After months of speculation and frankly everyone, including myself, resigned to the fact he was leaving, Luke Garbutt has performed a dramatic U-turn and committed his future to Everton by signing a new five-year deal.
Plenty of clubs were sniffing round the 22 year old, but it’s come as something of a relief that he has resisted the temptation to “do a Gosling” and leave just when he was starting to make an impression at Goodison.
It’s still possible that Garbutt may still find himself playing away from Everton next season, and to be honest, a temporary loan move to another Premier League club is something I would advocate for his development. Bournemouth have been linked, but that interest appears to have cooled following their signing of Tyrone Mings. Hopefully, we can work something out with someone, because a lack of European football next season means opportunities are going to be limited. That is, providing Leighton Baines returns fit and healthy to pre-season following his operation, and Bryan Oviedo can put his injury problems behind him as well.
From that, hopefully he can go into the 2016/17 season ready to compete for a first team place at Goodison. He’ll be 23. There seems to be a mentality in English football that, if you haven’t cemented a place in the first team by the age of 20-21, you need to move on. Each situation is different though; some players develop later than others. Look at Seamus Coleman as a prime example. Sometimes, the path is blocked for the short-term by an established player, which is what we have here with Garbutt.
Leighton Baines can’t go on forever though, and Garbutt seems to be the ideal long-term replacement. That’s why this five-year deal is good for all parties involved. Garbutt knows he’s at a club that has a proven track record of developing players, even into their low-to-mid 20s, a la Coleman, and that he will eventually get his chance. For the club and the manager, they are safe in the knowledge they have a ready-made, long-term replacement for Baines. With the quotas for home-grown players also likely to become increasingly strict over the next few seasons, tying Garbutt down makes sense from this point of view as well.
And for the fans, it’s always pleasing to see players from the academy eventually make the grade in the first team. Although he was plucked from Leeds as a 16-year-old, prompting Ken Bates to brand us a “two-bob club”, a lot of work has been done on his development at Finch Farm. To see us reap the rewards of that would be immensely satisfying, especially in an era when teams are spending inordinate amounts of money on young players.
This deal makes perfect sense of everyone.
