Should Tosun get another chance at Everton

Alongside all the debris and fallout from another depressing defeat at the weekend Everton are facing their next fixture without either first-choice striker, once again.

So, the question is should Cenk Tosun get another chance to see if he can contribute anything up front for Everton against the Bees?

The Toffees are facing a quite extraordinary crisis of absences with around a third of their first-team squad out injured or suspended. The list of players is telling: Yerry Mina, Tom Davies, Andre Gomes, Abdoulaye Doucoure, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and now Demarai Gray. With Mason Holgate and Richarlison the two who are suspended for the Brentford game.

Not all of those players would be starting of course but of those players Mina, Doucoure, Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison and Gray would all likely start and Davies and Gomes would be in contention.

Effectively then the heart of this Blues’ side has been ripped out.

The one area of the team that has been perhaps most affected by all these wretched problems is the strikeforce. For large chunks of the campaign Everton have been without one or both of their two international class forwards.

Calvert-Lewin has been injured since the Brighton game way back in August and has missed so much of this season already it’s hard to remember when he was last in the team.

His Brazilian partner up front, Richarlison, has also been in and out of the side not so unexpectedly given all the football he played in the summer. His yellow card on Sunday was almost predictable and creates yet another immense problem for Rafa Benitez.

So, summer free agent signing Salomon Rondon got the nod earlier in the season, but he struggled badly to make any impact.

Richarlison has returned recently and played up front again on his own in Sunday’s defeat. He hasn’t made much impact in that position, not surprisingly given the lack of support, and now is out suspended for one match after picking up that card, his fifth of the campaign.

You do sometimes feel like there is a sort of official conspiracy against this club with the way all these issues and misfortunes keep adding up.

Well, whatever the truth of that, Everton now have another massive headache up front to resolve in six days time.

Perhaps, it is time to give the club’s almost forgotten Turkish centre-forward Tosun another chance as Benitez considers his sparse striking options.

Tosun has never convinced he is really good enough to score goals regularly in the Premier League although it has to be admitted he’s had limited opportunities recently and hasn’t regularly played in teams that were creating a huge number of chances, that’s for sure.

He’s also suffered from the characteristic Everton injury-jinx and twice returned from loans away with a serious injury. Given all that his future doesn’t look to be on Merseyside.

Ironically though, the current team at Goodison Park (when everyone is fit anyway!) would seem to most suit his strengths with the much-improved width, pace and creativity in the side.

Tosun is a player who with his strength and ability in the air would seem well-suited to feeding off good quality and plentiful balls and crosses into the box.

Anyway, I think that unless Benitez is willing to give his young strikers Ellis Simms and Lewis Dobbin a chance he should consider Tosun. Let’s be honest he doesn’t have much alternative unless he’s still convinced  Salomon Rondon on his own is the answer.

I’m not at all convinced of that, but I think given that Gray is out now for what looks to be several weeks (of course) he might be forced to go with a two-man strikeforce in a 4-4-2 formation to try and offer some semblance of a threat at Brentford. It’s not much is it, but this is what Everton are reduced to.

What do you think should Tosun get another chance in royal blue?