Cameron Hay has been speaking on The Mighty Blues YouTube channel about Marcel Brands and his failure to bring in suitable backup to Seamus Coleman.
It had been expected that Everton would bring in a new right-back this summer, as they had been linked with several targets including Denzel Dumfries, Max Aarons and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, but with none of them arriving, Coleman and Jonjoe Kenny remain the only options to Rafael Benitez in that position.
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With the failure to bring in a right-back, even as a stopgap for the season to help Coleman get a rest when required, Marcel Brands’ role has been questioned by Hay about whether he is succeeding in his role at Everton as director of football following the news that Coleman had picked up an injury while on international duty with the Republic of Ireland.
Hay spoke at length about Coleman’s injury and what it means for Everton.
“Marcel Brands certainly has failed in that department of going out and bringing in a right-back. We knew coming into this transfer window at the start of the summer that our number-one priority has to be right back.
“Because if you think back to last season when we went seven wins on the bounce, and it was all brilliant and Spirit of the Blues was top of the charts, and we were top of the league and it was dead good, the thing that turned that form – and I’m not putting the blame on Seamus Coleman per se with this – Seamus picked up an injury I think it was in October, it might have been the derby, actually, and he had to come out the team.
“It was when Ben Godfrey stepped in and it really, really, really just threw the balance of the whole squad, threw the balance of the whole team up in the air and that was what sort of knocked our form a little bit.”
TIF Thoughts on Brands…
Looking at Everton’s transfer window this summer, it could be seen as a positive one bringing in five new players, with two of them featuring in every league game so far this season in Andros Townsend and Demarai Gray – with the latter even being nominated for August’s player of the month award, however, one of the most threadbare parts of the squad at right-back was once again not acknowledged.
Coleman is now 32 years old and despite being the club’s captain, he is not able to start a lot of games in the league given the intensity and magnitude of games for both club and country, with the full-back failing to start at least 30 matches in the league since the 2014/15 season.
Therefore, it would appear that bringing in a new and younger right-back to be Coleman’s long-term successor, much like the Toffees did by signing Lucas Digne to replace Leighton Baines, would’ve been the simplest task this summer for Brands, instead of signing two backup ‘keepers, but as the window slammed shut last week, no right-back arrived.