Calvert-Lewin impasse is doing no one any favours

Along with the crowded pitch and the beaming, bare-chested striker amid the elated throng, the photographs of Dominic Calvert-Lewin wheeling away from goal, arms outstretched with unadulterated joy and relief on his face are indelible images of that dramatic night in May 2022 when his terrific, 85th-minute header completed a remarkable comeback by Everton from 2-0 down to 3-2 up against Crystal Palace and assured the Blues’ place in the Premier League.

That classic “Everton No.9” goal cemented DCL’s place in Toffees folklore and was vindication of his own self-confidence in demanding that iconic number. But his standing at the Club is clouded by uncertainty and mounting frustration as his ninth — and, potentially his last — season approaches.

A big-money move to Newcastle United, one that would have seen exciting young talent Yankuba Minteh come in the opposite direction, collapsed in June, purportedly because Calvert-Lewin could not agree personal terms with the Magpies.

On 1st July, meanwhile, Calvert-Lewin entered the final year of his Everton contract, with the offer of generous new terms gathering dust on the negotiating table and the striker reportedly having told the Club that he currently has no desire to sign a new deal.

It leaves Everton in limbo to a degree and largely at the player’s mercy as the summer transfer window moves into its final month. The Club appear to have put a £35m price tag on his head, one that is, perhaps, as ambitious as the £135,000-a-week salary package that Calvert-Lewin is said to be demanding to stay at Goodison Park.

One or the other will need to blink before the deadline or DCL will see out the final 12 months of his existing deal and, most likely, leave as a free agent at the end of the season. If you were viewing the situation purely through the lens of the £1.5m it took to sign him from Sheffield United in 2016 and the service he has given the Club in between, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

With Everton desperately strapped for cash, however, and facing an uncertain future following two failed takeovers in the last year, losing a player who could command at least £20m in the market even now would be hugely costly and deprive the Club of the leeway and precious means to replace him.

Under normal circumstances, of course, Everton would not have allowed the contract status of a player of Calvert-Lewin’s importance and transfer value to drift to the point that it has, where they risk him leaving for free, but circumstances at Goodison have been anything but normal for many years.

Firstly, of course, there has been the devastating impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Everton’s commercial revenue and Farhad Moshiri’s own ability to keep ploughing money into his Everton project on the one hand, and the austerity imposed on the Club by its new financial reality and the Premier League’s Profitability & Sustainability Rules on the other.

Secondly, Calvert-Lewin himself suffered two years of repeated injury setbacks that restricted him to 30 Premier League starts over his massively disrupted 2021-22 and 2022-23 campaigns. Thanks in large part to Sean Dyche’s insistence last spring that he get properly fit and the Club’s patience and support while he did so, last season he was involved in all but six of Everton’s League games but only scored eight goals either side of a miserable goal drought.

It means that the 27-year-old has found the net fewer times (16, an average of five a year) over the past three seasons than he managed in 2020-21 alone under Carlo Ancelotti. That sub-standard return makes somewhat of a mockery of his reported wage demands and, potentially, Everton’s own valuation.

Which is where the two parties find themselves now where Everton, for the financial reasons outlined above, are in a frustrated and largely impotent position and Calvert-Lewin running out of options if he does, indeed, want to leave Goodison before the deadline.

Newcastle have retained Callum Wilson and signed William Osula from Sheffield United and West Ham, one of the few realistic Premier League destinations left for DCL that would also offer him at least a sideways move, are on the verge of completing a deal for German striker Niclas Füllkrug. Increasingly, it looks as though he will have to see out his current contract and then look elsewhere if there are no takers over the rest of the month.

Calvert-Lewin himself has the imperative to perform well in 2024-25 in order to earn the kind of move he wants next summer which would obviously benefit Everton if he can stay healthy and either score enough goals or play his part in Dyche’s side being successful enough this coming season.

The problem, of course, is that there is mounting disaffection from supporters with the player and a sense — fair or not given that they’re just warm-up games — that he has looked less than enthusiastic and potent in the Blues’ pre-season friendlies thus far. While fans don’t begrudge him the ambition to secure a supposedly better move for what should be the peak years of his career, there is also a feeling that he is holding Everton to ransom to a degree with his wage demands after the Club stood by him through his lengthy struggles with injury and poor form.

Goals and good performances would, of course, change that perception in the coming weeks and it would be sad if Calvert-Lewin’s time with the Toffees fizzled out in an atmosphere of disappointment and ill-will should things go the other way, particularly if it is felt that he blew the chance to secure a hefty transfer fee back in June when the Newcastle deal fell through or a future fee by not perhaps agreeing a shorter-term deal to protect his value to the Club.

Again, he has indelibly written himself into the pages of Everton history, not least with that towering header that sealed victory in the Goodison derby last April, but his legacy stands to be tarnished if things drag to an unsatisfactory conclusion over the next nine months.

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