Everton added a handful of English players to their ranks during the summer transfer window.
However, one such player with whom the Toffees were linked that we feel they were better off not signing is Morgan Gibbs-White.
In July, it was reported that the Merseyside club had a £25m bid rejected by Wolves for the midfielder. A month later, the 22-year-old joined Nottingham Forest in a deal worth a reported £42.5m, significantly more than what the Toffees had offered to the Molineux outfit.
Since becoming a new member of Steve Cooper’s squad and one of the 22 players that the Midlands club signed over the summer, the former Wolves figure has shown why Everton were right to not shell out the sort of money which took him to the City Ground.
In five league appearances for his new club, the 22-year-old has only been able to register five attempts at goal, with just one of those on target. Also, out of the 160 passes that he has attempted, only 108 have been accurate, leaving him with one of the lowest pass completion percentages at Forest (67.5%).
His overall performances have earned him a rather underwhelming early season rating of 6.33/10 from WhoScored, which would make him one of the lowest-rated Everton players to have started more than one league match in the current campaign.
Taking all this into account, it’s hard to see how Gibbs-White would have been an effective addition to Everton’s squad.
Previously slammed by former Premier League referee Keith Hackett for an “unacceptable” challenge on then-Brighton defender Dan Burn in May 2021, it’s safe to say that the Toffees and Frank Lampard saved quite a lot of money by not doing more to sign the 22-year-old.
While it still may be early into the season and his career at Forest, we feel that the Merseyside club were right to not sign the player, especially if it would have cost them an eye-watering £42.5m.
For context, Everton paid not much more than that on three midfielders this summer in Amadou Onana, Idrissa Gueye and James Garner. The former two rank among their top six WhoScored performers with ratings of 6.85 and 6.9 respectively, showing the wisdom of not splurging on the much lower-rated Gibbs-White.
