Which Everton players should stay and go?
Now let’s consider Everton’s midfield.
There is plenty of work to do here as well. Last season the Blues midfield was a mess with too much chopping and changing of players and very little stability there.
The endless saga of whether Wayne Rooney or Gylfi Sigurdsson should be the main playmaker was an additional distraction.
This situation has to be resolved one way or the other.
Sigurdsson is a player who thrives most playing in a free role in a team with a classic target-man type centre-forward like Fernando Llorente. Will that be how a new manager wants to play?
And with Rooney being linked with a move to the MLS, the problem might be decided that way. Rooney may now decide he wants to stay but given his lack of commitment to the Blues, if he doesn’t like the manager, I’m not too concerned if he does.
Two other midfielders have had decidedly mixed seasons. Davy Klaassen arrived from Holland with a good reputation but he has been disappointing.
He has not contributed any goals or assists although to be fair he hasn’t played much.
And Nicola Vlasic is another midfielder signed to add to Everton attacking strength but who has disappointed as well. He was signed from Hadjuk Split when Everton played them in the Europa League.
At 20 he is young and can improve but his contribution since he joined has not been great. He also has failed to find the net or create an assist in the Premier League.
Of the two I would be more inclined to keep hold of Vlasic.
Everton have quite a lot of other similar, hard-working and defensive players in this area of the pitch.
Idrissa Gueye was arguably the Blues best outfield performer and was usually solid and reliable winning the ball and not too often conceding possession sloppily. But although he is good at what he does his game is limited.
He also sometimes gets caught out when he comes forward and when Everton didn’t have a fit and in-form Morgan Schneiderlin alongside him that left the Blues leaky defence further exposed.
For his part Schneiderlin has come through a very difficult season. He was horribly out of form earlier in the campaign and suffered from the Goodison boo-boys as a result.
But to his credit he turned his form around and I still think he has a role to play at Everton. If he can re-discover the strongly consistent play of the 2016-17 season he might again be a mainstay in midfield.
Alongside these two usually was Tom Davies. The teenager had a breakthrough season in 2016-17 but last term was in some ways a classic ‘second-season syndrome’ and he was far less effective.
Davies has plenty of energy and commitment to his play and chips in with the odd goal and assist. He is still a very young player and worth persevering with.
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Again though Davies is not a truly creative type and Everton desperately need more craft and invention in midfield.
This is highlighted even further by the fact that the other two main options in the middle, James McCarthy and Muhamed Besic are again very similar.
McCarthy is currently injured and Besic is on loan at Middlesborough.
I think that McCarthy is worth holding onto as he’s a consistent, reliable player while it’s very likely Besic will want more first-team football next season so he should move on.
Finally we come to yet another similar type of player in Beni Baningime. The 19-year-old has played sporadically and while he has not exactly been spectacular he does have a good pass completion percentage of over 80%.
This does matter as one of Everton’s major failings is the team’s inability to keep hold of the ball. Also Baningime, like Vlasic, has youth on his side.