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Everton’s finish to the summer transfer window was far from ideal, but the thin squad David Moyes has been left with could actually aid one youngster’s bid for the PFA Young Player of the Year award.

Everton were in disarray before Ainsley Maitland-Niles scored a 96th-minute equaliser against Manchester United last weekend. To a degree, that remains the case — but the situation is not beyond repair.

The Toffees are unbeaten after their first three matches of the new Premier League season, having collected five points, so the players are doing their bit on the pitch. At boardroom level, however, it has been widely reported over the past fortnight that everything is not right. A home defeat to Manchester United would have brought back what is commonly known as the ‘Goodison boo’ at the final whistle.

A week earlier, supporters had protested against the possible sale of academy graduate Harrison Armstrong to Nottingham Forest, a reaction that led to a £40 million U-turn from the club’s decision-makers. After that, fans were left to watch Everton offload £100m of attacking quality on transfer deadline day without bringing in any replacements.

It is understandable, then, that Everton supporters are eager to pin their hopes on Armstrong and his potential. And while many may believe he is the youngster with the highest ceiling at the Hill Dickinson Stadium this season, FourFourTwo takes a different view.

Everton’s move for Chelsea academy talent Tyrique George may yet prove to be among the club’s smartest pieces of business in recent years, because the 20-year-old has made an immediate impact this season despite all the outside noise surrounding the club’s off-field problems.

The left-sided winger caught the eye against Manchester United, scoring with an excellent finish late in the game to bring Everton level. It was his first Premier League goal for the club.

But in our view, it is not George’s goalscoring that makes him a potential dark horse for the PFA Young Player of the Year award.

Courtesy of Gradient Sports data, George has been the Premier League’s best ball-carrier so far this season. Granted, the campaign is only three weeks old, but the early indicators are encouraging.

George is performing well above average across a number of areas, including passing, shooting and winning duels, but it is his ball-carrying that truly stands out in the data.

Up to this point in the season, George has completed seven of his nine attempted dribbles, regularly beating his marker in the opening stages of the campaign. That side of his game is particularly reminiscent of the breakthrough made by one of Everton’s team-mates at Aston Villa: Jack Grealish.

Grealish was — and to some extent still is — an elite ball-carrier. Both players are capable of driving play up the pitch, carrying the ball forward for tens of yards at a time. For clubs likely to spend the season in mid-table or lower, relieving pressure by moving the ball a long way from their own goal is a highly valuable trait, especially when it can also be used effectively in attacking situations in the final third.

George is likely to be asked to do a great deal of that this season, not least because Everton’s first-team squad contains only 18 senior players. Chances are going to come for the former Chelsea youngster and, based on the evidence from the opening weeks of the season, he looks ready to take them with both hands.

Everton have left David Moyes with only one recognised striker in his group, Thierno Barry, and he is the sort of centre-forward who depends on service from wide areas as well as runners around him. As he has shown in recent weeks, George can provide the latter from the left, while Brennan Johnson is more than capable of doing so from the opposite flank. It does depend on all three staying fit, but it paints a much brighter picture than the one that existed when the transfer window closed last week.

George was always going to find first-team opportunities hard to come by at Chelsea, despite the cameo role he played at Stamford Bridge before joining the Toffees. The Blues are aiming to challenge for the Premier League title this season, even if only as outside contenders, and the £116m signing of Morgan Rogers gives Chelsea a better chance of success than they would have had by giving George a similarly important role in the squad.

If George can also add consistent end product, as he showed against Manchester United, then there is every chance that, because of the level of exposure he will receive, the influence of working alongside Grealish and the style Everton are likely to adopt, he will be a player everyone is speaking about very highly by the end of the season.