Everton must strengthen this summer but another key job for Kevin Thelwell will be to repeat a task he pulled off last year.
Sean Dyche’s squad may be misshapen but it is not small - the Blues boss having inherited a collection of players built up by a long list of recent predecessors. For the lack of options upfront, the dressing room is bloated in central midfield.
From the outside, the options available provide cover should Tom Davies reject his contract offer and the club need to capitalise on interest in Amadou Onana in order to fund a wider rebuild. Yet the reality is much different. Dele Alli, Andre Gomes and Jean-Philippe Gbamin return to Finch Farm with uncertain futures, partly due to their substantial wages and partly because of the doubts that led to them being allowed to play elsewhere last season.
Finding a solution to the issues they pose will not be easy. But it is important. And Thelwell did have success in this area last season - not just by finding opportunities for those three, but others too.
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Dyche will have an intriguing return to Everton when he finishes his summer holiday. He has formed conclusions on the players he has dealt with since his appointment and is well aware his squad needs work - and that resources may be limited. But there will be new faces when pre-season begins, some young and some experienced. Of those, he is set to give centre-back Jarrad Branthwaite - whom he has already spoken with - an opportunity to stake a claim for an important role. Academy striker Tom Cannon is also likely to be assessed as a possible first-team option before a decision is made on whether he will be allowed to leave on loan again with Preston North End - where he did well last season - among the clubs interested in his availability.
While both players represent Everton’s future, the decisions of managers-past continue to impact the new regime and Dele, Gomes and Gbamin provide a test. Dele is the most fascinating. Finding a creative influence in the middle would be a significant boost for Dyche and Dele’s early-career form showcased his immense talent. If Dyche could unlock a fraction of that it would transform a side that struggled in the final third last season. To do so would mean finding success where others, from Jose Mourinho to Frank Lampard, have failed. Dele endured a difficult loan spell at Beskitas last season and even experimenting with him would be a costly gamble for a club with a tight budget and an excessive wage bill. Dele is seven appearances from triggering a £10m clause in the deal that brought him to Everton from Tottenham Hotspur.
Dyche has spoken with Dele, who returned to the UK early for treatment to a season-ending hip injury, and said: “I just got a sense that he wants to be back playing football and playing well.” Dyche will make up his own mind on Dele when pre-season returns. Of their initial conversation, and what he hopes to see from the player, he added: “[It was] about his injury, how he saw it. How he saw his time on loan and how he saw what he wants to do. First thing first is get the injury right, you can’t do anything when you’re injured. As regards football. Anything else is down to him. He’s 27, he’s pretty well travelled in the sense of football and the football world and what he has achieved at a young age. Some of it is common sense, do the right things and you know what the right things are.”
Gomes and Gbamin will struggle to convince Dyche to include them within his plans but a solution to both of their situations may at least be easier to find than it was last year. Gomes, whose last action for Everton was to be replaced by Dele at half-time with Everton losing what would become the survival-clinching win over Crystal Palace, departed for Lille on the final day of the summer transfer window. He enjoyed a positive season with the French club and found form that might fuel interest in him this summer.
Meanwhile the agent of Gbamin, whose latest loan spell took him to Trabzonspor, has been outspoken over recent months. Earlier this year, Bernard Collignon revealed his player plans to leave this summer. He said: “We will have to find another project for him.” Germany and Russia have been touted as potential destinations.
Everton being open to the departures of players - or the players wanting to leave - are not the only factors, though. In each case a new club would have to be willing to take on a player, at least part of their wages and potentially a transfer fee - all three have a year left on their deals. Thelwell was able to find destinations for them last season and two other moves offer evidence he is capable of doing so again.
Another out-of-favour midfielder, Allan, remained with Everton for almost a month after the end of the British transfer window but a suitor was still found for his services - the Blues securing a fee from Qatar side Al Wahda in late September. And then in December the club struck a deal with Salomon Rondon to terminate his contract, freeing up wages ahead of the January transfer window.
That was part of efforts to improve the Everton attack that later failed to deliver, but Rondon's exit was a show of pragmatism that was welcomed at the time - even if there later ended up being a sense that Dyche may have been able to have found a use for the Venezuela international.
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