Good news: four players will be coming back to Everton

Good news: four players will be coming back to Evertor

The manager will hope to have a number of key players back in contention this weekend when Everton visit Ipswich Town. Ahead of that encounter, our writers shared their current best Everton XIs if the entire squad was fit.Everton found some form heading into the most recent international break. But it still feels as though the two-week hiatus from domestic football came at the right time.

 

The Blues battled to earn a 0-0 draw against Newcastle United in their previous match. While the performance did leave a lot to be desired, the amount of absentees on the day for Sean Dyche mean that the point was mainly viewed as a positive one.For the purposes of this exercise, I shall try and give you mine. Goalkeeper (Jordan Pickford); three of the back four (Jarrad Branthwaite, James Tarkowski and Vitalii Mykolenko) plus striker (Dominic Calvert-Lewin) surely all pick themselves but all the other areas to varying degrees are up for debate. First of all, there is the right-back conundrum with four different players having started there already this season and half a dozen squad members used in total in that single position.This is an issue I discussed with Gavin Buckland and Ian Croll on the Royal Blue podcast this week. In the modern era with squad rotation, five substitutes and different tactics for varying opposition, is there even such a thing as a ‘best XI’ these days?

It might even be a case of James Garner, who prefers to play central midfield, being continued to be deployed at right-back given the competition for places that now exists in the engine room. The Birkenhead-born player possesses enough quality for Sean Dyche to fit him in somewhere but if everyone is 100%, is there still a spot for him?