By The Numbers: Wilfried Zaha would be a perfect Everton signing

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There are fresh rumours swirling that Crystal Palace may be selling Wilfried Zaha, and Everton in particular are keen. This would be a perfect transfer.

Wilfried Zaha is a flying winger who would grace the starting XI of almost any Premier League team outside of Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur.

He is a profoundly positive player, the kind that can pick up a side and carry them on his back. The kind whose fearless dribbling can often see him dispossessed but more often than not results in some truly special skills.

The Gambling Times are reporting that Everton want to bring that special talent to Merseyside, although they will face competition from some Premier League heavy-hitters.

“I don’t think that as a manager you can ever give guarantees on anything,” Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson said in the Mirror, with regards to Zaha leaving; “He’s helping us win games and I’ve no doubt that will continue until the day when he can no longer do it for us. Like most Crystal Palace fans, I hope that’s a long way off.”

But that day appears to be rapidly approaching, and Everton must be hopeful that they will be the ones who take him away from South London.

This Everton side that Sam Allardyce is in the process of saving has quite a lot of talent. But it’s missing a couple of key pieces: a second defensive midfielder and a winger. It was missing a striker but Sam Allardyce’s trust in Dominic Calvert-Lewin appears to have solved that problem.

Still, Everton need a winger. A pacy winger who can beat a man off the dribble. They need that kind of spontaneous creativity and spark of genius. The kind of player who can add to their general play but also turn a game on its head all by himself.

Right now Aaron Lennon is their only genuine winger, and whilst he’s doing a good job he’s far from good enough for the level Everton want to reach. Meanwhile Yannick Bolasie is returning from injury, so even if he hits the ground running at 100% (he won’t, ligament injuries always take about a year of play to fully go away) Everton will still need another.

So why not Bolasie’s old Palace team-mate, Zaha? The Ivorian international would be dream-like in that exact role. Since 2014/15, when Zaha began his second stint with Crystal Palace, he has completed 401 dribbles, which is more than any other player in the same period with the exception of Eden Hazard.

Notably, Hazard and the two players behind him (the only four to have completed over 300 dribbles) have played 1000 more minutes than he has, which only makes it more impressive that Zaha’s attempted dribbles dwarf even Hazard’s numbers. Zaha is quite simply a dribbling machine.

This is a critical need for Everton, who have won just 102 dribbles all season. That’s lower than any other side in the division, even Burnley. It’s a huge problem and part of the reason why Ronald Koeman was such a failure this season.

Should Sam Allardyce want to not only ensure Everton survive but elevate them to the next level, then he needs to make sure that The Toffees sign Wilfried Zaha ahead of the other Premier League sides who will surely be after him.