Royal Blue: Josh King providing more questions than answers for Everton
![UP NEXT]()
UP NEXT
Moise Kean will still have three years left on his Everton contract this summer - but convincing him he has a future at Goodison could be difficult.
The 20-year-old striker pushed for a loan move out of the club in October because he could see the writing on the wall: he was not going to play as much as he wanted to.
A season-long switch to Paris Saint Germain was arranged and Kean will not once have looked back.
And why would he?
And though, on July 1, he will return to Everton, for how long will he be back remains to be seen.
In France, Kean has been playing and scoring. In England, if the fortunes of Everton's other fringe forwards are anything to go by, he would have been doing significantly less of both.
Since arriving in Paris five months ago, Kean has played 27 times across Ligue 1, the Champions League and the two domestic cup competitions.
Covid has kept him out of PSG's last three matches.
The player signed for around £25m in the summer of 2019 from Juventus has scored 14 goals, including one at the Nou Camp against Barcelona, and is winning fans at PSG.
Sporting director Leanardo says they are already talking about how they could feasibly keep Kean for next season but, recently, conceded his transfer future is "complicated" with the Blues yet to suggest what their asking price could be.
But it doesn't take a leap of imagination to see Kean pushing to return to PSG again next season. Perhaps permanently.
Because look at the playing time of those who have filled his seat on the Everton bench.
Cenk Tosun returned to full fitness just less than a month after Kean's departure but he's no longer at the club having returned to Besiktas on loan until the end of the campaign.
While Tosun was still at Goodison, he made only seven appearances. Just one was a start - the FA Cup third round tie with Rotherham in which he scored - and his Premier League minutes amounted to around one half of football.
And, in January, with Dominic Calvert-Lewin out injured and Richarlison only fit enough for the bench for the game with Wolves at Molinuex, Tosun still did not make the XI.
Kean may have looked at that and wondered if he, too, would have been forced to sit on the bench and watch Everton play with Gyfi Sigurdsson and James Rodriguez as the most advanced players that night.
Josh King, meanwhile, came in as the deadline day replacement for Tosun and joined on a short-term deal from Bournemouth.
King is cup tied for this weekend's FA Cup quarter-final with Manchester City but is unlikely to have been picked anyway.
Carlo Ancelotti says the 29-year-old is ready to start games but he has been restricted, so far, to eight appearances off the bench.
The longest single run out he's been afforded so far, is the 34 minutes he was given against Fulham.
"The arrival of King makes our squad more competitive and it puts more pressure on our strikers, but this was not the reason why we wanted him," Ancelotti said.
"We wanted him because he can cover all the positions in front, and we can have more options in front than we had before. The signing of Josh was not to put more pressure on my strikers.
"They know without his arrival that they have to improve. They know."
And the Everton manager delivered those quotes in response to a conversation about King's chances of winning a long-term deal this summer.
He says it's "down to the player" to show what he can offer but it's also down to Kean. If a deal can be agreed for him to leave, then that opens the door further for King.
It's not difficult to see Kean been eager to make room for him, especially so when he considers Ancelotti's use of the words "cover" and "options" in relation to King's role.
By returning, he would understandably fear he would be doing the same.
And so while Everton hold many of the cards in this situation, given the length of his remaining contract, player power counts for a lot.