Controlled Aggression & Versatility Key to Mason Holgate’s Everton Breakthrough

Watching Premier League teams go through pre-season rituals can be a laborious task, and the amount of real, useful information you can extract is severely limited.

As managers will often stress, the summer exhibition matches are almost solely designed for fitness purposes, with excellent individual showings often serving as misnomers due to the casual nature of the games and, often, the regrettable skill level of the opposition.

But pre-season matches do drop the odd nugget here and there, and one thing you can identify by perusing the squad lists and watching the action is which academy players are on the verge of the first-team. From Manchester City’s Tosin Adarabioyo to Thomas Robson of Sunderland, there are youngsters on the verge, and July becomes their potential portal for success.

Perhaps more than any other, Mason Holgate used the months of July and August to his advantage, cementing himself in his manager’s thoughts and rubber-stamping his graduation to the first-team.

A surprise starter on the opening day of the season against Tottenham Hotspur, the former Barnsley youth product acquitted himself superbly against a UEFA Champions League side and piqued the interest of the wider Everton audience.

The Barnsley Way?

Holgate invites natural, inevitable comparisons with John Stones. They both graduated from the Barnsley youth academy—a stage upon which possession football is preached—and both have shown enough versatility to play in two positions.

There’s also a third name to throw in here when comparing him, as Joe Gomez, of Liverpool and formerly of Charlton Athletic, has similar traits and took a similar route into first-team football.

Holgate played as a centre-back for Barnsley’s youth side but broke into the senior setup at right-back, making just over 20 appearances for the Tykes in League One. His comfort and ease on the ball made it an easy switch to make, and he would roam forward frequently with the ball at his feet.

He has enough agility to ghost past players when required, and this allowed him to play a multi-faceted full-back role. Unlike a player such as Khalid Boulahrouz or Carlos Cuellar, who when switched to the right were given pure defensive briefs, Holgate was still encouraged to beat his man, take the ball in tight spaces high up and deliver crosses.

The insistence on dribbling out of danger and away from pressure we see from Stones has not manifested fully in Holgate’s game, though he rarely punts the ball clear in a panic. He is at the crest of a new wave of possession-happy young English defenders—Stones …

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