It’s about time we had the conversation. Is Lucas Digne the best left-back in world football right now?
While a certain Scottish pocket rocket on the other side of the Merseyside divide might have something to say about that, there is certainly a case to be made that the game’s current number one is plying his trade in blue rather than red.
Jordi Alba and Marcelo are both the wrong side of 30 these days, Benjamin Mendy’s potential remains unfulfilled and Alphonso Davies, for all his searing pace and attacking intent, is far from faultless at the other end of the park.
Digne, meanwhile, is playing the best football of his career at Goodison Park. And that’s a career in which he has represented PSG, Roma and Barcelona.
Everton’s £18 million bargain has been irrepressible during the club’s best start to a season since 1894 and, during France’s 2-1 UEFA Nations League victory over Croatia on Wednesday night, produced the kind of assist that prime-time Alba would have been proud of.
Racing on to a perfectly weighted Paul Pogba pass, Digne served up the easiest of chances on a golden platter to Kylian Mbappe with a sublime, first-time cross.
Perhaps the best compliment we can pay to Digne is that we have come to expect this kind of magic from that wand of a left foot.
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