On a very quite day for new transfer or indeed any other Everton stories, lets look in further detail at another area of the Blues team; wide midfield.
This area of the Everton team has been in flux ever since the pairing of Mikel Arteta and Steven Pienaar broke up at the end of the David Moyes era.
The Blues have struggled to replace those two for nearly a decade or so, and a succession of managers have also failed to find players to satisfactorily solve this problem.
Ronald Koeman didn’t even really try to bring in effective wide players, concentrating on signing a plethora of centre midfielders/playmakers instead so creating a very unbalanced team.
The current probable first-choice incumbents, Theo Walcott and Alex Iwobi, (signed by Sam Allardyce and Marco Silva/Marcel Brands respectively), are both ex-Arsenal rejects who have failed to convince that they can deliver consistently.
Neither have produced enough evidence, at least so far, to show they can provide the width, creativity and goals needed. That’s certainly true of Walcott and although I still think that Iwobi might be able to do the job, but it’s debatable whether he will now have the chance.
Because with Carlo Ancelotti in charge, this problem has been brought into further focus as the Italian seems committed to using a 4-4-2 formation going forward.
For a 4-4-2 formation to work, Ancelotti needs good quality wide players to make it deliver the outlets for his type of football.
Those players need pace, energy and the ability to both create and score goals, as well as provide reasonably effective defensive cover too, especially if you have attacking full-backs. That sort of player is not easy to find.
I’ve said many times that this formation is not necessarily the right one for the Blues given the type of players they have or might get.
I still feel on balance a 4-3-3 is a better fit given the players available and gives the team more flexibility over how it plays.
What Ancelotti needs are players like Everton’s two eighties wide men, Trevor Steven and Kevin Sheedy. Unfortunately these sort of players are few and far between today.
One solution, as I’ve said before, is to move Richarlison back out wide on either the right or left flank, something he’s done before successfully, and then give Moise Kean a chance alongside Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
That seems the most expedient strategy to me, because that would mean the Toffees only need to sign one other wide player and would give Kean a chance to play regularly, something that I feel would be good for him and the team.
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However I do recognise that this would be breaking up a very effective partnership up front, one that Ancelotti is happy with, and so perhaps another solution needs to be found.
As with other positions in the team, there have been an endless number of players have been linked with moves to Goodison Park. One of the best of these many candidates, is the Roma player Cengiz Under.
The Turkish player is a fine attacking talent and is the left-footed right-winger, something that the Blues have been keen to find and sign. Although he doesn’t seem to be very effective defensively.
I think that it will be quite difficult for Everton to find two players of the kind that would be able to fill in adequately on both flanks in the likely truncated summer transfer window. So it seems that a solution such as the one outlined above might be needed, at least for another year.