As Aston Villa circles the versatile midfielder, the Toffees must decide if cashing in on their dynamic engine room star outweighs the risk of a midfield collapse.
Another important summer is upon Everton.
Will we get a right back? Will we get a striker? Will we eventually sign Jack Grealish? All viable questions but, always in the back of Everton fans' heads is: who are we going to have to sell to maybe facilitate such moves?
At the time of writing, I would say Everton have four sellable options (excluding Jarrad Branthwaite due to his injury troubles). Jordan Pickford, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Illman Ndiaye and the gentleman that I am going to talk about today…James Garner.
My thoughts on selling James Garner are that of a very simple, absolutely don’t. Garner had the season of his life last year, even got himself into the England squad and had a massive shout of getting to the World Cup and to be fair, he should feel hard done to that he never made the squad.
James Garner has made the centre of midfield his own. He and KDH were the big bright sparks of last year, and to break this up would be catastrophic in my eyes.
Garner’s set pieces (albeit not all the time) can be the most effective part of our attacking prowess. Not only that, his movement off the ball, the constant of taking players away from the play, and the cute passes he can provide to our very run-of-the-mill strikers paid dividends last year.
Not only is he dynamic in the centre of midfield. Garner will literally play where he is told to and will carry this out very well.
He can play either side of the midfield and has played right and left back for a time too. I would go as far as to say Garner could be our best full-back in the squad.
That is a compliment to James but also, a damning statement to the state of our back four at the moment.
Reasons he would leave are very apparent with a team like Aston Villa. Massive club (yes, they really are folks), they have one of the best managers in Europe and, most importantly, have Champions League football to play next season, which is the pinnacle for any player.
Aston Villa are a good team so there is no guarantee James would play every week.
In conclusion, I think it would be disastrous for Everton to let Garner go. I think he has to look at the players who have left for the ‘bigger club’ and haven’t exactly set the world alight….I am looking at you, Amadou Onana!