\nAdam Aznou in action against Dundee<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n
<\/button><\/p>\n
My biggest takeaway from Dundee was hammered home by two different players, both under the age of 21, in separate halves of Everton\u2019s first pre-season friendly. The issue itself will come as a surprise to no-one.<\/p>\n
But the ease with which the improvement to anything I have seen from the Blues in more than a year became apparent was, in some ways, shocking.<\/p>\n
Adam Aznou did not play a single minute in the Premier League last season. His repeated omission was baffling, never more so than when he was left on the bench as first-choice left-back Vitalii Mykolenko was urged to push forward when Everton were chasing games.<\/p>\n
Mykolenko and Aznou play in the same position and yet the contrast in their skillsets could not be greater.<\/p>\n
That should be good for David Moyes, providing him with the ability to change personnel in an important position as the needs of a performance shift over 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
Instead, he refrained from using Aznou at all in the league. I could understand not starting him, or selecting his opportunities carefully – he struggled in his pre-season appearance off the bench against Roma and is a young player who was stepping into a tough environment.<\/p>\n
To leave him completely unused was bizarre, though, even more so once he made such a positive impact as a late substitute in the FA Cup loss to Sunderland.<\/p>\n
I hope this season is different.<\/p>\n
I expect Aznou to leave on loan this summer but his display on Saturday should leave Moyes in no doubt that, whether or not it is the Morocco international, Everton need an adventurous player who is comfortable going forward to dovetail with Mykolenko, absent at the weekend due to the birth of his second child.<\/p>\n
The benefit of having such a player on the left was clear in the opening 45 minutes. Aznou flew forward whenever possible, providing Tyrique George with an option to play off and an overlapping teammate to create space by distracting defenders.<\/p>\n
It helped George to impact the game while Aznou himself offered an attacking threat that included a gorgeous back post cross that was begging to be turned in.<\/p>\n
When Aznou was withdrawn halfway through the second half, Moyes introduced another young full-back, this time on the right.<\/p>\n
George Finney spent the second half of last season on loan at Ayr United, earning his first taste of senior football.<\/p>\n
Within minutes of his introduction he produced one of the few moments of quality in the game, pushing forward and whipping a devilish cross across the face of goal. It was almost prodded in by Braiden Graham, who had read his Under-21s teammate\u2019s intention and gambled on a late burst into the box.<\/p>\n
It was not the only good cross delivered by Finney across a positive cameo by the teenager.<\/p>\n
Now, to be clear, this is not me advocating an Aznou and Finney double act at full-back for the Premier League opener against Crystal Palace next month.<\/p>\n
Both are young, inexperienced, are without a previous minute in the top flight and, at Dens Park, were playing an opposition they would hope to be competitive against – though it is worth noting that Dundee started the match having already played two cup matches and five friendlies, so were much further advanced in their preparations than an Everton squad that had been training for just one week.<\/p>\n
But their impact made crystal clear just how much more coherent Everton look as an attacking force when they have full-backs that are comfortable pushing deep into opposition territory and capable of delivering good crosses into the box.<\/p>\n
They provided a threat the Blues were without all last season as Moyes relied on the conservative Mykolenko on the left and centre back Jake O\u2019Brien on the right.<\/p>\n
It is an area where huge improvement is available, and where progress could be made with even average signings in those positions, so long as they are specialist full-backs.<\/p>\n
I am not sure I can face another campaign of watching Everton\u2019s wingers get surrounded by defenders comfortable to commit to them because they know there is no threat coming from behind them.<\/p>\n
I know most of us feel the same but on Saturday it was striking just how much better Everton looked when they had full-backs that could operate in both directions. This feels like an easy problem to solve, one that would have a massive upside for even a modest investment. I cannot imagine Everton are unaware of this but, after recent windows in which this issue was not addressed, I will not sleep easily until action is taken.<\/p>\n
A version of this first featured in the latest edition of the Royal Blue newsletter<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everton FC correspondent Joe Thomas on how Adam Aznou and George Finney took one friendly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"liverpoolecho\"](\"https:\/\/www.liverpoolecho.co.uk\/assets\/liverpoolecho\/images\/premium-byline-liverpoolecho.svg\"\/)
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n