Chris Beesley reckons there are seven leading candidates among the current squad to be the next Everton club captain
Who should be the next Everton captain?
Who should be the next Everton captain?
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Seamus Coleman announcing that his time as an Everton player is coming to an end means that the Blues will need a new club captain, but who should that be?
The last survivor in the squad from David Moyes’ first spell as Everton manager, Coleman has long been a huge presence in the dressing room and leader within the group. It wasn’t always the way for the once shy youngster, plucked from the semi-professional ranks of Sligo Rovers for that now fabled ‘Sixty Grand’ fee that inspired his terrace anthem in January 2009, but as he matured as both a player and a man, Coleman learned to embody all the best traits in what it means to be an Evertonian.
Unlike most professional footballers on Merseyside, the Killybegs native also chose to make his home in the city, and as a result, he always had his finger on the pulse when it came to what the fanbase were thinking and saying, those devoted supporters who fill the streets of Liverpool that prompted Moyes to make his “People’s Club,” declaration when he started upon his own journey with Everton back in 2002.
Following in Coleman’s footsteps will be a tough act to follow and he first made his name as the best Blues right-back since Gary Stevens and a worthy modern-day successor to the likes of Alex Parker and Tommy Wright.
He also came through at a time when top players in his position were experiencing a revolution and expected to also contribute inside the opposition half of the pitch. Although he was a devoted servant and one-club man, predecessor Tony Hibbert never scored in 328 appearances for Everton – a record number for an outfield player – but Coleman found the net 28 times for the Blues, including seven occasions in the 2013/14 season alone, the first under Roberto Martinez.
What also became the Republic of Ireland’s other great trait – bouncing back strongly from a sickening double leg break while on international duty in 2017 following a horror red card challenge by Wales’ Neil Taylor – was his durability. But while Coleman has now played more Premier League games for Everton than anyone else and has pushed his way into the top-10 on the club’s all-time appearance list, his outings in recent seasons have become increasingly infrequent.
Turning 38 on October 11, he appeared 13 times in 2023/24, six last season and is currently on five this term. Therefore, Coleman’s influence, on-the-field at least, has dwindled in recent times with others having to take up the mantle.
So, on to who could next take up the club captaincy with the Blues after Coleman bridged the gap of the final season at Goodison Park and inaugural campaign at Hill Dickinson Stadium. The natural place to start is with current vice-captain James Tarkowski, who through Coleman’s regular absence from the line-up, has become the team’s de facto leader on the pitch.
Given where he plays, at centre-back and his status of often being the most-experienced defender in the line-up, Tarkowski naturally marshals the backline and those around him. Also, in the manner that he plays the game, the Mancunian is reminiscent of one of Moyes’ previous Everton captains, Alan Stubbs, in terms of bravely putting his body on the line on numerous occasions, flinging himself in the way of shots to make crucial blocks and interceptions.
He’s a vocal presence, and as Blues superfan Dr David France told the ECHO last month: “I think James Tarkowski is a great influence at the club. I think the day when he gets too old, and I don’t think that’s now, we’ll miss him.
“He’ll be very difficult to replace. He reminds me of a bouncer, he looks after everyone.
“He’s a warrior. I called him a bouncer, that’s very unfair, he’s a champion, he’s the guy you want in your corner.
“He’ll never let you down. You need that in a team, you need that in any organisation, somebody like that.”
However, while Tarkowski is also durable, missing just six Premier League matches in his four seasons at the club to date, as someone who will turn 34 before the current calendar year is out, he is no spring chicken himself. His form has been up and down this term and like Vitalii Mykolenko, he often looks much better when he has got Jarrad Branthwaite alongside him.
There are also question marks about a tendency to throw his weight about in what is seen as an unnecessary fashion, a trait that Everton’s official statistician Gavin Buckland has repeatedly described on the ECHO’s Royal Blue podcast as “a need to prove that he is the hardest man on the pitch.”
Following the Blues’ 3-0 home win over Nottingham Forest in December, opposition boss Sean Dyche, who was previously Tarkowski’s manager at Burnley and Everton, having signed him for the Clarets from Brentford in 2016, said: “I said to big Tarky just to be clear, and I respect him and like him as a bloke, how he got away with that (an off the ball bump in the back on Dan Ndoye) in the first half, I don’t know what’s going on there.”
Also, given his natural leadership qualities, Moyes could also decide going forward that Tarkowski does not need to wear the armband to come to the fore in that respect. In terms of Everton’s longest-serving players once Coleman leaves the squad, goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and centre-back Michael Keane will take up the mantle having both arrived in 2017 (Idrissa Gueye first arrived in 2016 but had three seasons at Paris Saint-Germain between 2019-22).
Both have been matchday captains in the past – Pickford on 17 occasions in 2022/23 – but while Keane has enjoyed an impressive season this term in terms of his personal form, turning out 32 times so far, like Tarkowski he is now 33 and ultimately when everyone if fit, he probably doesn’t get into Everton’s first 11.
England number one Pickford, who has played over 30 Premier League games in all of his nine seasons with the Blues, and who Coleman himself has tipped to eventually overhaul his own appearance record in the competition, most certainly does.
Although he faces his boyhood club Sunderland this weekend, the team where he started his career before making his £25million switch to Goodison Park in 2017 – on departing Black Cats boss Moyes’ recommendation to Bill Kenwright – the Washington-born player is now Everton through and through, loves playing for the club and has shown great loyalty to them.
