Everton is interested in Leicester City left back Victor Kristiansen, according to a report by Rob Dorsett of Sky Sports.
The 22-year-old Danish defender joined from FC Copenhagen in January of 2023, but was loaned out to Bologna for the 2023/24 campaign, making 34 appearances, including 28 starts for the Italian club.
He returned to England this season, where he played 29 times (all starts) for a side that struggled to score goals (just 29 on the season) and shipped them at an alarming rate (76, 2.17 per match).
It's not reasonable to put that blame on one defender, particularly one who is young and who, by all accounts, does well defensively. In that regard, he is at least on par with, if not better than, Vitalii Mykolenko, Everton's current starting left back.
However, Kristiansen showed himself to be a willing runner in the attack, averaging 1.55 shot created actions per 90 this past season for Leicester, which is in line with his career numbers. And while this might not be an impressive number (FBref has his career SCA in the 19th percentile for his position), Leicester were a much more defensively driven team, which may drag down these numbers.
The age is a key consideration, since he's young and already shown himself capable of being a starter in the Premier League, and any purchase of the player would allow for a return on investment if he continues to improve during his time at Everton.
He also looks to be an improvement on Mykolenko in terms of his ability to get up and down the pitch. The Ukrainian is willing but not always able, and often finds himself caught out of position when he does push further down the flank.
The almost-26-year-old Mykolenko still has usefulness, so bringing in Kristiansen wouldn't mean he'd need to be sold, but he might find his starts fewer and farther between.
As usual, the choice to bring in Kristiansen will come down to cost and whether Everton value a player of his skillset enough to go out and get him. Keeping him in the Championship likely isn't cost prohibitive for Leicester, but the price of relegation is often having to sell good players at a cut-rate price, so maybe Everton can take advantage of that in this scenario.