‘He was quite good’: Benitez names the one Everton man who played well against Wolves

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Rafael Benitez singled out Fabian Delph for praise after Everton suffered a third straight Premier League defeat away to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Monday night, while speaking to the Liverpool Echo. 

Benitez’s bench was hardly full to bursting with potential matchwinners at Molineux – two goalkeepers, a £27 million disappointment, an 18-year-old without a single first-team appearance and a 32-year-old striker who hasn’t scored all season long. 

You would have been forgiven for adding Delph’s name to that rather underwhelming list of second string subs, especially when you consider that the England international had played just seven minutes of league football before the trip to Wolverhampton. 

But if anyone came out of a 2-1 defeat at Molineux with any shred of credit, it was him.

Did Fabian Delph prove a point at Wolves?

With Jean-Philippe Gbamin looking as rusty as a 1989 Vauxhall Nova left out in the rain on his first start since 2019, Everton were given the runaround in the first 45 minutes by Wolves’ influential front three of Raul Jimenez, Hwang Hee Chan and Francisco Trincao.

And while it would be a bit of a stretch to suggest that Delph’s introduction for Gbamin at the interval turned the game on it’s head, it certainly redressed the balance a bit, the 31-year-old giving Everton a foothold in a match that appeared to have slipped out of their grasp.

“The reason (for making the substitution) was we were looking for a change of something and to get possession of the ball,” Benitez explained at full-time.

“Delph has experience (even if) he was not fully fit because he was away for a while. He can pass the ball, receive the ball and make people around him play.

“We were needing this and apart from the intensity to challenge for first and second balls, but he gave us this on the ball and he was quite good for us.”

“We showed what we are capable of doing in the second-half. We were missing something in the first-half.

“I was not very happy with the first-half. In the second-half we were still unbalanced but we showed the character that we didn’t have in the first-half.”

With Abdoulaye Doucoure still unavailable and Gbamin clearly lacking fluency and confidence after two years on the sidelines, Delph could make his first league start in 12 months against Tottenham Hotspur next weekend.