Everton looking at Tottenham’s Danny Rose
After a relatively quiet week in terms of player rumours there are new stories that Everton are looking to beat their rivals and sign Tottenham’s left-back Danny Rose.
The Sun are claiming Everton will move quickly to try to capture the unsettled Spurs defender.
He has had a difficult season struggling with injury and losing his place to Ben Davies. Everton are in need of another left-back as Leighton Baines approaches his mid-thirties.
This is a position, among several, that the Blues need to address.
There is a huge amount of work to be done to bring Everton’s squad up to strength to enable the team to compete.
Rose has been selected for the England squad travelling to the World Cup in Russia. It will be interesting to see how he does when England play in the tournament.
Given his injuries this past season, he hasn’t played much recently so there are not many statistics to look at.
His pace and attacking qualities are evident and he has an excellent passing accuracy of around 80%.
Defensively he is a solid player too and can play in a full-back or wing-back position and chip in with a few goals.
On the downside though he has a tendency to foul often and has discipline problems picking up cards regularly.
Talking of downsides, it is reported in the Liverpool Echo that RB Leipzig are considering making a move to permanently sign on-loan Blues forward Ademola Lookman.
This is not good news as Lookman is a talented young player with a bright future. And that future should be at Everton.
Lookman has underlined that potential with a fine half-season at the Bundesliga club. He scored five goals and created four assists.
The youngster has settled in well at Leipzig and might be tempted to stay. I hope that Everton with new Director of Football Marcel Brands in post, can persuade him to return to Goodison.
Having spent around £11 million on signing the teenager from Charlton eighteen months ago, it would be a major failing to let him now slip through our fingers.
His pace, creativity and increasing goal threat is exactly what the Blues need. And his situation becomes even more important given what has happened with Henry Onyekuru.
The saga with the Nigerian forward is becoming a mini soap-opera all of its own.
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To re-cap, Everton signed Onyekuru last summer and then loaned him to Belgian side Anderlecht for the season.
After enjoying a decent campaign, he suffered an injury that kept him out for the last few months of the Belgian league season. This obviously meant he didn’t play for Anderlecht and also put his participation in the World Cup with Nigeria into doubt and that had implications for Everton.
If he doesn’t play in the World Cup it would complicate his visa application and so delay his arrival at Goodison Park. He wasn’t selected and now there are conflicting reports about how seriously he is injured and whether he could have played for Nigeria or not.
Reports in the media said he was fit and could have played but that Anderlecht are trying to hold onto him for another season by exaggerating his injury!
Next: Blues forwards on loan - verdict
Whatever the truth of all this it seems very unlikely he will be joining the Blues in time for next season. So Lookman will be even more important to future plans, unless of course Everton go out and splash the cash on yet another forward or two.