Manchester City striker Wilfried Bony has emerged as a potential target for Premier League heavy spenders Everton, as per reports from Transfer Market Web.
The report also suggests that fellow Premier League clubs West Ham United are also monitoring the striker’ situation.
The 28-year old Bony may be surplus to requirements this season at the Etihad and City are believed to be keen on offloading the forward in the summer, despite the player’s intentions of staying at the club and proving himself.
Bony joined Manchester City in January 2015 from Swansea City for a whopping £28 million (BBC), following a highly impressive 18-month spell with the Welsh outfit. The Ivory Coast international struck 35 goals for the Swans in 70 matches in all competitions but hasn’t been able to translate that form for the Sky Blues. With just 10 goals from 46 games since January 2015, the arrival of Pep Guardiola last summer saw Bony being loaned out to Stoke City.
Things failed to improve for the big and burly striker at the Bet365 Stadium as he struggled to make a mark for Mark Hughes’ team and found himself warming the benches for long parts of the season. Following his return from the Africa Cup of Nations duty with Ivory Coast at the start of this year, he did not feature even once for the Potters and as a result just finished with 2 goals in 11 appearances in all competitions.
Bony found himself behind an ageing Peter Crouch and a misfiring Saido Berahino in the pecking order at Stoke City and it certainly doesn’t make for a good reflection on the player’s form and condition.
Everton are on the lookout for a new striker after selling last season’s star man Romelu Lukaku to Manchester United for £75 million earlier this week and have been linked with a number of strikers in the transfer market till now.
However, the links with Bony are a bit surprising, to say the least. The Ivorian has been struggling for form and confidence over the past two years and found himself warming the benches at Stoke. And Everton, who are a club with much loftier ambitions than the Potters, and have shown that they can attract top quality stars already this summer, shouldn’t even be considering the distant possibility of moving for Bony.
Moreover, he still has two years left on his contract with City and having spent heavily on him a couple of years ago, they would want to recoup as much as possible, which would mean he wouldn’t be coming on the cheap either.
The 28-year old had his moments during his days with Swansea, but since then his powers have been on the wane. Someone who hasn’t been performing consistently at this level for more than two seasons now and is on the wrong side of 20’s is hardly the kind of striker that the Toffees should be looking at, to replace the Belgian international for the next season. Everton can definitely do much better than Bony and should end their interest in him at the earliest.