us pulling out of that one bit. We got Laporte who is genuinely world class, and young.