Sold by Koeman: Everton's "world-class" ace is now outscoring Beto & DCL

Everton welcomed Charly Alcaraz to the fold in January – but they didn’t welcome a striker.

Many fans expressed – with just cause – concerns over new owners, The Friedkin Group, opting against walking down this track, but with four-goals-in-three-games striker Beto currently enjoying the richest form of his Premier League career, they have been vindicated somewhat.

With David Moyes in the dugout, Everton have got one job this season: survive. Only, Moyes is passing that test at a canter, winning four of his past top-flight matches and drawing the other, against Liverpool in the Merseyside Derby.

The Toffees are 14th in the standings with 13 games to play, having leapt above Manchester United and West Ham United last week.

Points deduction notwithstanding, Sean Dyche collected 48 points last season, averaging 1.26 points per game. Moyes’ first six league games in charge have provided a 2.16 average.

Next season and Bramley Moore lay beyond the horizon for now, but Moyes is sure to be thinking about the need for a new striker. Albeit, Beto’s doing the trick right now.

How Beto compares to former Everton CFs

Beto has played 47 times in the Premier League, scoring just eight goals. Four of those goals have come under Moyes’ wing, across the past three matches.

He’s starting to prove that he could be Everton’s finest centre-forward in several years, for Dominic Calvert-Lewin hasn’t hit double figures since 2020/21 and is out of contract at the end of the season.

Over the past decade, it’s pretty bleak viewing at number nine. Cenk Tosun and Moise Kean joined on the back of large transfer fees but failed to nail down successful roles, the former even being described as “toothless” by journalist Luke Gardner.

The ineptitude and dysfunction under Farhad Moshiri’s rule was perfectly illustrated through the sheer consistency of inconsistency at Goodison Park, with the forwards queued up for failure by the droves.

Ahead of the 2017/18 season, Sandro Ramirez was billed as a star in the making after joining from Malaga in a £5m deal. The Barcelona youth product scored one goal from 16 games before leaving.

Beto might stem the rot, with his improvements in Moyes’ system pointing toward a legacy greater than these erstwhile figures, should he maintain his level.

However, Beto and indeed Calvert-Lewin would need to shift quite the haul ahead of them were they to take the mantle of Everton’s greatest striker across the past decade.

Everton’s finest modern striker

The exploits of Duncan Ferguson and Kevin Campbell linger in memory, but their Everton careers spanned bygone eras. The man in question here is none other than Romelu Lukaku, a striker who is still banging them in today.

A central part of Napoli’s bid for the Serie A title, the 31-year-old Lukaku has scored nine goals across 20 starts, adding eight assists, for Antonio Conte’s side this season, resurgent in Italy after a failed stint at Chelsea.

In 2021, the Blues broke their transfer record and paid £97.5m to Inter Milan for the prospect they cut loose way back when. It was an unhappy marriage, with an equally hostile divorce.

You could say that the richest stint of Lukaku’s storied career, that most replete with goals, came at Goodison Park, when this hulking mass of muscle and menace proved too much for most Premier League defenders. Not just brawn, Roberto Martinez hailed his forward for having “an elite brain,” so instinctive and intelligent in his movement and decision-making.

For unaware football fans, the Belgian’s time at Everton stands as a footnote in a long and nomadic career, but he’s never scored more goals for a single side than he has for the Toffees.

Some haul. Everton might miss the sweet consistency of Lukaku’s goal threat, but given that they enjoyed some of his most prolific years before selling him on to Manchester United for a whopping fee rising to £90m in 2017, it’s hard to look back at then-boss Ronald Koeman’s decision too dejectedly.

However, even this current iteration of one of football’s most prominent strikers would be a welcome asset on Merseyside, for his nine-goal haul for Napoli this year surpasses that of both Beto (seven) and indeed Calvert-Lewin, who presents a measly three-goal return from 22 matches.

The 6 foot 4 Beto is not Lukaku – who has been hailed as “world-class” by Thomas Tuchel – but he does carry a few similar properties, ranking among the top 6% of Premier League forwards this year for successful take-ons, the top 19% for tackles and the top 4% for aerial battles won per 90, as per FBref.

Might we be looking – under Moyes’ wing – at Lukaku reincarnate, in the last days of Goodison Park? Beto himself has admitted that Lukaku is one of the former Premier League players he strives to model his game off.

For now, he’s failing to match the ageing centre-forward. There’s sure to be a part of the collective Toffees fanbase that rues the departure of their most latter-day modern goalscorer.

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