FC Barcelona and Everton have an interesting relationship. The two clubs have had a surprisingly high number of transfer deals in recent years. Just this summer, Everton bought two Barcelona players and took one on loan, and Lucas Digne, Yerry Mina, and Andre Gomes all represent extremely important pieces for the club. Meanwhile the Gerard Deulofeu adventure/experiment/merry go round is in recent memory also.
Everton has now shown interest in recently arrived winger Malcom, reports Spanish paper Marca. Marcel Brands and co. had been interested in the winger prior to the purchase of Richarlison this past summer, but AS Roma and Barcelona entered a much battle over the player and the Catalan club came on top. It’s worth noting that Marca has extremely close ties to Barcelona’s eternal rival Real Madrid and at times are not the best source for information on clubs outside the capital.
Since then, Malcom has barely been seen in the Blaugrauna, posting only 96 minutes in La Liga action. Simply put, a club with Ousmane Dembele, Leo Messi, Philippe Coutinho, and Luiz Suarez playing in forward positions does not have too many minutes to spread around. While sitting behind those names is no shame, it is a bit concerning that Malcom has seen fewer minutes than Munir El Haddadi in league play.
At Bordeaux, Malcom was a creative dynamo in Ligue 1, producing 2.72 key passes per 90 and 0.3 assists. For comparison, Bernard, playing a similar role for Everton this year, averages 2.1 key passes per 90 and 0.21 assists. Bernard, of course, is also playing in a better league.
According to the Marca report, Malcom does not want to leave Barcelona. Given the open play creative production we are getting from Bernard, I see no reason to add another winger at this time.
Silva needs to stop playing multiple shoot first wingers (read Richarlison and Walcott) at the same time, especially if he wants to build play from wide areas (as our crossing seems to indicate) but this is an issue of selection, not roster. We have young wingers in Ademola Lookman and (on loan) Henry Onyekuru who have shown a lot of promise, and as long as Bernard is on the field we seem to have enough open play creativity.
In short, I don’t see any reason to make this move, though I do like Malcom as a player. There are more important things we can spend money on, like depth in central midfield.