Sean Dyche speaks to the media during the Everton Press Conference at Finch Farm on October 17, 2024
Few players have grown in importance during their absence as much as Armando Broja and Youssef Chermiti. When this season started, Chermiti was recovering from surgery on a nasty foot injury and Broja was on his long rehabilitation programme from an achilles problem at Chelsea.
Now, a young striker who is yet to score for Everton and a talent who netted just once last season across 21 appearances for Chelsea and Fulham, are being looked to as the potential answers to a growing problem at Goodison Park.
The hunt for goals is a key issue - the Blues are one of the lowest scorers in the top flight this season and have not scored in three consecutive matches despite those games being against some of the most porous defences.
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The problem, a key theme of Sean Dyche's latest press conference, could not have been highlighted more emphatically than it was last week, when Everton’s latest failure in front of goal provided Brentford with their first clean sheet in their 12th match of the campaign. That was even after captain and centre back Christian Norgaard was sent off in the first half.
Dyche is not wrong to say this is a problem that existed upon his arrival but having been on Merseyside for two years now, it is a problem that he is yet to solve.
His search for answers has included the patience to allow Dominic Calvert-Lewin to return to fitness but, for all his work occupying defences, this season is proving to be a struggle even with his awareness goals are needed if he is to be courted by other clubs at the end of the season, when he will become a free agent.
While Calvert-Lewin has not scored since the middle of September, his closest competition, Beto, cannot get a break. Used sparingly by Dyche it looked as though his stoppage time heroics against Fulham would create the breakthrough he needed after a difficult start to the season.
His celebrations were sodden by the tears of real emotion as he left the pitch in relief that night. It looked like he had the magic touch when he then produced a stunning first touch and composed finish at Southampton to score what looked to be a magnificent equaliser. Instead, his goal was ruled offside by the barest of margins. That close call added insult to the injury caused by his close range header thundering off the bar minutes earlier to essentially start the counter attack from which Adam Armstrong scored the Saints' winner.
Since then, it seems as though Beto has, somehow, gone backwards. Thrown on alongside Calvert-Lewin in the second half against Brentford, he made a nuisance of himself but a tactic castigated by Dyche last season showed again that all it does is produce a haphazard attack that benefits neither forward.
And so the appeal of Chermiti and Broja has grown. Amid the struggles against Southampton, West Ham and Brentford their rehabilitation programmes have come under more and more scrutiny and Dyche has not shied away from namechecking the pair, nor did he do so again on Thursday.
Both look supremely talented - Broja has been courted by Everton since the Frank Lampard days while Chermiti provided glimpses of intelligence on the ball at the end of last season and was the big winner of the early weeks of pre-season, sparing Blue blushes with a brace at Sligo Rovers and by winning the free-kick from which James Garner scored at Salford City. His injury was a cruel blow for a player growing in prominence.
The pair were once again on Dyche’s lips at Finch Farm ahead of the match against Manchester United at the weekend. One of his opening lines was that both would feature for the Under-21s on Friday afternoon - a second run-out for Broja and first for Chermiti.
Whether this is out of desperation or expectation remains to be seen, however. On the one hand, it is a rare positive that the answers to Everton’s problems may lie in what they have in the squad. On the other hand, two young players are set to return from injury under pressure to provide a breakthrough for Everton’s goalscoring woe. How they fare will go a long way to determining just how difficult this December gets.
At Finch Farm right now, amid the defiance that this season is playing out better than results may suggest, there is an awful lot of hope being placed on them being the solution to a problem Dyche needs quick answers to.