New Everton manager Frank Lampard was quick in adding reinforcements ahead of Monday night’s transfer deadline.
One of the more notable arrivals was Donny van de Beek who has joined the Blues on loan until the end of the summer from Manchester United.
The Dutchman was close to joining Everton last summer but eventually remained at Old Trafford, assured he’d be given more minutes on the field by then-manager Ole Gunnar Solskajer.
However, he failed to make a Premier League start this season, and even struggled for regular game time following the arrival of Ralf Rangnick at Old Trafford.
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Beyond these frustrations at club level, a wider consequence of his struggles in England was that the Dutchman has missed out on three successive call-ups to the Holland squad.
He’ll therefore undoubtedly arrive at Goodison Park with a point to prove between now and the end of the season.
In terms of a profile, Van de Beek is a multi-purpose player who has the potential to bring more quality to Everton’s play in possession.
His most standout traits are his passing ability, close control and movement without the ball, all of which have been developed and were illustrated best during his time with Ajax.
For the Dutch giants, Van de Beek usually featured either as a number 10 or as a number eight in a 4-3-3 formation and benefited from being a key component within a side that usually dominated the ball and attacked through good combination play.
His success for Ajax led to his move to Old Trafford in the summer of 2020, however in a much different environment, he struggled.
The first issue he had was that Bruno Fernandes was already the club’s first-choice number ten, and within Solskajer’s favoured formation, a 4-2-3-1, there was only room for one such player. This meant minutes on the field were few and far between.
A second big issue culminating in his struggles was that United under Solskjaer often struggled to really fine-tune the expansive and ball dominating style of play that the Norwegian had ambitions to implement.
Often their best performances came in matches where they looked to play on the break, relying on players who tended to take more risks and have a higher output in areas like ball carriers and dribbles. This style wasn’t one necessarily suited to Van de Beek.
We don’t know for sure how Lampard intends to play, though based on his time at both Derby and Chelsea, we can expect to see a style more centred around pressing high, controlling possession and building through the thirds.
Van de Beek’s role within the same might be to play in a more advanced area of the pitch, like a number 10, applying killer passes, threading balls and making late runs into the penalty area, like he often did for Ajax,
Or Lampard may use the Dutchman in a deeper central midfielder role, orchestrating the early stages of Everton’s passing sequences, particularly given that the club lack such a reliable profile to do that at present.
Either way, Van de Beek provides Everton with options that they haven’t previously had, and he could be set to become a really important player under this new era at Goodison Park.
