He is who has been throughout his career. In his prime, his physical skills were good enough to allow him to keep his position on top teams, and employ the dark arts to make him a useful contributor. You had grudging admiration for him as an opponent. I guess Dyche still sees him as that guy, but he just seems like the weakest link whose ceiling is not blowing the game. Even decimated Everton has better options. It should have been Garner at right back yesterday.
Everton's options at right back are/have been, depending on health in any given week:
-Seamus Coleman, for grit, guile, and leadership
-Nathan Patterson, for bedding in the prospect
-Ben Godfrey, lacking in nous and experience but extremely athletic
-James Garner, a midfielder by trade but a well-rounded, two-way player who excelled at RB for England in the U21 Euros
Any one of these offers more upside in some dimension than Young, who does not lead this pack in any important attribute (Coleman, who is depicted in an Everton shirt in the Lascaux cave paintings, is amazingly still three years younger than Young, but miles ahead in nous and ability to read the game).
You have to squint to see the upside in playing Patterson, who has struggled and has had injury issues, but he is an experienced international at a young age. At almost exactly the same juncture of his career, Mykolenko was, like Patterson, still considered a project and by some thought to be a bust, but with more minutes has evolved into one of the better defensive LB in the league. Got to play the kids eventually to find out if they can cut it.
Godfrey will bang bodies like a CB and will sprint the width of the pitch to make a game saving tackle, notwithstanding that he was off on some dumbass detour that made it necessary to begin with.
There is literally no point to playing Young, whose season is littered with yellow cards, red cards, own goals, penalties, and every other kind of self-destruction that a defender is capable of.
