Coutinho offered to Everton

EVERTON have been offered the opportunity to sign Philippe Coutinho in this transfer window as the Brazil playmaker looks to revive his career. The former Liverpool midfielder, 29, joined Barcelona in January 2018 for £146million but the switch didn’t work out as Coutinho (below) envisaged and he was loaned out to Bayern Munich in 2019 for a year before returning to the Nou Camp. Barcelona are eager for him to leave and his representatives have spoken to Everton about the possibility of him moving to Goodison Park this month but it remains to be seen whether Rafa Benitez will pursue the deal. Everton are on the brink of confirming a deal to sign for Ukraine left back Vitaliy Mykolenko from Dynamo Kiev and Benitez also wants Nathan Patterson from Rangers, after missing out on the Scotland international in August. Benitez, whose side face Brighton tomorrow, has a specific profile of player in mind to reshape Everton’s squad. He wants hungry individuals to make his team competitive and is confident he will get his targets before the deadline. He said: ‘My idea, the board has agreed with the principle, is that we bring players who want to be here, especially in January when it is a difficult window. ‘The second one is that they’re players who will help the team, give us something different. ‘We are looking for players who will come and give us something straight away. Sometimes you cannot, then you can talk about foreign players to fix a gap in the team. But if you can bring players who have experience in the Premier League, they can perform straight away from day one and that is much better. ‘You try to sign what you want but sometimes you can only sign what you can. ‘With the transfer window in January, it is not clear and easy because there are too many players playing Champions League or in Europe. ‘They don’t want to move, you have Covid and not too much money around. ‘I have a lot of agents throwing me names, or throwing us names. But everything is in place to move forward.’