Everton manager Frank Lampard might resist the temptation to make a straight swap for Conor Coady when Wolverhampton Wanderers come to Goodison Park on Boxing Day.
That’s the view of the ECHO’s Everton correspondent Joe Thomas who believes the Blues boss could decide to change his formation when on-loan Coady is forced to sit out the fixture against his parent club.
Other than on his debut at Aston Villa when he went off after 83 minutes, Coady, who was a non-playing member of the England squad at the recent World Cup finals, has been an ever-present in the Premier League for Everton alongside James Tarkowski at the heart of defence. When asked on the Royal Blue Podcast who they would choose to fill the void against Wolves, this correspondent chose Michael Keane while Gavin Buckland went for Yerry Mina, but Thomas believes it needn’t necessarily be a straight swap.
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He said: “Where we’re at with Yerry Mina and Ben Godfrey is that they’re both back training with the first team. They’re both close to full fitness if not already fully fit.
“Godfrey has been playing minutes throughout the break for the Under-21s, his last run-out was against Mansfield in the Papa John’s Trophy. He looked alright, that was November 30, almost a month ago.
“I think in player profile in terms of the centre-back most similar to Conor Coady, it’s hard. There’s a compelling case for Keane, I think Mina is the best centre-back of those going but obviously again with the caveat of injuries.
“I’m tempted to go with a third option that hasn’t been mentioned bearing in mind how significant this game is and the injury concerns that will still linger over Godfrey and Mina, even if they appear to be fully fit. What we’ve seen from Frank Lampard in the past – I think it’s fair to say he’s a cautious manager, he plays it safe – I think he’ll go into this game looking at it thinking ‘it’s imperative that we don’t lose it’ rather than a ‘must-win’ and for that reason I wonder whether he’ll revert to playing three centre-backs to try and mitigate some of the risks around bringing back players from injury and some of the uncertainty over partnerships he’s not sure about.”
Thomas added: “What the make-up of that three would be I’m not entirely sure, he’s got James Tarkowski in there and maybe he’ll put Mina and Godfrey in together. You’ve got Mina for the obvious skills he brings and Godfrey for the pace he offers around the back.
“Maybe Mason Holgate might get a look-in but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was his move come Boxing Day. There isn’t a way in which he solves the problem and doesn’t have a concern so therefore one of the safest things he might end up doing is playing five at the back with essentially three centre-backs.
“I think it’s pretty obvious that the club would take decent bids if they were forthcoming for either Keane or Mina and playing them obviously brings the risk of them getting injured or putting in bad displays to take themselves out of the shop window but I think Everton’s situation right now is such that they have to put that at the back of their mind and what they have to do, certainly for these first few games when they come back – obviously if they get the results they need it might change come the middle of January – they have to put out the 11 players they think will give them the best opportunity to get three points. That has to be the plan at the moment.
“What I would say is that this is a problem they’ve known about since the moment they signed Coady but they’ve also had six weeks to think about this. Give or take a few injuries that have hindered planning and brought a bit of uncertainty, there’s no excuse for them not having planned for this because it’s one of the few things going into the Wolves game saying ‘we know this is something that we have to address.'
“Whatever the formation and the partnership is, you’d hope that they’ve spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it and working on it last week and this week, looking at how to mitigate the issue and put themselves in the best position to try and get a result on Boxing Day.”
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