Everton saw a number of players leaving Goodison Park during the summer transfer window. Some of those departed on permanent deals whereas others left on temporary loans.
One Toffees player who joined another club on loan, but who we feel doesn’t and shouldn’t have a future at the Merseyside club, is Jean-Philippe Gbamin.
Everton signed the £75k-per-week midfielder from Mainz three years ago in a deal worth a reported £25m. Since then, the 26-year-old has made just eight appearances for the club across all competitions, meaning that he has cost the Toffees just over £3.1m per appearance for the fee that they shelled out to sign him.
It must be noted that during his time at Goodison Park, the Ivorian – who was once described as a “monster” by trainer Theo Chapelle – has suffered two serious injuries which kept him out of action for a combined total of 538 days throughout his first two seasons as an Everton player.
With four league appearances to his name for Trabzonspor, where he is currently on loan, the midfielder has earned a rather uninspiring performance rating of 6.51/10, making him one of the lowest-rated players at the Turkish club to start more than one league game according to WhoScored.
To put that into perspective, this rating would also put him among some of the lowest-rated Everton players in Frank Lampard’s squad by the same metric.
Taking all this into account, it’s safe to say that spending £25m to sign the player has been an investment which hasn’t paid off for the Merseyside club.
The club appear to have already replaced Gbamin by signing the likes of James Garner and Amadou Onana this summer, which suggests that the Toffees’ Ivorian outcast isn’t likely to get much game-time at Goodison in the future unless things drastically change over the next few months.
Frankly, given the vast wages he has been taking home during his time at Everton, Lampard would be best served to simply ditch the 27-year-old for good when the opportunity arises in the transfer market.
