Everton are offered the chance to sign Barcelona's Philippe Coutinho

Everton have been offered the opportunity to sign Philippe Coutinho in the transfer window as the Brazil playmaker looks to revive his career.

The former Liverpool midfielder moved to Barcelona in January 2018 for £146million but the switch to Spain never worked out as Coutinho envisaged and he was loaned out to Bayern Munich in 2019 for a year before returning to Camp Nou.

Barcelona are eager to move him on and his representatives have spoken to Everton about the possibility of him moving to Goodison Park this month but it remains to be seen whether Rafa Benitez will pursue the deal.

Everton are on the brink of confirming a deal to sign for Ukraine left back Vitaly Mykolenko from Dynamo Kiev and Benitez also wants Nathan Paterson from Glasgow Rangers, after missing out on the Scotland international in August.

Benitez, whose side face Brighton on Sunday, has a specific profile of player in mind to reshape Everton's squad. He wants hungry individuals to make things competitive and is confident he will get the targets he wants in before the deadline.

He said: 'My idea, the board has agreed with the principle, is that we bring players that want to be here, especially in January when it is a difficult window. The second one is that they're players that will help the team, give us something different.

'We are looking for players that will come and they will give us something straight away. Sometimes you cannot, then you can talk about foreign players because you have to fix a gap in the team but you can bring players that have some experience in the Premier League.

'They can perform straight away from day one and that is much better. You try to sign what you want but sometimes you can only sign what you can. With the transfer window in January that is not clear and easy because there are too many players playing Champions League or in Europe.

'They don't want to move, you have Covid-19 and not too much money around. What I have is a lot of agents throwing me names, or throwing us names. Everything is in place to move forward but, for me, it is just to concentrate on the game.'