This article is part of Football FanCast’s Transfer Focus series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent transfer news…

According to Football Insider, Lewis Gibson is “ready to quit” Everton in search of first-team football.

What’s the word?

The 19-year-old only joined the Toffees back in the summer of 2017 from fellow Premier League side Newcastle, but has predominantly featured for the U23s side.

This season, he has made four appearances all in Premier League 2, and has yet to make a senior appearance under Marco Silva’s reign on Merseyside. Now, Football Insider has claimed the teenager is growing “increasingly frustrated” at being unable to break through into the first-team, and that he is ready to move on from Goodison Park.

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The report adds that with Gibson’s contract with the club coming to an end at the end of the season, Everton could look to cash in on him in January, with a possible return to Newcastle being mooted.

Open your eyes

Having lost Kurt Zouma back to Chelsea, Everton’s lack of significant depth at centre-back has been exposed this season. Former Barcelona man, Yerry Mina, has had niggling injury problems that have plagued his time on Merseyside, and it was perplexing to see Silva fail to bring in adequate cover in the summer transfer window.

The Portuguese boss even admitted prior to the Premier League clash against Tottenham, that the dearth of options has been an issue.

“Our solutions at centre-back are not a big number, you have to take care of them three (Mina, Michael Keane and Mason Holgate) and we did that.”

In Gibson, they have got someone who has featured prominently in his time with the U23s, playing 32 times at Premier League 2 level, but has surprisingly not been given a real chance in the first-team. When your side only has three genuine options to play at centre-back, surely you would be handing an opportunity to some of your younger prospects to shine?

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Instead, Silva appears to be ignoring the obvious, and his reluctance to address the situation could see an exit that they could eventually live to regret. But, quite crucially, it’s still not too late to change the course of where this is headed, and if the Toffees manager can just open his eyes, then they could make the most out of Gibson’s potential.