Mike DeAsha has slammed Everton midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson on The Blue Room podcast (March 1st, 8:10) after the club’s 1-1 draw with Manchester United.
What’s he said?
Carlo Ancelotti’s men took a point from the game with the Red Devils, though they were perhaps unlucky not to win.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin thought he had scored his second goal of the game after initially opening the scoring by blocking David De Gea’s attempted clearance.
He fired an effort into the bottom corner from just inside the box but Sigurdsson was sat in front of De Gea at the time, with the goal ruled out for offside, as the Iceland international was said to be restricting the Spaniard’s field of vision.
Sigurdsson did hit the post with a free-kick but he struggled to have a proper impact, laying on just one key pass, failing to complete a dribble and having a corner accuracy of just 17%, per WhoScored.
And DeAsha was massively disappointed with his display throughout the 90 minutes.
He said: “I hold him more to account than I do Jon Moss. Gylfi Sigurdsson is a better player than that. We’ve seen it at times.”
He added: “The Gylfi Sigurdsson we’ve seen this year has been atrocious, and this is just the last in a line of ridiculous speed bumps and invisible performances.
“In my opinion he just shouldn’t play for Everton again.”
Time for a break
Manager Carlo Ancelotti needs to give Sigurdsson a break.
He has played a total of 102 times since his arrival at the club from Swansea City in a £45m transfer.
In that time, he has missed just eight games after collecting a knee injury in the 2017/18 season.
He has rarely been rested. Last season, he played in every Premier League game, while he has missed just three outings in the top-flight this season.
Did he play for Everton? Simple question but a lot tougher than you think…
In his career at Goodison Park, though, he has scored just 22 goals and provided just 14 assists. That is a goal involvement rate of 0.3 per games.
Extrapolated over an entire season, that equates to 13.4 goal involvements per league season but he is already way behind that this season, scoring once and providing just two assists.
That simply isn’t good enough and it is time that he is rested and an opportunity is given to somebody else in the squad.
Sigurdsson just doesn’t appear to be up to it.
Meanwhile, an Everton journalist has drooled over one man!