Last weekend was a big one for Ishe Samuels-Smith but while it didn’t work out like the teenage prospect would have hoped, those guiding him on the path to becoming a potential Everton first team player of the future believe he will learn from his testing couple of days.
On Saturday, the player who doesn’t turn 17 until June 5, was included in a Premier League matchday squad for the first time having been named by Sean Dyche among his substitutes for Everton’s home game against Fulham. It was the second time Samuels-Smith had been given bench duty with the senior side having also been picked among the subs when Dyche’s predecessor Frank Lampard made 11 changes for the 4-1 Carabao Cup defeat to Bournemouth back in November.
Had the Manchester-born starlet got on that night, at 16 years and 156 days he’d have been the youngest player in the Blues’ history but a cautionary tale surrounds the current record holder, another left-back Thierry Small. Despite his place in the Everton annals, nobody actually got to see him play.
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On January 24, 2021 – with matches still taking place behind closed doors because of coronavirus restrictions – Small came on for the last five minutes of the Blues’ 3-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday in the fourth round of the FA Cup at Goodison Park aged 16 years and 176 days. Perhaps the lad from Solihull started to get too big for his boots though after being chosen by Carlo Ancelotti to replace James Rodriguez?
He would depart Merseyside in August that year having refused to sign a professional contract when he turned 17 with Everton’s then Director of Academy David Unsworth saying: “We made him an unbelievable offer... but when a player doesn’t want to be at your club, it’s very difficult to try and keep him.” Small quit for Premier League rivals Southampton, presumably thinking that his route to the first team could be more direct with the Hampshire outfit – with a tribunal setting his fee after Everton rejected a £1.5million offer – but he is still yet to turn out in the Premier League for the division’s bottom club.
Like at Everton, he has just a solitary FA Cup run-out to his name having started a fourth round tie at home to Coventry City last season before being hooked by Ralph Hasenhuttl at half-time. Since then there have been a couple of loans this term, first going to League Two Port Vale where he failed to command a regular spot with manager Darrell Clarke – who experimented by putting him in an attacking role for a Staffordshire Cup tie against eighth tier Newcastle Town – admitting that: “for various reasons, he hasn’t played the minutes that we would have liked.”
Small has now gone north of the border in his search for top flight football but has played just once for St Mirren since being farmed out to Paisley on the last day of January as Rochdale academy graduate Scott Tanser continues to keep him out of the side. The way his career has hit the buffers since defecting from Goodison Park represents a warning to the likes of Samuels-Smith but while a precocious talent like Small may have been duped into thinking everything was easy because he got too much, too young, sometimes the best lessons come through adversity.
Samuels-Smith got a close up view of Everton’s 3-1 defeat to Fulham from the home dugout and afterwards, Dyche said: “That is part of being a Premier League player, you have to deal with stress, pressure, all of the time. Ishe, the young kid on the bench, I said: ‘It’s a brilliant game for you son because you’ll experience what it really is.’ The good stuff always looks after itself.
“You’ve got a 16-year-old kid looking at the game, going ‘what’s this all about.’ That’s the reality, that’s when your growth really comes, in these times. A good day always looks after itself, or virtually always but when the hard days come, what do you learn from that, how can you correct your performance?
“So that’s the truth of the market we’re in and that’s the truth for the players here, to grow from this, not to go ‘woe is us’ – that gets parked. What about building on it? What about us taking strides forward – like we have been – and correcting it, that’s the challenge now.”
The following day, Samuels-Smith was back in action for Everton Under-21s for the ‘mini derby’ against their Liverpool counterparts at Southport’s Haig Avenue. With Stanley Mills – who was also an unused substitute for the senior side against the Cottagers – firing the Blues ahead early on, they had numerous good chances to increase their lead only to spurn them.
Samuels-Smith had marshalled on of the Reds’ danger men well for 85 minutes but a rash challenge saw him dismissed by referee Aaron Jackson. Manager Paul Tait refused to chastise the youngster though and told the ECHO: “We lost Ishe, and I’m not having a go at him because I thought he was magnificent and he and I thought he and Ben Doak going up against each other were two top young players going toe-to-toe and it was great to watch. He’s 16 and he’ll learn from that bit of lack of discipline or being out of position.”
Left-back has been something of a problem position for Everton of late with Ben Godfrey being hauled off at the break against Manchester United at Old Trafford and then Vitalii Mykolenko struggling in the home loss to Fulham but back at Finch Farm, Samuels-Smith has one of the best mentors he could wish for in the shape of Under-18s coach Leighton Baines, widely-regarded as being the Blues’ best player in the role of modern times. The past few days have proven a steep learning curve for him but hopefully he’ll now be able to grasp much better just what is needed to succeed at the highest level.
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