Ashley Young currently looks like an 'accident waiting to happen' for Everton | OneFootball

Highlights

Everton full-back Ashley Young has looked like “an accident waiting to happen” recently. Journalist Paul Brown provides his verdict on what comes next for the defender at Goodison Park.

Sean Dyche is under pressure to produce positive results quickly for the Toffees. The club received a ten-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules.

Everton now sit firmly in the relegation zone. The club must rely on their experienced and veteran players to show leadership and get out of the dangerous position it currently finds itself in. Young hopes to eventually prove influential on and off the pitch as the Merseyside outfit prepare for a difficult winter fixture list.

Young struggling to prove his worth at Everton

Young’s career at Everton has started poorly. He signed for the Goodison Park outfit in the summer of 2023 after being released from Aston Villa. The reported £40,000 per week earner has become a regular in Dyche’s side, playing right-back and left-back in the early weeks of the campaign.

Everton struggled at the beginning of the 2023/24 Premier League season, winning just one of their first seven fixtures, including home defeats to Fulham, Wolverhampton Wanderers, and Luton Town. However, three wins in their next five fixtures pushed the Toffees away from the relegation zone and into the relative comfort of mid-table.

However, on 17th November, Everton were deducted ten points after being found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules. That places the club second from bottom in the Premier League table, above basement club Burnley on goal difference.

Young’s form in recent weeks has been below par, and his irrational decision-making was compounded in the Toffees’ 3-0 defeat to Manchester United on 26th November, when he gave away a penalty by tripping Anthony Martial in the box. On 4th September, Brown described Young, Nathan Patterson, and Vitaliy Mykolenko’s performances as “quite alarming” in an interview with GIVEMESPORT. The journalist suggested the trio kept getting selected because of Dyche’s lack of options in the full-back areas.

The Everton head coach will be concerned about the form of Young, who turned 38 in July. He will have hoped that the versatile defender could offer him some much-needed experience at the top level during the 2023/24 season.

Paul Brown on Ashley Young

Brown says that Young hasn’t made the decisions you’d come to expect of an experienced professional throughout the 2023/24 Premier League campaign. The journalist suggests that the former England international should be handed a much-needed rest to take him out of the limelight. Brown told GIVEMESPORT:

Amid the chaos of a ten-point deduction, Everton are also in the middle of a takeover process, which will see majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri sell his shares to 777 Partners. On 23rd November, Brown told GIVEMESPORT that the American consortium are determined to secure the purchase of the Goodison Park outfit despite recent developments that have jeopardised their Premier League status.

In September, it appeared that Everton were on the verge of a new era when the club agreed to a takeover with 777 Partners. However, the transition hasn’t been officially confirmed or ratified, leading to doubts about its completion.

On 22nd November, Football Insider reported that 777 were prepared to enter re-negotiations with Everton over the price of the club’s takeover. The US-based investment firm aims to lower their purchase price given the club’s ten-point deduction. Several rival clubs seek compensation for missing out on the Premier League’s prize money following relegation.

However, on 24th November, journalist Ben Jacobs told GIVEMESPORT that Everton’s silver lining following their points deduction is that the total required for survival may be lower during the 2023/24 campaign than in previous seasons. Jacobs adds that the Toffees could have found themselves stranded if this had happened before the current campaign, with Dyche’s troops still having enough time to turn the tide.