Would signing Souttar help solve Everton defensive woes
As Everton continue their preparations for the critical away trip to Wolves, there are more rumours the club remain interested in signing Stoke City’s Harry Souttar.
The young Scottish player has apparently been watched recently by Everton scouts including his countryman assistant manager Duncan Ferguson.
The 23-year-old centre-back has been catching the eye with some outstanding performances in the Championship recently, although the Potters have lost three on the bounce.
Souttar seems to tick all the boxes in terms of his qualities and strengths as a defender. He’s tall providing much needed additional height in the box, he’s dominant in the air and according to the scouting report on Whoscored.com the Scot has good levels of concentration too.
So, in a lot of ways he would seem well-suited to what the Blues need given all the difficulties the side have especially in defending set-pieces.
He is very similar type to another young defender Jarrad Branthwaite who Everton signed in the last January window so adding another in Souttar might not make a lot of sense as the team need a player who can come straight into the side.
Souttar also might not be the quickest and the Toffees certainly need more pace at the back, and he obviously lacks top flight experience having not played in the Premier League.
Of course Everton are not the only Premier League club likely to be tracking the young defender and given the Blues financial problems and current struggles, Souttar will probably be going somewhere else if indeed he moves on this January or in the summer.
Everton’s defensive issues have been a long-running sore for several years, in fact as long as I can remember now.
Managers have come and gone, new players have arrived and a few (not enough of them) have left eventually, but the team’s problems at the back remain.
The current crop of players still exhibit all the charateristics that have plagued this side particularly defensively for so long.
The apparent lack of mental strength and resiliance or perhaps lack of commitment is I think always underneath the surface in this team and is made clearly evident every now and then, such as in Saturday’s appalling collapse.
I’ve argued that perhaps in the short-term Benitez will have to look at what creative ways he can do with his existing defensive resources to try and plug the leaks. On that fromt one peice of positive news is that Branthwaite has returned from his own recent injury problems giving Benitez another option.
Longer-term it seems certain that the Toffees boss will demand resources to go and buy another centre-back to try and solve these seemingly endless problems.
Hopefully, finances will allow some room for manouvre in January and while there are continuing issues up front, especially in the absence of Richarlison and Dominic Calvert-Lewin, the need for defensive reinforcements is becoming more and more crucial a problem to solve.
Do you think Everton should try and sign Souttar this January?