League Cup is important competition for Everton to do well in

After two Premier League fixtures and four points gained Everton now face Huddersfield Town in the first round of the League Cup tonight.

The League Cup or EFL Cup as it’s now known in it’s latest incarnation, isn’t the most glamorous of tournaments but it’s the one domestic cup that Everton have never won.

It’s also a competition that the Toffees might just have a realistic chance of winning too so ensuring a good run in it and trying to make it to the final is important.

There have been a lot of positives to be seen in the team’s first two matches so far this season. In particular the Blues have played some excellent attacking football and have already netted five times so far this campaign.

But on the downside to that defensively Everton have been exposed with individual errors proving expensive and probably costing the team a win at Leeds United.

Micheal Keane was responsible for two of those mistakes and he has obviously come in for plenty of criticism since.

Part of the problem is that while such basic lapses in concentration simply have to be erridicated and there are major question marks about whether he is generally good enough at this level, one of the issues is that Keane is a player who needs real pace alongside him to be effective.

He is pretty good defending when the play is in front of him, at blocking and clearing the ball and winning it in the air but he struggles badly against any forwards with pace and movement.

When Keane was playing alongide Kurt Zouma in the 2018-19 season he and the Frenchman struck up a good solid partnership largely because Zouma had the pace to cover for his centre-back partner.

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Playing alongside Yerry Mina won’t really solve this issue either as although he is a better all-round defender, he also lacks the out-and-out pace needed.

The return of Ben Godfrey, hopefully tonight, would hugely help as the young Englishman certainly has the speed to cover and man-mark and ideally he should probably partner Mina going forward.

But the problem is that Mina is also very injury-prone and getting a full season out of him seems almost impossible.

So on top of all the other transfer priorities he has, Rafa Benitez ideally needs to see if he can bring in another quality central defender before the window shuts.

As for tonight’s team I’m not sure how many changes Benitez will make at Huddersfield as he may want to maintain the fine start to the season and not make too many changes although
I’m it’s possible some of the youngsters like Lewis Dobbin might get a chance to impress.

Hopefully, Everton will produce a solid professional performance and get the job done before the weekend’s next Premier League game away to Brighton.