There are only a couple of months to go now until the January transfer window opens, and the Toffees could be busy. And a new report has suggested the Toffees have had eyes on Rayan Ait-Nouri recently.

Everton have one of the smallest squads in the Premier League at the moment, after several players were sold on transfer deadline day.

Nathan Patterson, Tim Iroegbunam, Beto and Iliman Ndiaye all departed, with Jack Grealish and Ainsley Maitland-Niles both arriving.

The Friedkin Group have put Everton up for sale, and it remains to be seen if the club changes hands before the next window opens. But if that doesn’t happen, there is still likely to be investment.

Everton need a striker most of all, but other positions will be considered – and left-back Rayan Ait-Nouri could be an option.

Everton have looked at Rayan Ait-Nouri

TEAMtalk have produced a report today about Ait-Nouri’s standing at City. He is struggling for game time there, having made just four appearances for a total of 168 minutes.

Manchester United are said to be keen, following suggestions that the Red Devils attempted to sign him on loan at the end of the summer transfer window.

But Everton are also mentioned in the report. Supposedly, the Toffees have shown interest in the Algeria international, and ‘discussions are already taking place with several interested parties’.

City are open to allowing Ait-Nouri to leave on loan. But with Everton, this would not be possible since Jack Grealish is already on loan from City. Loaning more than one player from the same club is not permitted.

That’s actually a reasonable price – and his signing could be genuinely very exciting.

Rayan Ait-Nouri could finally give Everton attacking threat from full-back

One of the major criticisms of Vitalii Mykolenko has been that he doesn’t contribute enough in the final third. In 167 appearances so far, he scored just four goals and made five assists. The numbers are a far cry from the days of Leighton Baines, that’s for sure.

Mykolenko’s strengths lie more in his defending and Moyes clearly likes him for that.

But the clamour to sign a more attacking full-back won’t go away and the manager could do much worse than Ait-Nouri if he was finally ready to go in a different direction.

While he hasn’t yet scored for City since his 2025 move, he has provided nine assists in 35 games – a far better rate than Mykolenko at Everton. And of course, he had a fantastic spell at Wolves which earned him that move to City. For Wanderers, he scored 12 and assisted 19 in 157 appearances.

That kind of output would massively help Everton, who do not have enough goals or creativity in the team.

It’s stated in the report that City would look to recoup around £30 million if they were to sell Ait-Nouri and that is a brilliant price for a player with his Premier League experience and proven output.

Sure, he might not be as solid as Mykolenko, but what you do get is threat. Perhaps with Jarrad Branthwaite playing next to him, the defensive shortcomings would not be as much of a concern.

Ait-Nouri is too good to be sitting on a bench, so hopefully Everton do get involved and land him to reinvigorate the left-back position.

As Gary O’Neil said during his time at Wolves, ‘the sky is the limit’ for Ait-Nouri (via E&S), and he genuinely does have the potential to make a special signing for Everton.