Andre Gomes was substituted in the 1-0 win over Arsenal on Friday night when Carlo Ancelotti brought on Fabian Delph as Everton eventually secured the points at the Emirates.
This was the latest example of some similar and frankly strange substitutions that the Everton boss has made in recent weeks.
In particular the Crystal Palace match when just as last Friday night, he decided to bring on another long-injured midfielder; Jean-Philippe Gbamin instead of a forward.
Gomes was hauled off in the first half without any apparent injury after another ineffective match in which he had contributed very little and it was the latest in a series of disappointing games. This sort of thing and other issues around his overall form, raises potential questions about his long-term future.
The Portugese player has been a shadow of himself for over a year ago since he got seriously injured against Tottenham at Goodison Park in November 2019.
However, even before that serious injury he hadn’t produced very much of the form that had been sometimes seen by Evertonians when he first signed from Barcelona.
Gomes had initially shown his technical skill, strength and the ability to carry the ball and link up with the forwards, although he didn’t often produce the right end product.
Ever since he has returned to fitness recently though Gomes has been very inconsistent. He started this season reasonably well playing as one of three midfielders in the 4-3-3 formation that Ancelotti adopted.
He then declined in form and was out of the team again as Ancelotti had to re-structure the side when results started to go awry.
And again he’s never managed to convince that he can regain a regular place in this Everton team and make a strong case for a future under the Italian. He’s also very similar to James Rodriguez and Gylfi Sigurdsson, all looking to do the playmaker type role.
One of the problems is that he has always seemed more suited, to me anyway, to playing in a deeper role as part of a midfield two in a 4-2-3-1 formation.
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There he can sort of ‘quarter-back’ the team’s play getting on the ball and hitting lots of searching accurate passes, a bit like Kalvin Philipps does for Leeds United. This actually sometimes seems to be a role he’s more comfortable in.
To do that though he needs a really energetic, hard-working defensive ball-winner type like his original midfield partner like Idrissa Gueye.
When Gueye left for PSG in 2019 the Blues then manager Marco Silva went out and bought Jean-Philippe Gbamin to replace him.
But as we know that didn’t work out too well as Gbamin got hurt and bascially hasn’t played for eighteen months.
So that brings us back to earlier and Ancelotti’s decision to bring on Gbamin against Palace for his first run out in a royal blues shirt for an awful long time.
Then Gbmain got hurt again and probably won’t play again this season. If he can return yet again, to full fitness then that would give Ancelotti the option of pairing the two of them as one of his potential midfield combinations, if he decides to stick with the ex-Barcelona man.