E verton midfielder Fabian Delph misses the visit of Crystal Palace as he serves a one-match suspension after his red card at Watford last weekend.
With Andre Gomes (ankle) and Jean-Philippe Gbamin (thigh) still out injured Carlo Ancelotti has only three fit central midfielders in Tom Davies, Morgan Schneiderlin and Gylfi Sigurdsson and they are competing for two places.
Gomes is set to play in a friendly in the lead up to Everton’s match at Arsenal on February 728.
Crystal Palace forward Cenk Tosun, on-loan from Everton, will be ineligible to face his parent club on Saturday, but would have been unavailable anyway with a hamstring injury.
Mamadou Sakho (hamstring) and Jeffrey Schlupp (hip) both remain absent for Roy Hodgson ahead of the trip to Merseyside.
The versatile Martin Kelly will also miss the clash at Everton after suffering a calf injury, but he is not expected to be sidelined for long.
Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti is not in favor of closing the Premier League transfer window after the season gets underway because it makes managing players looking for a move away more difficult.
Premier League clubs agreed on Thursday to move the last day of the close-season transfer window back to the end of August or early September, in line with Europe’s top leagues.
The move was agreed upon so clubs could avoid losing players to European rivals after the window closed when English clubs were barred from recruiting replacements, with the window set to close on Sept 1 this year.
“For my job it’s not good to have this window so open,” Ancelotti told reporters on Friday ahead of Crystal Palace’s league visit.
“For a manager, it’s the best way for the season to start and the window to close. You have to manage players for a month who want to leave. It’s more difficult.”
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