Should Allardyce take Ball advice about Garbutt’s future at Everton?

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Michael Ball thinks something needs to give with Luke Garbutt and what is happening to his Everton career – or lack of it.

Former Everton left-back Michael Ball has concerns over a current player in his position at the club in Luke Garbutt and how his career is going.

Garbutt has not played a first team match for the Toffees in almost three years and now aged 24-years-old, Ball thinks something needs to change.

“Garbutt is training with the first-team squad again but still can’t force his way into Sam Allardyce’s plans and at the age of 24, the left-back has approached a critical moment in his career,” the ex-defender, who played for the club for five years, wrote in his Liverpool Echo column.

“Luke needs to be playing, he needs game time and there is an opportunity for him to be offering competition for Leighton Baines but, as it stands, Cuco Martina – a right-back playing left-back – is being preferred to him.

“I would be embarrassed at that and so I am urging Luke to knock on the manager’s door or knock on whichever door he needs to in order to find the answers to his problem and ask: what is stopping me from playing?

“There may not be a future for him at Everton but he needs to be certain there is one elsewhere, at the very highest level possible and that’s why he needs to do everything to get himself back in the shop window.”

Something needs to change

So is Ball right? It would seem that if Garbutt were ever going to become a regular at Goodison Park it would be now, with his position of left-back a real problem one currently for Allardyce.

That is because an injury to Baines and no natural cover has seen Martina playing there and often struggling, yet still the former England Under-21 international hasn’t been called upon.

Is it perhaps time for Allardyce to take note of the advice being given by ex-pros such as Ball and be a little fairer with Garbutt about what future he actually has at the club?

Maybe the manager should either start playing the full-back or tell him that he can move on from the Merseysiders and therefore start planning for life away from Everton.