Marcus Rashford has emerged as a target for Everton – and there is one part of his arsenal that may increase his appeal to Toffees recruitment officials.

Everton currently lack bite in the final third, with Thierno Barry having huge pressure on him to deliver after being left as the club’s only recognised striker.

Everton have only scored eight league goals so far this term, which is a disappointing return. Barry has three of those, but he has missed 11 big chances so far, which isn’t good.

Links to Rashford are certainly intriguing. Seemingly, his time at United is coming to an end, and Everton are said to be in talks with United over a possible January move.

He’s been around a long time now and we all know what he’s about, but one trait of his could see Everton push harder to sign him.

Marcus Rashford’s free-kick potential will surely appeal to Everton

Of course, Everton will just want to increase their rate of scoring and won’t really care too much about how the goals go in.

But set-pieces are a huge part of the game now, and teams usually get a couple of chances to score directly from free-kick scenarios. Unfortunately, though, Everton are just not very good when these opportunities arise. Certainly not recently anyway.

Remarkably, Everton have not actually scored from a direct free-kick since the one Ashley Young converted against Wolves back in May 2024.

Despite having some really good strikers of the ball, such as James Garner and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Everton tend not to be any kind of threat from shooting positions – but Rashford could raise that threat level if he came in.

Last season, Rashford scored two free-kicks for Barcelona. His first came against Real Madrid at Camp Nou. It was just outside the penalty area, and the England international gave Thibaut Courtois the eyes and fired his shot into the far corner, on the Belgian’s side.

He also scored one against FC Copenhagen in the Champions League, finding the bottom left corner from the left side of the penalty area.

Rashford has scored seven direct free-kicks in his career to date, which is pretty decent going – and his one against Chelsea in the Carabao Cup for Manchester United a few years ago was arguably his greatest. And it left Jack Grealish stunned.

Rashford used the knuckleball technique and smashed the ball into the top corner from all of 35 yards out. Grealish took to social media and said, ‘I think this is the best free kick I’ve ever seen’.

Everton need to sign a goalscorer in January and Rashford has scored 89 in the Premier League to date. That is perhaps the biggest selling point for Everton in terms of signing him. But that free-kick ability is definitely something that would be nice to have as well.

It is so valuable to have a player with the ability to produce something special from distance and Rashford has shown he has that in his locker.