John Lundstram33

John Lundstram had been developed by Everton from a very early age and signed a full-time scholarship in July 2010.  He started making immediate progress in the U18s and at the end of his first season in the Academy, in June 2011, he signed a 2-year professional contract with Everton.

Lundstram was one of only two England players to make the 22-man tournament select squad after the 2011 European U17 Championships in Serbia. A report at the time claimed that Lundstram was an “influential catalyst in launching attacking moves.”  He would go on to represent England at U18, U19 and U20 level.

In February 2013, he joined Doncaster Rovers on loan. He made his full league debut for the club in a 1–1 draw against Yeovil Town on 23 February 2013. Lundstram went on to make over a dozen appearances for Rovers, becoming a key part of the side that lifted the League One trophy come the end of the season.

His contract at Everton was extended for a further two years in 2013 and on 28 November that year, he joined  Yeovil in the Championship on loan until January 2014, making his debut against Watford in a 3-0 win. He assisted Joe Edwards for the third goal. On 3 December, he scored on his second appearance for the club in a 1–0 win against Blackpool.

His loan at Yeovil was extended until March when he made the switcheto Leyton Orient, where the Everton player would go all the way to a League One playoff final at Wembley that May.  Lundstram came on as a substitute for the second period of extra time with the game against Rotherham tied at 2-2.  In the penalty shootout, he slotted home Orient's second (after former Everton player Kieran Agard had scored the first for Rotherham) but could only watch on as the Yorkshire club won 4-3.    

He joined the senior Everton squad for pre-season training in July 2014 and went to Thailand to play in the friendly against Leicester City but did not really impress in his midfield role.  He would later go out on a season-long loan with Blackpool in the Championship.

However, his temporary side were having a nightmare of a season, and by late December a decision was made to terminate the loan deal and bring Lundstram back to Finch Farm. Now 20, the midfielder had played 17 times for the Championship side in what is his fourth spell out on loan in the two seasons as he sought to build his first-team experience in the lower leagues.

That process continued into the new year with another brief loan spell at Leyton Orient but his Everton future was to end despite considerable promise shown in his earlier years, working his way up through the academy levels.  He was released in June 2015 after his contract expired, having never played competitively for the Toffees' senior team. He subsequently signed for Oxford United in League Two.

Six month later, he spoke to The Guardian about leaving Everton:

“It was the best decision I ever made,”

“When David Moyes was at Everton, I was in the squad and with the first team and doing really well but as soon as he left it just wasn’t the same for me,” says Lundstram without bitterness. “It’s a game of opinions and I wasn’t involved in the first team as much as I’d have liked under Martínez. I was meant to go on a pre-season tour with the first team when I came back from Doncaster and then, a couple of days before that, I got taken off the squad list to go and I was never told why. That knocked my confidence a bit and little things like that set me back a bit. Then I had to go on loan to Yeovil.”

“It wasn’t the right club because we never had the ball,” he says, raising an issue that affects many young players’ development: in three years as a professional at Everton he went to five different clubs on loan and wishes he had been more assertive about his moves. “If I had my time again, I’d have more say in where I went and would say ‘no’ to some things. But I was just trying to please the manager and saying ‘yes, yes, yes’ all the time.”

When his contract expired at Goodison in the summer of 2015, Everton offered him a six-month deal but this time he did say no. “I didn’t feel it was worth wasting any more time, so I just wanted to get out there and start playing first-team football regularly – and not on loan for once. It definitely makes a difference being permanent. You just feel much more part of things.”

Lundstram would eventually find his way to the Premier League within four years of leaving Everton, gaining promotion with Sheffield United. He would score the only goal in the Blades' first victory back in the top flight in August 2019 in a win over Crystal Palace. After 4 years with the Blades, he moved to Glasgow Rangers on a free transfer in July 2021.

FactFile