Everton had a rather busy previous summer transfer window in terms of the deals that took place concerning the Toffees.
However, one deal that the Merseyside club were reportedly looking to complete before the window closed but were unable to, is one that would have seen Villarreal winger, Samuel Chukwueze, make a move to Goodison Park.
Towards the end of the window, it was reported that the Toffees had approached the Spanish club to see if they would be able to sign Chukwueze on loan with an option to secure him on a permanent deal for a fee of around £43m.
This deal ultimately didn’t happen, which we fee is a blessing in disguise for Everton and their director of football, Kevin Thelwell.
To compare his previous domestic campaign with Demarai Gray’s, even though the Nigerian made seven fewer league appearances than the Everton, he didn’t do enough to warrant potentially taking Gray’s place in Frank Lampard’s side.
For example, the 23-year-old ended the campaign with a lower percentage of shots on target than the Toffees winger (23.1% vs 20.6%), as well as a lower percentage of successful dribbles (54.7% vs 53.2%) and successful pressures (32.2% vs 31.9%).
Described as an “unpredictable” player by Sunday Oliseh, Chukwueze has yet to start a league game for his current club this season and has only been able to earn himself a rather uninspiring performance rating of 6.61/10 from WhoScored.
With all of that in mind, even though Everton are yet to win any of their league games in this campaign so far, we feel that having the Villarreal winger in their squad may not have helped the club that much from an attacking point of view.
Moving forward, unless Chukwueze vastly improves his performances in Spain, Everton should forget about potentially making another move to sign him in the near future.
