Everton will go into the summer transfer window ready to look at the striker market, even after Beto and Thierno Barry put together a combined 17 Premier League goals this season. The pair have given David Moyes more than he had for long spells of the campaign, but the club still wants more certainty in front of goal.
Beto scored only one goal in Everton's opening 19 league games, before his season changed on the last day of January with a 98th-minute equaliser at Brighton & Hove Albion. Barry, signed from Villarreal for £27m, has also had bright moments, scoring in home and away wins against Nottingham Forest, at Aston Villa and twice against Manchester City. Ahead of the defeat by Sunderland, Moyes said both forwards had done well in the end and needed time to settle.
"I think both of them together have done quite well in the end. I think they've taken a bit of time to settle. Both of them, Beto didn't start the first half of the season well and we had a new player in Barry who was taking time to get going as well. But maybe now the two of them have done decent," he said.
That improvement has not ended Everton's search. The club remains concerned about consistency and missed big chances, and the market for proven strikers is tight, with the best options expensive and in demand. That is why Everton's recruitment work is likely to keep circling back to the same question: whether a better finisher can be found without paying a premium it may not want to meet.
Liam Delap remains part of that thinking. Everton pursued him last summer and believed they came close to bringing him to Merseyside from Ipswich Town. He has since scored one goal in 26 league appearances at Chelsea, and Everton will have to deal with Chelsea again this summer whether or not Delap is available.
That wider conversation is already underway through another deal. Everton and Chelsea are discussing whether the Blues want to keep Tyrique George, who has struggled to break into the starting line-up since arriving at Hill Dickinson Stadium on loan in January, even if he has repeatedly made an impact from the bench.
For Everton, the message is plain. The forwards on hand have improved, but not enough to close the book on a search that has already stretched from last summer into this one. The club has goals now. What it still wants is a striker solution it can trust across a full season.