As Pickford quipped after the 2-2 draw at Brentford last month: “I’ve got the best chant that Everton fans sing. It takes some doing to get an Everton chant, let me tell you that.”
At 32, age is far less of a concern for a goalkeeper than an outfield player in terms of how much longer he can continue, and given his vocal character, special relationship with Blues supporters and vast international experience – Pickford, who has been capped 82 times for England, a Three Lions record while at the club, is poised next month to go into his third World Cup finals as first choice – he remains a strong contender.
However, there is always something of a question mark with managers over the suitability of having a captain in between the sticks given their detachment from the rest of the team, but then Italy duo Gianpiero Combi (1934) and Dino Zoff (1982) plus Iker Casillas of Spain (2010) and France’s Hugo Lloris (2018) were all World Cup winning skippers who were keepers.
So, those are the time-served veterans who Moyes could pull rank with, but what about a more ‘out of the box’ approach? Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall has been a breath of fresh air since arriving for £25million from Chelsea last August and both on and off the pitch, he seems to ‘get’ what it means to be an Everton player.
A self-proclaimed “scholar of the game,” who immerses himself in other matches when he’s not playing, at 27 he is in senior pro status and arguably at the peak of his powers. Insightful and articulate when expressing his thoughts, the Nottingham-born player described his connection with the supporters when speaking in an interview last November.
Dewsbury-Hall said: “The fanbase is so big and it means so much to the people, which I love because football’s my life and it feels like it’s their life as well. We’re sort of on the same page.
“I see how passionate they are and how much they want to win, and it just resonates with me because that’s how I live my life. I’m not saying that the other clubs weren’t like that, but I just feel like Everton’s on a different level.
“I was speaking with someone the other day and I said: ‘Imagine playing for Everton when you’re pushing for things and trying to win things?’
“It must be like one of the best places to play. So, that’s what I want to get to because that would be an amazing feeling because you see how got they (the fans) are even in the tough times, but imagine when it’s going a bit better.”
With eight goals from midfield this term, he is in contention to be Everton’s Player of the Season in his maiden campaign on Merseyside, but when the gongs are dished out at the club’s awards night this Thursday, you’d imagine he will get pipped to the spot by another captaincy candidate James Garner.
Garner’s performance levels have gone up a couple of levels this season, and he fully deserved both his new contract and first England call-up in March, following his man-of-the-match display on his international debut against Uruguay with a second cap against Japan.
Often dominant in the centre of the park, his versatility has helped the team by Moyes also selecting him at left-back and right-back this term and the 25-year-old is the only player to have started every match in all competitions for Everton this season.
Although Garner isn’t as naturally vocal as the previous contenders, he leads by example, and when the player penned his new deal to commit himself to 2030, Moyes said of him: “He’s taking on more responsibility and we’re now seeing a really important midfielder, with the versatility to play in other positions, as well as someone who is turning into a leader for us.”
The Blues haven’t had a Merseyside-born club captain since the aforementioned Stubbs under Moyes first time around. While Scousers like Dave Watson, Mick Lyons and Brian Labone have all led the team with distinction in the past, Garner could potentially follow in the footsteps of fellow son of Birkenhead, the legendary Dixie Dean, who served as club captain from 1931 until his Goodison Park exit in March 1938.
There are a couple of more wild card options, from arguably Everton’s two most valuable players. Branthwaite has the elegance to become a 21st century T.G. Jones for the Blues if he can stay fit.
When the centre-back enjoyed his breakthrough season in 2023/24, his physicality of power and pace combined with an assuredness on the ball, saw him rated as a potentially generational talent among English centre-backs.
No wonder a couple of bids from Manchester United, the second of which was £45million plus add ons, didn’t come close to tempting Goodison Park chiefs in the summer of 2024, who given the £80million fee that Manchester United paid for Harry Maguire in 2019, the £75million Chelsea paid for Wesley Fofana in 2022 and the £77million Manchester City paid for Josko Gvardiol in 2023, considered Branthwaite to be in the same bracket, especially given the premium for both left-footed defenders and homegrown talent.
A new five-year deal in July last summer was an impressive statement of intent going into Hill Dickinson Stadium, but after an eight-month absence from competitive football due to hamstring injuries, he didn’t return to action until the end of January and made just 10 appearances before the problem flared up again in the latter stages of the first Merseyside Derby at Everton’s new home.
But if Branthwaite can overcome his injury woes, the 6ft 5in colossus has captaincy potential, having skippered Lee Carsley’s England Under-21s in the last-ever international match at Goodison Park on November 21, 2023, as they defeated their Northern Ireland counterparts 3-0.
Finally, there’s another out of the box choice, Iliman Ndiaye. Like with Branthwaite, Moyes could potentially show this star player how important he is to Everton by making him captain – a ploy that understood to have been tried (unsuccessfully) with an 18-year-old Wayne Rooney in the summer of 2004 before he joined Manchester United.
The Senegal international is the magic man in this Blues side and their most exciting flair player but he’s no mere show pony and he always works hard for his team, a trait that ingratiates himself further with Evertonians. Having netted the final goal at Goodison Park and first at Hill Dickinson Stadium, he already enjoys a unique historical double among the club’s annals, perhaps handing him the armband could complete a hat-trick of accolades?
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