Raft of injuries as Everton prepare for United
As we build up for the Blues trip to Old Trafford on Sunday, Everton are facing a mini injury crisis; one that is particularly affecting the midfield.
Interim manager Duncan Ferguson was talking in his press conference about the injury problems that Everton are having to deal with. As usual the Toffees have no luck with these things.
Along with the two long-term casualties in midfield, Jean-Philippe Gbamin and Andre Gomes, Ferguson said that the Toffees won’t have either Morgan Schneiderlin or Theo Walcott available for the trip to Manchester United.
After how well they both played against Chelsea, losing these two players is a blow, (I never thought I would say that about Schneiderlin!).
In my match preview I said that given that likelihood, I would presume that Alex Iwobi will move to the right flank with Bernard to come in on the left, especially as this injury to Schneiderlin means that Tom Davies will likely now be starting in the middle.
Additionally, Lucas Digne is still a major doubt, which would also be a blow although Leighton Baines is still a decent full-back and certainly has plenty of nous and experience. This is something that I think could be quite important as I expect Everton to be under the cosh for long periods of the game.
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Given these injuries, I would be tempted to see the Blues start fast, get an early goal again and then play quite deep and get plenty of men behind the ball and hit United on the break.
Perhaps Richarlison could drop deeper into midfield when the Blues don’t have the ball, he is capable of doing that. Its a bit negative I know, but sometimes you have to dig in and be hard to beat and United have a lot of pace and movement up front so if they’re given too much space, they might run riot.
Moving onto more speculation about the next Blues boss, the Daily Mail are saying that Carlo Ancelotti wouldn’t cost any money in compensation payments following his departure from Napoli earlier this week. The Mail claim Arsenal are still favourites to get the Italian coach, we will see.
At at any rate if Everton were to secure his signature, at least they wouldn’t be paying yet another load of money to another manager. Given how much compensation the club have had to shell out on Ronald Koeman and now presumably Marco Silva, that is certainly welcome.