OPINION
Everton striker Cenk Tosun is surely playing wishful thinking after he insisted that his performance against Tottenham would “leave a mark going into the summer”.
Speaking to the club’s official website, the Turkish international said that his goal against Spurs on the final day of the Premier League season would have an impact on his future.
“What happens in the final game stays in people’s minds,” the 27-year-old told said. It leaves a mark going into the summer. It was important for me to play well in that last match against Tottenham.
“I hadn’t started for a while but I still felt I was playing with confidence, which you need to be competitive in the Premier League against top defenders.”
But let’s be honest about this, one good performance is not going to change what Toffees boss Marco Silva thinks of Tosun.
Despite the striker making 25 Premier League appearances last season, Tosun only managed to play the full 90 minutes in four of those games, with the final-day run out against Mauricio Pochettino’s side one of them.
A lot of those have been substitute appearances too, so it is clear what Silva thinks of the man Sam Allardyce brought to the club in January last year.
In fact, the game against Tottenham was Tosun’s first league start since February, when he took full part in a 1-0 defeat to Watford.
And since February, the club managed significant wins over Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea. The one statistic that needs to be heeded from those games is that Tosun was an unused substitute in all of them. Silva does not trust Tosun in the big games.
Therefore, his appearance against Spurs was simply a run-out for the final day of the season, which was academic for Everton having shown enough resurgence earlier in the season to rest easy against the North London club.
Another statistic that needs to be taken note of is that Tosun only managed four goals and three assists for the Toffees last term, and even from the bench he has not been effective at all.
Yes, Tosun played well against Spurs and had one of his best games of the season. But that is not suddenly going to change Silva’s mind about him and it definitely will not convince the manager to give him any more game time next term – if indeed the striker stays on Merseyside.