Just what can Everton do with Dele Alli, Andre Gomes and Jean-Philippe Gbamin?
Howard Kendall, Colin Harvey and Alan Ball – the most-fabled midfield trio in the club’s history – were dubbed ‘The Holy Trinity’ but the Blues are facing a scenario more akin to football hell than heaven when it comes to offloading three players in that area of the pitch who have become surplus to requirements. Certainly, nobody is going to be commissioning a statue outside Goodison Park of these varying degree of transfer flops.
It’s a dilemma that could have director of football Kevin Thelwell earning his corn to get them off the books ahead of the 2023/24 season and a potentially-expensive issue that could prove the most difficult task of manager Sean Dyche’s first summer in charge. To be fair to Portugal international Gomes, he’s the only one of this untriumphant triumvirate to show anything resembling form when wearing the royal blue jersey but there’s still surely no way back for him now.
Brought in on loan from Barcelona – where readers of Marca had voted him the worst signing of the season – in August 2018, Gomes was already nursing a leg injury when he arrived and didn’t making his Premier League debut for another two-and-a-half months. Once he eventually did get himself fit, he became a regular in compatriot Marco Silva’s Everton side, proving a popular figure both on and off the pitch – famously sharing the love with a charity hug-a-thon – before sealing a permanent £22million deal the following summer, penning the five-year deal that still has another 12 months to run.
READ NEXT: Everton new stadium idea hailed as 'pure class' by Peter Reid
Gomes’ watershed moment with the Blues came on November 3, 2019 when he sustained a serious ankle injury following a horror tackle from Son Heung-min of Tottenham Hotspur which caused him to collide with Serge Aurier. Although the South Korean international was red carded by referee Martin Atkinson – a decision that the FA subsequently overturned – it was little consolation to the Everton midfielder or his club.
Remarkably, Gomes was back playing by February 23 but in truth he never quite looked the same player again. Never the quickest to start with, he seemed to have lost half a yard of pace and his sluggishness – especially out of possession, giving away a number of reckless fouls – made him increasingly look like a liability.
Those same supporters who had initially been charmed by a performer whose style was easy on the eye started to wonder just what he actually brought to the side in terms of tangible contributions. Here was a supposed creative force who totalled just one goal and four assists in 88 Premier League games but couldn’t provide an effective shield in front of his defence either with his clumsy tackling producing 19 yellow cards.
While the helter-skelter of the English game was passing Gomes by, his attributes seemed better suited to the more patient approach of Ligue 1 but despite a decent debut season in France on loan at Lille where his three goals in 27 outings were one more than the two he has managed in 100 appearances in all competitions for Everton, he remains unsure where he’ll be playing his football in 2023/24. In an emotional message to LOSC supporters earlier this week, Gomes admitted: “We don’t know what the future holds, but I want you to know that I am proud to have represented this club and this city!”
Turning 30 next month, Gomes is understood to command a hefty £120,000-a-week salary which could prove difficult for Everton to get off the wage bill. If Lille do want him back next term then they’re likely to want another loan rather than giving the Blues a fee for a player they know represents one of several financial millstones for them and any permanent switch might not come until next year when he becomes a free agent.
But if Gomes represents something of a headache for those within Goodison Park’s corridors of power then Dele Alli is more like a migraine. While he didn’t command a huge fee like the Barca old boy, arriving from Tottenham Hotspur on an initial free transfer on the final day of the 2022 January window – along with Frank Lampard, the manager who signed him – the structure of the deal prevents him from realistically ever resurrecting his Everton career at this stage.
You never get something for nothing from Spurs chairman Daniel Levy, one of the Premier League’s shrewdest negotiators, and as soon as Dele reaches 20 appearances for the Blues – he’s currently on 13 – then the first £10million payment in a package that in theory could eventually be worth up to £40million – kicks in. In truth, the player – who at 27 years of age should be at the peak of his powers – hasn’t demonstrated anything close to the kind of displays he produced for his former employers that prompted the famous CIES Football Observatory in Switzerland to calculate that he was the most-valuable midfielder in the world based on his contemporary transfer value back in 2018.
Dele hasn’t completed 90 minutes in any of his Everton outings with all of them, other than the 5-1 drubbing at Arsenal on the final day of the 2021/22 season after the Blues had secured their top flight status, coming off the bench. Then, rather than providing him with a pick-me-up, the player’s loan to Besiktas proved to be a nightmare with brutal criticism from the Istanbul club’s fans, coach and president.
The latter of which, Ahmet Nur Ceni was this week quoted by beIN Sports as saying: “He was a player we were very excited about when he came. He won’t come back.
“We didn’t get what we expected from him. I hope he recovers as a human.”
Such sentiments sound harsh and show little sympathy to his personal plight but they nevertheless hint at the crux of the matter. This isn’t an issue with ability nor have injuries taken their toll on a once outstanding athlete.
In a conversation caught on camera, Jose Mourinho famously spoke to Dele about the need to demand more from himself to be a player striving for consistency rather than just moments of brilliance but sadly he appears to have been unable to heed such warnings from one of the game’s must-successful managers. The way Dyche operates, there wouldn’t be a role for him within the team anyway so when you combine that with the constraints of the England international’s contract and his inexplicable downturn in fortunes then he’ll have to start afresh elsewhere but the million dollar question is just who will take him?
In contrast, Jean-Philippe Gbamin’s agent has already proclaimed his agent won’t be returning to Goodison Park. Bernard Collignon told Sport24: “Gbamin still has a year left on his contract with Everton, but the player will not return to the English club.”
How reassuring but that’s something that’s maybe easier said than done. When then Blues director of football Marcel Brands gave the green light to snap up Gbamin for £25million in 2019 – the same summer Everton spent big on the aforementioned Gomes, Moise Kean (£25m) and Alex Iwobi (£28m) – Michael Ebert, the South West region’s Bundesliga reporter for Kicker, Germany’s leading sports magazine spoke to this correspondent about what the Ivory Coast international might offer.
In words that were sincere but now sound like a sick joke, Ebert told the ECHO: “I think he has the kind of attributes that would make him a successful player in English football. He has a strong body and is physical so he should suit that style of play.”
After just one-and-a-half games for Everton, Gbamin picked up a thigh injury that was initially expected to see him sidelined for a couple of months. In October, it was then announced he’d be out until the New Year.
Come January he suffered a further setback with additional surgery ruling him out until the end of the season, then in May he ruptured an Achilles tendon in training which was set to keep him out until November 2020.
As it transpired, Gbamin didn’t actually feature again until he made an 11-minute cameo off the bench against Crystal Palace on April 5, 2021 but he was then back out again with a medial collateral ligament injury and didn’t resurface in the Blues side until November 1 when he looked woefully off the pace against Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux and was hooked at half-time by Rafael Benitez. Since then there has been just 20 further minutes of action for Everton in the shape of a couple of outings off the bench before his subsequent loan spells at CSKA Moscow and Trabzonspor.
Three midfielders, three very different situations but ultimately their collective cases add up to represent the level of profligacy and flawed recruitment that owner Farhad Moshiri referenced when he admitted last summer “we have not always spent significant amounts of money wisely” and has left the Blues with an almighty mess to clear up. As manager Dyche stated after the 1-0 win over Bournemouth that secured Everton’s Premier League survival despite the lowest equivalent points total in their history: “I never thought this was an easy fix because it is not, far from it. There is a massive amount of work to be done.”
READ MORE
