Benitez bargain boys lighting up Everton team

Last night Everton recovered from a losing position to eventually run out deserved 3-1 winners against Burnley and Rafa Benitez’s new men were key to that win.

In the last transfer window Everton boss Benitez didn’t have the chance to max out the club credit card like his predecessors and was forced to shop around for good quality bargains this summer.

And on the evidence we’ve seen so far he certainly did just that. The two players who scored the Toffees second and third goals, Andros Townsend and Demarai Gray, cost a combined £1.7 million.

They’ve now scored five goals between them – with Townsend’s wonder strike an early contender for goal of the season – in the club’s first five games. At the moment, you’d be hard pressed to find better bargains in this or any recent transfer windows in the Premier League era.

Of course, we need to always add the caveat that it’s still early days, after all we’ve only played four Premier League matches so caution is needed. However, the impact of these two players has been immense so far and bodes well for the season ahead.

So how have they made such an immediate impact? Both offer certain qualities in tandem but also have distinctive and complimentary abilities as well, which are just what the team needs.

Townsend combines a strong work ethic and defensive commitment with an old fashioned willingness to operate on the flanks and produce excellent crosses from out wide. He’s two-footed and loves to cut in and shoot with coruscating power and accuracy as we saw last night. He needs to keep doing this as he himself admits.

Gray is a player with electric pace who prefers to come inside to a more central position and loves to run at defences with direct purpose and skill. He’s also proving a terrific and very cool finisher.

The two of them have transformed the attacking potential of the Blues team and given what it lacked in pace and width as well as goals from players other than the strikers, something that was certainly needed.

They also offer this side the ability to recover from losing positions as was shown yesterday. Too often in the recent past Everton have lacked the sort of players to up their tempo and find another gear because they didn’t have that pace and direct attacking threat.

Another element of this is how well Benitez has managed and handled these players. Everyone knows that the Toffees boss has excellent tactical awareness and is obsessed with football detail so he can find every edge for his teams. He wasn’t necessarily as well regarded for his ability to connect with all his players.

But he has also shown the ability to make them feel focused, motivated and bring out the best in them. Interestingly, he often seems to be exhibiting more directly effective man-management skills than Carlo Ancelotti did, a coach who was renowed for that quality.

This has been seen with fringe squad players like Alex Iwobi and Andre Gomes who have responded very well to their new manager.

And it’s been particularly the case for Gray who came to Everton from Germany where his career had stalled after he had shown such promise early on.

Many eyebrows were raised at his signing and some people thought that he had lost the opportunity to fulfill the potential he showed at Birmingham and Leicester City. So far he’s shown that perhaps he still has that chance to become the footballer everyone thought he would be.

The 25-year-old has settled in so well at Goodison Park it’s like he’s been here for years. There’s a long way to go but let’s hope he can keep shining because the Blues will need both him and Townsend to stay fit and continue this great start to their Toffees careers for the team to secure a decent outcome to the campaign.