Ruben Vinagre and Andros Townsend almost certain to leave Everton this summer with rebuild needed
Everton need a rebuild this summer whether they avoid relegation or not, but it seems almost certain that at least two first-team players won’t be part of it.
Sean Dyche came into the club in January to replace Frank Lampard and wiped the slate clean for players, reinstating both Michael Keane and Abdoulaye Doucoure to the squad and starting line-up, which has helped the team move up to 15th place in the Premier League.
But despite their resurrection into the team, there are some players who still haven’t been shown a new path into the team and look forgotten at Goodison Park.
One of those is simply through injury, with Andros Townsend yet to make an appearance this season after suffering a setback in his recovery from an ACL injury picked up while Lampard was manager back in March 2022.
But with his contract at Goodison Road set to expire at the end of the current season, it seems impossible that the club will offer him an extension to stay on when he is now way beyond his best years and coming back from such a serious injury.
Demarai Gray, Alex Iwobi and Dwight McNeil currently occupy the wide positions after Anthony Gordon was sold in January, so an addition or two in the summer is likely with Townsend likely to head for the exit.
But defensively there are a lot of options for Dyche.
At centre-back he has an abundance of players with all of Conor Coady, James Tarkowski, Keane, Yerry Mina, Mason Holgate, Ben Godfrey and even Jarrad Branthwaite returning from loan at PSV Eindhoven.
Some of those are sure to leave, but with Godfrey recently making the left-back role his own ahead of Vitalii Mykolenko, that is one less option in the middle to consider.
On top of that though, it begs the question as to what the point of signing Ruben Vinagre on loan last summer was for Everton.
The Portuguese defender has managed just 24 minutes of Premier League action this season, with the last of those minutes coming all the way back in August during a 1-1 draw with Brentford.
He hasn’t been in either of the last two match-day squads either, and while there is a buy option in the deal that brought him to the club from Sporting CP there is no chance it gets triggered considering how this season has gone.
There are question marks over the future of several others in the squad with contracts coming up and relegation far from avoided yet, but while the club has made their decision on Abdoulaye Doucoure‘s future it seems certain that the future of these two has been decided too.
Fans won’t mind either, but if either of Andros Townsend or Ruben Vinagre are still at Everton next season then something has to have gone really wrong.