Is Brands recruit finished at Everton as Benitez nears £18m signing?

Follow us on Google Discover

It is July 2020.

Marcel Brands and Carlo Ancelotti are welcoming Niels Nkounkou to Everton, hailing the 19-year-old left-back as a potential long-term successor to Lucas Digne and Leighton Baines.

That was only 18 months ago.

Flash forward to December 2021 and Brands has gone, Ancelotti too, while Baines has long-since hung up his boots.

Following a high-profile falling out with Rafa Benitez, the clock also appears to be ticking on Lucas Digne’s Goodison Park career.

The club Nkounkou joined last summer is almost unrecognisable these days.

And, farmed out on loan at Jupiler League outfit Standard Liege, we are none the wiser about Benitez’s plans for the former Marseille youngster.

Who knows, by the time Nkounkou returns to Merseyside at the end of this season, Everton might have a new manager at the helm.

Benitez was hardly Mr Popular when he arrived. And, despite creditable recent results against Chelsea and Arsenal, he is no closer to winning over the supporters who have refused point-blank to overlook his Anfield past.

What will Benitez do with Nkounkou at Everton?

If Digne’s fall from grace had left the door open for an Everton revival, the impending arrival of Vitaliy Mykolenko from Dynamo Kiev appears to have slammed it shut in Nkounkou’s face.

According to The Guardian, the Ukraine international is set to sign a five-year deal at Goodison Park. Everton will pay a fee in the region of £18 million for the 22-year-old Dynamo Kiev left-back.

“One of them (our players) went to Everton, in England,” Dynamo coach Mircea Lucescu said on Thursday.

Talks regarding Mykolenko’s departure, Lucescu suggested, were in the final stages.

“After (West Ham’s Andriy) Yarmolenko, this is the first big transfer that Dinamo Kiev has made. (Mykolenko) is a young player, an example for the others who are coming (through the ranks).”

Assuming Benitez sees the versatile Ben Godfrey as a genuine option at left-back too, Nkounkou could find himself even further down the pecking order when he returns than when he left.