Why Brian Sorensen added Arsenal loanee Laila Harbert to his Everton squad | OneFootball

Laila Harbert (Everton FC)

Brian Sorensen has been working on adding to his squad this transfer window – most recently adding loan signing Laila Harbert from Arsenal.

The 19-year-old spent the second half of 2025 on loan at Portland Thorns in the NWSL.

And now the midfielder will spend the rest of the season at Goodison Park.

On Friday, her new head coach Sorensen described her as “a player we identified can come in and help us, and [she is] good on the ball, calm. [She just needs] a platform to perform on and hopefully we can help her give her that.”

And he told SheKicks.net that he had been impressed with what she had shown thus far in training.

“It took a little while to get all the documents, papers and so on, so only in one training so far.

“But it was good. She looked bright on the ball and good energy and yeah, looking forward to see much more of her, of course.”

“Chop and change” – the theme of Everton’s season

Everton host Aston Villa on Sunday; in the reverse fixture back in November, it was a 3-3 draw, but Sorensen isn’t sure that scoreline will be repeated this weekend.

Still, there are plenty of learnings the Toffees can take from it, he added.

“It depends a bit on what’s Villa’s approach, how do they also go at us that way. So it’s where are the spaces that we can hurt them?

“We had probably one of our best performances offensively in that game in terms of just getting through them quite easily, especially in that first half. Certain things happened. Elise [Stenevik] got injured in the first half, and we had to change the defence out, which has been the theme of the season, I would say, that we have to chop and change, but then they scored two goals, I think, not just because we had to change, but also because of maybe we were a bit unorganised.

“But I think offensively it was one of our best performances and that’s what we need to take into Sunday.”