Scout Report – Diniyar Bilyaletdinov to Everton

With Everton playing serious hardball with Manchester City and getting, quite frankly, a ridiculous amount of money for Joleon Lescott, David Moyes had the rare luxury of having some moolah to spend on new players. Aside from replacing Lescott it looks like the Everton manager has used the 22 million big ones to try to turn his team from Champions League hopefuls into serious contenders.

One position which he has identified as an area that needed to be improved was in the creative department and wasted no time in dipping in the market. So who did he go for? Step forward Everton’s new Russian signing Diniyar Bilyadinov Bilyertadinov Bilyaletdinov… phew, got it eventually…

So what do we know about Diniyar? (We’re on first name terms) Well obviously Sky Sports News didn’t have much to go on when the story broke as they lead the story of his transfer with the fact that, alongside Blackburn’s Zurab Khizanishvili, he has the honour of having the equal longest name of players currently playing in the Premier Division and the second longest name in Premiership history. (See if you can find out/work out who had the longest – no Googling allowed – tip it’s a single name – not double barrelled or Van something) Not exactly helpful when determining whether or not this guy is a decent player and more importantly a decent fantasy football purchase. Thankfully for you Fantasy Football Scout have done some digging and come out with some useful information to help you decide whether or not he’s fantasy gold or a fantasy mold.

Born in Moscow, the 6ft 1in player has won 28 caps for his country and played in every game during last summer’s memorable run to the Euro 2008 semi-finals under Guus Hiddink. He has scored 38 goals in 186 club games for Lokomotiv Moscow, that’s just slightly better than a 1 in 5 return for those who couldn’t work it out, before signing for Everton for a fee believed to be in the region of £8.9 million pounds. Despite being only 24 years of age Bilyaletdinov was the captain of Lokomotiv, leading them to glory by winning the in Russia League and League Cup in 2004 and winning the Russian Supercup in 2005.  An attacking midfielder, with very good close control and dribbling ability, he has been likened to Paul Gascoigne – a player Everton fans should be familiar with. Indeed his favoured position is in the space behind the strikers yet due to his pace and wicked left foot he is often employed on either flank where he can be a major threat. Here’s a little “Irrelevant fact of the day”- tediously it would cost exactly the same amount to get Bilyaletdinov on the back of your Everton shirt as it would Jo, the player with the shortest name in the Premiership, a bargain at £12.

So what about Fantasy football – well he comes on the FPL game at £6.5 million so is rivalling another Everton attacking player, Steven Pienaar, in that price bracket.  The worry is that, until we know what his exact role will be i.e. on the wing or centrally, it’s difficult to honestly say whether you should be rushing out to get him in – he’s only played 1 minute against Wigan so far. What I would say is that it looks likely that he will be putting primarily Pienaar and Osman under pressure and to a lesser extent Mikel Arteta, who is injured at the moment.  One thing’s for sure unless David Moyes comes up with a suitable nickname he’s going to get hacked off with writing his name on the team sheet every week.