Everton linked with Porto star

Vincent Aboubakar of Porto has been strongly linked with Swansea City. In fact, he’s been linked so strongly that even the player thought he was headed there this past July. With the Swans’ goalscoring record beyond abysmal, the team is looking at strikers (nevermind the fact that you can’t score goals without creating chances, and Swansea is abysmal at that too, so a new striker won’t solve a darn thing).

According to Wales Online, Sam Allardyce is also a fan of the player, and why not? He already has twenty goals and five assists in 22 games in all competitions, including five in the Champions League alone. In fact, the Whoscored.com scouting report on him is very impressive, take a look:

So why on earth do I think this is a terrible idea for Everton? Well, three reasons.

First, his release clause is £50m. Wales Online thinks that Swansea can get him for a lower price than that, but I’d imagine if Everton showed up with a bid, particularly a midseason bid with Porto staring down UCL knockouts against Liverpool, that price is going to be very near the release clause. Anyone ready for another round of “Everton bid £45m, the sellers want £50m”? I had my fill of that in the Gylfi Sigurdsson saga, thank you very much. There’s zero chance this guy is worth £50m and I don’t want to pay that for him.

The second problem is that he’s 25 and his career path is Ligue 1 to Turkish league to Portugal. Hardly inspiring. It’s a similar beef that I had with the idea of Everton signing Bas Dost. If he’s so good, why is he in his mid 20s still at Porto? This is one I’m not going to be able to get past.

Third, Everton is performing just fine at striker already. Don’t believe me? Cool, have a read.

The Blues were rumoured to be very interested in the Aboubakar before the 2016-17 season, settling for Enner Valencia on loan instead. But for now, let Swansea overpay in a desperate bid to not drop back through the depths of the Football League from whence they came. That’s a small club’s move. Let’s be more focused in January on getting some back line help and finding a way to make Davy Klaassen not be an Everton player anymore. These are far more pressing concerns.