Talented but enigmatic, Onana's rich promise must now be fulfilled elsewhere

In another time and, perhaps, under a different manager, Amadou Onana is the sort of player you could build a team around. Young, talented, already an established international with an evidently high ceiling and a physique made for the Premier League, it’s no surprise that, after his first season in England, he emerged as a potential target for the likes of Arsenal and has now ended up signing for another Champions League side in the form of Aston Villa.

Not that Villa Park is quite the same as the Emirates or even the Allianz Arena, home, of course, of Bayern Munich, another team strongly reported to have been interested in acquiring him before they plumped for Joao Palhinha, but it’s a tangible step forward in the rangy Belgian’s relatively nascent career.

For Everton, a deal that could top £55m even before any sell-on clause is activated is an excellent piece of business at a time when, with the future ownership of the club still up in the air, it still feels as though Sean Dyche and Kevin Thelwell are managing a squad with survival and stability as the over-riding priority, all the while keeping future transfer value and trying to improve the team in mind where possible as well.

Onana was signed from Lille for £33m but, even with the Ligue 1 club taking a 20% chunk of the proceeds of the sale to Villa, it still represents a healthy profit for the Blues that will enable the manager and director of football to make further acquisitions this summer, even though the Friedkin Group’s takeover bid has collapsed.

Just as important: while you would always choose to have someone of his ability at your disposal than not, despite his gifts and stature, Onana himself won’t be a huge miss to Dyche’s team. Indeed, there were times during the second half of last season when he was not a first-choice starter in central midfield and he was, of course, one of those unceremoniously hooked at half-time during that horror show against Chelsea in mid-April.

In what has been a very specific system thus far under Dyche — albeit one that might change to a degree with the arrival of a different profile of forward player in Iliman Ndiaye — Onana didn’t seem to be a natural fit. Furthermore, personality-wise, you got the impression that Amadou was not a “Dyche player”; he didn’t particularly lack effort but his languid style meant he could often fail the “eye test”.

Perhaps that was true for a manager for whom the minimum requirement is maximum effort, especially with the club having its collective back against the wall for so much of the former Burnley boss’s tenure. So Onana's move away and the timing of it just make practical sense.

Things felt different when Onana first arrived as an exciting prospect a week shy of his 20th birthday, with more than a passing resemblance to his compatriot Marouane Fellaini in terms of stature and provenance. David Moyes had reportedly wanted him at West Ham but baulked at the midfielder’s personal terms; Thelwell and Frank Lampard saw big potential, a potentially exciting fit for what they envisaged would be a more enterprising side than had been the case under Rafael Benitez, and a no-lose situation in terms of his sell-on value.

And his debut, when he came off the bench at Villa Park only to see his new team fall 2-0 behind with nine minutes to go, had Evertonians believing they had a new hero on their hands. Raw and unpredictable, it was his giveaway in the middle that led to Emiliano Buendia scoring Villa’s second goal but he quickly atoned with an almost unstoppable driving run that took him to the byline where his centre was bundled into his own net by Lucas Digne.

Those kinds of marauding capers forward did not become a hallmark of his time at Everton, though, even when the Toffees needed the kind of dynamism on the ball that he could clearly provide. Unlike Fellaini, it always felt as though he wanted to hold true to a desire to remain as the holding man or the pivot in the middle, spraying passes around, even though he had so much more in his locker from an attacking perspective.

It so often felt as though Onana was playing within himself; as if he viewed his career as a marathon, not a sprint; that it was better to save himself for bigger things and higher-profile occasions to come. And while his heading in the opposition box improved and he weighed in with a couple of important assists and goals, the less said about his shooting ability the better.

Fair or not, perhaps the lingering image of Onana from his time at Goodison will be that penalty miss against Fulham in the Quarter Finals of the Carabao Cup in December last year. So much ability and, no doubt, power in those boots and yet, when all he needed to do was score to put Everton into the final four, he stroked an overly nonchalant spot-kick into the grateful arms of Bernd Leno.

A kind of reverse “Kevin Brock moment”, it seemed to derail the Blues’ season. Save for the FA Cup replay victory over Crystal Palace a month later, Everton wouldn’t win another match for 3½ months and it took a superb run of five wins from the last eight games of the season to compensate for two separate points deductions and keep the Club in the top flight.

Though they’re of similar age, the prospect for Blues fans of selling Amadou Onana was very different to losing Jarrad Branthwaite, a feeling born not only of their respective importance to the team but also, perhaps, of the two players’ nationalities, their personalities and the way they viewed Everton: one a confident, overtly ambitious foreign national for whom Goodison Park was just a stepping stone towards the very top; the other a more humble Cumbrian lad who arrived at the Club perhaps expecting a gentler career arc and who, in a different era, might have designs on becoming an Everton skipper for the long haul rather than their most saleable asset.

Despite never truly grabbing the hearts of all Blues, though, Onana leaves with our best wishes and his classy farewell video expressed genuine gratitude on his part to Everton for bringing him to the Premier League and for allowing him to make some fond memories of the Grand Old Lady and the Club’s supporters.

He will almost certainly do well under the tutelage of Unai Emery and provide Villa depth in their first foray into the Champions League while, for Everton, his departure relieves any pressing need to cash in on Branthwaite this summer while also freeing up precious funds for further signings in the coming weeks. All in the name of business and, hopefully, forward progress…

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