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Richarlison offers Everton potential missing link

By Matthew Atteberry

LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 30: Richarlison of Watford during the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Watford at Wembley Stadium on April 30, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Mark Leech/Offside/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 30: Richarlison of Watford during the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and Watford at Wembley Stadium on April 30, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Mark Leech/Offside/Getty Images) /
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Everton are poised to sign Richarlison for £50 million. The price is steep, but the Brazilian is just what the Toffees need.

Transfer prices have continued to soar this summer. The most recent eye-watering fee is the £50 million Everton will reportedly pay for Watford’s Brazilian winger Richarlison. That’s a huge amount of a money for a largely unproven 21-year-old, but there are reasons to be optimistic about this signing after the Toffees’ very expensive and largely wasted summer of 2017.

The Merseyside club spent north of £100 million last summer, with Davy Klaassen and Gylfi Sigurdsson comprising nearly two-thirds of that total, a big part of the reason Everton were so dismal under Ronald Koeman and Sam Allardyce.

Klaassen and now-jettisoned free transfer Wayne Rooney both attacked in the same central areas, and both lacked the pace to create from out wide. Add in Sigurdsson, who was exiled to the wings to accommodate others, and it’s not difficult to see why the Toffees had such a rotten season, crashing out of the Europa League in the group stage and finishing eighth behind upstart Burnley to miss out on European competition this season.

Enter Richarlison, who will be reunited with his old manager, Marco Silva. The Brazilian tallied five goals and five assists for Watford last season. He cooled off significantly after October and didn’t score in his last 26 league games, but it would be unfair to judge him too harshly on only part of a season, not only because of his age, but also because his dip in form coincided with Everton’s attempt to pry Silva from Vicarage Road, before Watford fired him in January.

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Richarlison was one of the Hornets’ best players in the early part of the season, and if he can show that sort of form again will go a long way to bolstering Everton’s quality in the wide areas they neglected last season, which should help ease the creative burden on Sigurdsson.

All this, while off-setting the loss of firepower created by Rooney’s departure to DC United, seems like a tall order for a 21-year-old. Perhaps it will be. At his age, however, he represents and investment in the future, and presents much more long-term value than either Klaassen or Sigurdsson.

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