--- source: thedugout.football generated: 2026-06-09T17:21:04.715Z data_provider: API-Football canonical: https://thedugout.football/clubs/everton/news/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGl2ZXJwb29sZWNoby5jby51ay9zcG9ydC9mb290YmFsbC9mb290YmFsbC1uZXdzL2V2ZXJ0b24tdHJhbnNmZXItc3RyaWtlci1iZXRvLWJhcnJ5LTMzOTgyNDE3 --- # Do Everton need a new striker? Next transfer steps after Beto and Barry concerns - **Source:** - **Club:** Everton - **Original URL:** https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/everton-transfer-striker-beto-barry-33982417 As those plans are crystalised over the coming weeks, we ask do the Blues need a striker? ECHO Everton reporters Joe Thomas and Chris Beesley have their say. For me, a new striker is not THE priority for Everton this summer. This window has to see the longstanding, increasingly painful issue at right back addressed. I think left back also requires serious consideration with, if Adam Aznou is deemed as far off the first team as his current usage suggests, serious competition for Vitalii Mykolenko, should the club trigger his extension, a necessity. That player would have to be one who could at least dovetail with Mykolenko and be deemed the first choice in situations where the left back will have some freedom to attack. I also think a number is six is important. I think Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall should be utilised as an eight more often but that it looks like this squad has plenty of good central midfielders with the ability to progress up and down the pitch but they need someone strong and positionally disciplined to anchor a midfield that is too easily bullied and exposed in transition. Beto and Thierno Barry’s haul is improving and most would have taken a combined 17 goals in the league this season - at least they would back in December when neither had made a serious impact. While Everton have something to work with on both fronts I think there have been too many occasions when good chances have been missed at important times. For the goals the pair have scored, the chances they have missed have been costly. Both also drift out of games a bit too easily. If the opportunity comes along to buy a striker who can occupy defenders more consistently and show a bit more ruthlessness and guile, I don’t think it should be turned down - and I do think the club should be proactively searching for options on this front. Do Everton need a striker? Well, not in the way the need a right-back, or even a left-back, and probably another winger. As well as Jake O’Brien, the 6ft 6in centre-half who David Moyes has converted into an auxiliary right-back has done, prompting this correspondent to dub him ‘The Cork Cafu’ for his game efforts over the past 18 months, the 3-1 defeat to Sunderland surely sounded the final death knell to that experiment. The Blues boss himself admitted towards the end of the winter window that the club had been actively searching for a new right-back for over a year and they need to get that piece of recruitment right this summer as a priority. When it comes to a striker, for me it’s more of a case of seeing whether you can get an upgrade and deciding how you’re going to play. My colleague Ian Croll pointed out on the latest edition of the Royal Blue podcast that one of the reasons he feels Beto has scored a lot more goals in the second half of this season is because the team are now playing more to his strengths than they were earlier in the campaign before Jack Grealish got injured and the on-loan winger was slowing the game down. Everton have therefore got a big decision to make over the Guinea-Bissau international this summer as he enters the final 12 months of his current contract. Are they encouraged enough by his recent revival to offer him a new deal and willing to actually adopt tactics that will help him to hopefully find the net on a more regular basis, or is it time to cash in? Between the pair of them, Beto and Thierno Barry have netted a combined total of 18 goals this season, so while neither of them has been entirely convincing, as a pair being alternated, they have done the job of one top striker over the course of a campaign. By the way, the Blues haven’t had a single player score that many goals since Dominic Calvert-Lewin in 2020/21. If Beto, or indeed Barry, goes then Everton are going to have to get somebody in to replace them just in terms of bodies, but then Hill Dickinson Stadium chiefs could be on the lookout for someone they deem to be better than either of them. It might not be easy with no European football again, but perhaps they might go back in for previous targets such as Liam Delap or Ivan Toney?