Joe Ellis

Mon 18 July 2022 17:10, UK

Everton badly missed the peripheral figure and goals of Dominic Calvert-Lewin last season but the big man is back at his best.

At least that is the view of Toffees’ first-team coach Chris Jones who has been paying extremely close attention to every nugget of information he comes across as the squad tour the United States in pre-season.

Under Rafael Benitez and Frank Lampard, Everton scored just 43 goals in their 38 Premier League games with Calvert-Lewin scoring five of them despite missing a large portion of the season through injury.

His early season form was thwarted and he only rediscovered his mojo for the final couple of games as he helped the Blues stay up but Jones believes he is now back to the player he wants to be ahead of the 2022-23 campaign.

“Dominic is looking good. He had a tough season last year in terms of his injury,” Jones said to the Liverpool Echo. “He came in really good at the end with the important goal that he scored for us.

“I think he looks like the athlete that he wants to be now, and through the rest of the pre-season we will be looking to develop that.”

And that is massively needed at this stage too because the other talismanic figure we did have in attack (Richarlison) has now been sold so the England international really has to step up this season.

There wasn’t much Calvert-Lewin could have done to change his injury woes last season but he needs to be able to move past them rapidly and be ready to lead the side from the front and prevent any kind of relegation trouble this time around.

No one can doubt his ability to score goals when he is on it but if he struggles early on in the season, Lampard does not have the wealth of options to score him the necessary goals to keep us out of the mire.