What should be Everton and Lampard’s priorities now – part 2
Lampard’s needs to change the culture and mentality of the side and look to bring in younger players for the long-term
Another key to improving this team is to make changes in the culture and mentality of the squad.
Too often when this side was in trouble or under pressue in games the players would just fold and give up without a fight often then going down to heavy defeats.
There was a flakiness and apparant mental fragility that we saw repeatedly and with increasing frequency over the last few seasons and especially again during this campaign.
Part of that is sorting out those who should be moved on as they don’t have the right mindset but it’s also important to lower the age of this Everton team with players who are free of this baggage and hungry for success.
This will partly anyway be acheived as a number of older and veteran players contracts are up this summer and they will be leaving the club. Among them are Fabian Delph, Cenk Tosun and the almost forgotten Gylfi Sigurdsson.
If Allan and Andre Gomes also depart, then the age of the squad will have gone down anyway making this prioirity more immediately achieveable.
Despite all the problems he ultimately bought to the club, one of the results of Rafa Benitez’s time in charge was that he did actually bring in some promising younger talent of the sort with the mindset I think the Blue’s really need to be looking for.
He signed Gray who is still relatively young and of course added both the two full-backs Mykolenko and Patterson in the January window.
Lampard himself also added players who are in the right age range when he took over in Donny van de Beek and Dele Alli on deadline day.
Ironically then having said all this, the first main transfer target alledgedly being chased by the club this summer is the 29 year old Burnley centre-back James Tarkowski!
There is a core of other young talent already in the squad with players like Ben Godfey, Jarrad Branthwaite and Gordon plus promising youth team products like Lewis Dobbin, Reece Welch and Issac Price.
Lampard as we know has a reputation for handling youngsters well and giving them a chance in his teams so perhaps these talents will get more of opportunities next season.
Expediency is perhaps a key reason for Lampard’s approach at Derby and Chelsea because of their financial contraints and unless Everton sell several of their stars for big money or come up with some serious cash from somewhere else, then he might face a similar situation now.
Along with the link to Tarkowski the Toffees’ are apparantly trying to get a deal done for Chelsea midfielder Connor Gallagher who had such an impressive season on loan at Crystal Palace and who also played very well against Everton.
Gallagher is the sort of young, emerging talent the Blues’ should be in the market for so we’ll see if this rumoured deal comes off (probably not) and what if any others the manager might be able to pull off given the links he has to his old club for example.
Overall then a massive in-tray for the club and manager to contend with. I don’t imagine an overhaul like this is possible in one summer of course, and it’s likely plans will have to be in place for the next two or three years before we see it all come to fruition.
The question is do Everton have that much time?