Everton currently have the joint-second oldest squad in the Premier League alongside Fulham and Newcastle United with an average age of 27.4.
One of the older players at Goodison Park is Abdoulaye Doucoure, who, at the age of 29 is the seventh-oldest outfield player at the Merseyside club.
With the midfielder’s current contract at Everton set to expire at the end of the current season, the focus could soon turn to finding a suitable potential replacement for him.
One player that the Toffees were linked with over the recent summer transfer window that we feel could be a suitable heir for Doucoure is Conor Gallagher.
Last season saw the Chelsea midfielder complete a loan spell with Crystal Palace, which is where he was able to show why he’d be such an impressive addition to Frank Lampard’s squad.
To compare his previous campaign with Doucoure’s, Gallagher not only showed off his attacking credentials by racking up 11 goal contributions compared to the Everton midfielder’s six, but he was also able to prove himself as a solid defensive figure as well.
To highlight the defensive similarities between the two players, they both ended the season with an almost identical number of successful tackles (45 vs 44), successful pressures percentage (27.3% vs 28.3%) and interceptions (43 vs 41).
The Englishman’s overall league performances for Palace ultimately earned him a season rating of 7.09/10 from WhoScored, making him the highest-rated player at the south London club.
To put that into perspective, that rating would have also made him Everton’s highest-rated player for last season.
This shows why the west London club were reportedly looking for a substantial fee of £50m to sell him over the summer and also why Gallagher was labelled as a “super talent” by Graeme Souness.
Taking all of this into account, if an opportunity arises to sign the 22-year-old, either in January or the next summer transfer window, this is something that Everton and Lampard, with his connections to Chelsea, should be all over.
