According to The Athletic, Everton tried to re-sign Kurt Zouma on a season-long loan this summer after Chelsea brought in Thiago Silva on a free transfer from Paris Saint-Germain.
Zouma’s place at centre-back initially looked under threat as he had Andreas Christiansen, Fiyako Tomori and Antonio Rudiger for competition, but Frank Lampard blocked our approach.
We’ve been trying to bring Zouma back to Goodison Park ever since his loan spell came to an end, but Chelsea were having none of it this time and that may shut the door on a return ever materialising.
Zouma is an important player at Chelsea
The French international joined Chelsea from AS Saint-Etienne in 2014 and has gone on to make 120 appearances in all competitions, scoring seven goals with six assists.
Before finally nailing down a starting place in 2019/20, Zouma was loaned out to Stoke City (July 21, 2017 – May 31, 2018) and Everton (August 9, 2018 – May 31, 2019) to get first-team football, and now he’s an important player for the Blues.
Zouma made 43/55 appearances across the board last season and has featured in six of Chelsea’s seven games this campaign, so there’s no way he’ll be allowed to leave.
We don’t need another centre-back now
It would have been great to bring Zouma back, but I don’t think we need him any more. We have Mason Holgate, Yerry Mina, Michael Keane, Jarrad Branthwaite, Lewis Gibson and new-boy Ben Godfrey at our disposal, so we’re blessed with defensive depth.
We have the third-best defensive record in the Premier League (5 games, 7 goals conceded) this season, so Carlo Ancelotti is getting the best out of our players. Only Aston Villa (2) and Arsenal (6) have conceded fewer goals than us, so it’s a stark turnaround to last season (38 games, 56 goals conceded).
Summary
It appears we really did try to bring Zouma back to Goodison, but Chelsea weren’t willing to let him go. You can see why, as he’s one of the first names on the teamsheet now, but we should be happy with Godfrey. He’s impressed at Norwich and has a bright future.
In other news, here’s why Everton missed out on Antonio Rudiger and signed Ben Godfrey