Everton can strike gold on “unsung hero” who’s a £50m star in the making

Bramley Moore awaits, but Everton have already turned the page.

There have been a few hitches in the maiden phase of David Moyes‘ second stint in the Goodison Park dugout, but not all that many.

In actuality, Moyes isn’t all that different to Sean Dyche, both steeped in pragmaticism and resilience and hard graft. Moyes, however, is more nuanced in his ideas, more expansive in his vision. Just peek at West Ham’s recent history.

Dyche did well last season, steering the Toffees away from the Premier League drop zone despite carrying a hefty points deduction, but he’d taken the club as far as he could.

Last summer was the chance to add some inspiration. How’d he do?

Sean Dyche’s final summer transfer window

It was another challenging transfer window for a team looking to put Premier League profit and sustainability problems behind them.

Everton only spent £42m, with just one outfit – intriguingly, Manchester City – paying out less on new signings (about £21m). While the £15m capture of Marseille’s Iliman Ndiaye has gone down as a bona fide success, hailed as a “relentless forward” by analyst Ben Mattinson and the harbinger of most things good from an attacking standpoint this term.

However, loan deals for right wingers Jesper Lindstrom and Jack Harrison, retained, have done little for Everton’s attacking output.

Jake O’Brien has started to earn regular minutes at right-back due to the club’s dearth of fit options, but Tim Iroegbunam’s impact has been negligible in recent months due to injury, albeit after a bright start.

Everton needed to lie low, so to speak, and cash in to balance the books. With The Friedkin Group now settled into their seat, fans can expect a more exciting summer market ahead.

Selling the likes of Lewis Dobbin and Ben Godfrey proved efficient ways to circumvent further financial bother without taking a chunk out of the starting line-up. However, at least one major sale was inevitable, and it came through the departure of Amadou Onana.

Why Everton sold Amadou Onana

In a nutshell, Everton needed to cash in on someone for a pretty last summer, and Aston Villa’s persistence in their bid for Onana ultimately held sway.

Manchester United had thrown leather at Moshiri’s transfer committee in hopes of bringing the talented centre-back over to Old Trafford but had failed to land the knockout punch. Everton wanted £75m, and this was beyond even the Red Devils’ scattergun capacity.

A core member of Belgium’s international set-up, Onana had proven himself a star and signed for Unai Emery’s Villa in a deal worth £50m in July 2024, seeing Everton bank a sizeable profit after paying an already large £33m figure to LOSC Lille in 2022.

Luckily, Everton combatted the sale with the signing of a new version of the midfielder. However, Orel Mangala‘s Merseyside future is in jeopardy after sustaining a season-ending injury in January.

Everton could hit the jackpot on Orel Mangala

Everton felt they had an exciting player in Mangala, one with a modern-tailored skill set that could ferry Dyche’s brand away from the monotonous football that it had become defined by.

He’d been hailed as an “unsung hero” when at Nottingham Forest before by journalist Antonio Mango, but he’s now proving with a second shot in English football that he’s able to thrive at the heart of a thriving outfit.

Dyche hailed him as a “great character” and a “good team player,” and though Mangala’s season is now prematurely complete after injuring his ACL toward the end of January, Moyes might want to consider signing him at the end of the season – for good.

Indeed, Mangala was brought in from Lyon last summer on an initial loan move after previously playing in the Premier League with Forest, part of the bloated influx that followed their promotion from the Championship.

There is a buy option in the contract that Everton could activate at the end of the campaign, but whether TFG will want to activate the £30m clause remains to be seen.

His ball-playing capacity kind of ran counter to Dyche’s system, and though Moyes hardly employs the silky-smooth game of Pep Guardiola, he is more open to expansion and could twist his vision accordingly with such a talent in the centre.

The Belgium international is, of course, more than just a one-trick pony. As per Sofascore, the 26-year-old also completed 61% of his dribbles from the middle of the park before being struck down by injury.

FBref even record that Mangala is one of Onana’s most comparable players competing in the English top flight this season, suggesting that Everton have already found their long-term successor to one of the most talented modern midfielders in their recent history.

Onana, Mangala’s Red Devils teammate at international level, has completed 88% of his Premier League passes this term and has won 59% of his duels, which have averaged out to about 5.9 per game.

Back in December, the £50k-per-week talent was even called by writer Ell Bretland to “stay in that starting XI every week,” with such effusions owing to his ability to provide Dyche’s Toffees’ with some fluid consistency that was scarcely on show.

It feels like a no-brainer. Everton should get the deal done, landing a player who can resurrect the spirit of Onana in a Moyes outfit that could raise the level above anything that the outfit has seen in recent years.

After showing such promise over the Dyche-led months of the campaign, fans will be hoping that Everton will decide to activate his purchase clause and keep him on Merseyside over the coming years.

Given that there remains an Onana-shaped hole in Moyes’ first-team, it feels like this is a player who could hold down that fort for the coming period at Bramley Moore, and do so with a flourish.

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