Everton need reliable striking options and Dele Alli still needs a reset

Dele Alli seems likely to leave Everton for Besiktas at the end of an experiment that didn’t work with a player who remains stuck in a rut.

With nine minutes to play at Villa Park on Saturday afternoon and Everton down by a goal to nil, Frank Lampard made a double substitution. The two players introduced represented what some might consider to be Everton’s impending past and their immediate future.

One of them was the freshly-minted midfielder Amadou Onana, their recent £33m signing from Lille. The other was Dele Alli.

It will come as little surprise to anybody who’s been keeping an eye on the career trajectory of the latter to find out that he didn’t really make an appreciable difference to the final outcome. Villa ended up winning 2-1, with Everton’s goal helpfully scored for them by their former defender Lucas Digne while Dele shambled about trying to be helpful but ultimately unable to influence proceedings to any significant effect.

There’s a reasonable possibility that this will turn out to be the last time we see him in an Everton shirt; it’s not implausible that it’ll be the last time we see him in the Premier League, too. Besiktas seem ready to give him a fresh start away from the Barclays Hothouse in the Turkish Super Lig.

After just one start and a dozen ineffectual appearances from the bench since joining at the back end of the January transfer window, another chance to revive a career that has stuttered to such an extent that the player himself is almost unrecognisable from five years ago.

Spurs should not expect that Dele Alli payment any time soon and Everton are cursed

Although Dele leaving Spurs for Everton at the start of the year was a transfer the player quite evidently needed, it always came with an element of risk attached for the buying club. His goal for Spurs at Wolves a year ago was his first since before the pandemic lockdowns started, and his decline as a player has been nothing if not comprehensively documented.

There was a time when Dele was one of the great hopes of both Spurs and the England national team. Those days appear to now be very firmly in the past and it is telling that Everton seem happy enough with him leaving.

Their only Premier League goal this season so far has been an own goal, their attacking options are limited following the sale of Richarlison to Spurs, an (extremely unsurprising) injury to Dominic Calvert-Lewin, and talk that Anthony Gordon could be set to leave Goodison Park for…