The Echo’s Tony Scott has urged Everton to clear out the deadwood in order to make way for much-needed January arrivals.
Scott is banking on the Toffees being able to shift fringe players to allow new incomings, with the club’s finances tight at present.
Everton currently have 11 first-team players still at the club who have played under 350 minutes of Premier League action so far this season.
Of those players, five are defenders and three are midfielders, showing a clear sign of what Everton need to address in the January window to freshen up the squad.
Meanwhile, their desperate need for a striker is summed up by Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Salomon Rondon part of that list, with the former injured since the start of the season and the latter already bidding the club farewell.
Frank Lampard’s side are unsurprisingly the second-lowest goalscorers in the league with only 11 goals in 15 games, with Scott highlighting on the All Together Now podcast that this must be addressed in the window.
He said: “Maybe now could be the time to cash in for Abdoulaye Doucoure; now could be the time to cash in for Tom Davies, Michael Keane, Mason Holgate… Yerry Mina – there’s a lot of candidates in there that could leave the football club in January.
“I think it’s more about balancing the books [and] getting the right characters in more than anything; getting the right players in, getting attackers in because we can’t score a goal for love nor money.
“I think we’ll see midfielders go out the door, defenders go out the door and attackers come in, which is desperately what we need.”
TIF Thoughts on Scott’s comments…
Everton are desperate for goals right now and a clearout is urgently needed to make funds available and free up wages taken up by unfancied, sub-par players who are perhaps not at a Premier League level.
The Toffees’ league top scorer is winger Anthony Gordon with three whilst the club’s only out-and-out strikers in Calvert-Lewin and Neal Maupay have just one each.
With Everton hovering a place and a point above the drop, the inconceivable scenes of last season could yet be repeated again, and without a successful window and other strugglers set to invest, the Toffees are currently looking at another fight to survive the drop amid their move to a new stadium.