Alex Iwobi’s contract impasse leaves Everton with an uncomfortable transfer dilemma this summer.
Back on December 23 last year, ahead of the Blues’ first post-World Cup fixture at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Boxing Day, then Everton manager Frank Lampard claimed the club were “very close” in terms of agreements over new deals for Iwobi, Anthony Gordon and Jordan Pickford. Six months on, only the England number one has penned an extension – back on February 24 – with Gordon of course having been sold to Newcastle United for £45million during the January transfer window and Iwobi now about to enter the final 12 months of his contract.
Having turned 27 last month, the Nigerian international could be considered to be at the peak of his powers. He’s just been voted the Everton Players’ Player of the Season by his Goodison Park team-mates and as EFC Statto insightfully pointed out on Twitter, having become the first Blues midfielder since Lee Carsley in 2006/07 to start every Premier League game over a season, his seven assists from open play is the most from an Everton player since Ross Barkley reached the same figure in 2015/16.
Even Iwobi’s most-enthusiastic backer would struggle to claim he’s been an unqualified success on Merseyside since his move from Arsenal in 2019, though. For long periods he struggled not only to find form but a settled position, being shunted around from the flanks to playing off the striker and even wing-back, and it’s a pattern that was repeated last season as he operated centrally under Lampard during the first half and then mostly back on the wing for new boss Sean Dyche.
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While he finally seemed to find something of an epiphany, responding to Lampard and the energy of the Everton crowd in the latter stages of the 2021/22 campaign, the fact remains that for an attack-minded player, there hasn’t been a great amount of tangible end product with Iwobi. The aforementioned assists total is encouraging but in the four seasons he’s been with the Blues, his Premier League goals totals are one, one, two and two.
Even at the Emirates, he only ever topped out with three strikes in a Premier League campaign and for someone primarily operating in the final third of the pitch, those clearly aren’t stellar numbers. In terms of offering fresh terms, the financial landscape at Everton is now very different than it was four years ago when Iwobi arrived.
Back then, the Blues were able to lavish £28million on Iwobi to prise him away from the Gunners, where he’d been for 15 years having first arrived while still at primary school. The big-money move came on deadline day of the summer window as the player himself was on yacht on holiday in Dubai and came after Farhad Moshiri was thwarted in his attempts to make Wilfried Zaha the club’s record signing.
Everton had already brought in Moise Kean for £25million and Jean-Philippe Gbamin for £23million that window but with Moshiri admitting in his apology to fans last summer “we have not always spent significant amounts of money wisely,” Financial Fair Play restrictions are now biting at Goodison with funds understood to be tight. Asmir Begovic has already rejected a new deal with the Blues and will officially exit the club at the end of this month and given the era of increased prudence now required, the scope for committing to dole out Iwobi’s current wages – reputedly around £100,000-a-week – for several more years could prove prohibitive.
If Iwobi doesn’t pen an extension at Everton though, they face the choice of either having to cash in on him this summer or risk losing him for nothing in a year’s time. The player himself was last week quoted as telling Nigerian sports channel Brila FM that he would like to play Champions League football again but “I won’t go to Saudi Arabia.”
With no potential for raising major funds like Wolverhampton Wanderers, who have agreed to sell captain Ruben Neves to Al-Hilal for £47million, there seems little prospect of the Blues being able to get anything close to their money back on the player. If Iwobi does end up going on a Bosman-style free transfer in 2024 though, the club will find themselves in a position in which they have to pay a pretty penny to replace him.
It’s all quite the predicament for Goodison Park chiefs – those that are actually left – and just one of many engulfing the club right now. Perhaps Iwobi’s Evertonian gardener who he revealed before their survival showdown with Bournemouth had kept telling him that they’d stay up, could do with having a word?
