One of the biggest problems at Everton is in midfield and you’d have to imagine it is an area that Carlo Ancelotti will be desperate to strengthen this summer – but can Marcel Brands really be trusted to pull something wonderful out of the bag?
His recent business has been nothing short of an embarrassment.
£34m for Alex Iwobi, who’s merely returned one goal all season; £25m on Jean-Philippe Gbamin, who has featured for a total of 135 minutes all season; and only then consider the impacts of Fabian Delph and Moise Kean.
However, the Dutch director of football can win back his critics with a swoop for Napoli’s defensive midfield enforcer Allan.
Should Brands splash the cash on Allan?
Yes please!
No thanks!
The 29-year-old has once again been linked to the club this week with journalist Nicolo Schira claiming that talks are ongoing between the Brazilian and the club.
Last month, reports suggested that the Serie A outfit would be willing to listen to offers of around €40m (£36m) for him and given that’s merely £2m more than Iwobi, it would be dumb not to make a ploy for him.
The Toffees have never really replaced Idrissa Gueye with the departing Morgan Schneiderlin ranking top for tackles in the squad – and if there’s a player out there with similar attributes to the PSG man, then it is Allan.
Under Ancelotti at Napoli last season, the lynchpin was an absolute beast across all competitions. He averaged a whopping 6.3 tackles per game in the Champions League as well as 4.3 per match in the Europa League and 3.2 in Serie A, via WhoScored.
That’s triple what Everton’s best defensive midfield option has mustered up this season.
In three campaigns at Goodison Park, Gueye recorded no fewer than 3.5 tackles per game with a best of 4.3 during his final season here.
And as an added benefit, Allan is somewhat a nemesis of our arch-rivals already having kept Mo Salah and co quiet earlier in the season as Napoli defeated Liverpool 2-0 in the UCL.
Not for the first time either as he shut out the Reds last term as well as Neymar’s Paris Saint-Germain.
Brazil head coach Tite once said this about the ‘new Arturo Vidal’: “Allan is good in transition, going box to box, leading counterattacks and breaks. He’s mobile and brings protection defensively.”
It’s absolutely a no-brainer for Brands to splash the cash on the 29-year-old this summer.
why are you including gbamin in your list of failiures,
he is not a failure he is badly injured, get your facts right, please
I would much rather back Carlo who hjas been insistant on his desire to sign Allan than I would to look at Schalke players who are used to losing every game…Todibo and John Jo are half of that under performing defence and although Kenny is receiving good reports on his attacking play his first priority must be to defend. Surely we need to concentrate on serial winners rather than serial losers….we have lost our two best players in Gueye and Lukaku and neither have been adequately replaced. Surely the academy should be grooming replacements for these two types of players even whilst each were still at the club. It was exactly the same with Pienaar.He had a great partnership with Baines and Distin had the pace to cover Leighton when he made his dashes upfield…I could see that both Distin and Pienaar were needed to bring the best out of this left sided attack. Why were they not replaced as priority signings instead of filling the squad with a lot of slow paced mediocre players and inadequate finishers. IMO Lukaku carried our attack and Gueye was 9 tenths of the defence….look for similar players or develop them from within the academy.