Once a blue… Never mind

The departure of Romelu Lukaku came as no surprise to Evertonians this summer, the Big Belgian moved to Manchester United for £90m earlier in the window, with many believing he would be the only significant departure from Goodison Park this summer. Well we were wrong, Ronald Koeman stated today in his first press conference of the season that he is “100% Certain” that Ross Barkley will leave Everton this summer.

Gutted, right? Actually no. Ross Barkley has always stated that he is here to stay, be it in interviews, or jumping in to the Gwladys Street when speculation about his future was circulating around social media. Ross’s commitment to Everton has never really been brought in to question, until recently it was rumoured that Ross had declined a contract from Everton, believed to be in the region of £115,000.

Ross broke in to the Everton first team a few years back, and if we are all being honest, he hasn’t exactly improved since then. If I’m being honest, its not his lack of development that has bothered me, its his attitude and the way he has been going about this whole new contract. We all know that Everton have never actually been able to compete with the wages that teams like Chelsea and City can offer, but with recent investment from Farhad Moshiri, Everton now can compete with the bigger teams in terms of wages, and in terms of transfers. In my lifetime I have never been more optimistic as an Everton Fan, we have the money to compete, we have a brand new stadium finally in the pipeline, and we have a world class manager who wants to take this club back to the heights of the 80’s, Why a Young Scouse lad, who has been around the club for so many years would want to leave Everton at a time where there is so much optimism and hype around the club is beyond me. What startles me even more is the fact that Ross actually thinks he could start for any of the teams that are linked with him, He is never getting in that Spurs team with Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen, and he simply won’t fit in to Arsenals side either.

Ross has declined a £115,000 a week contract from Everton, and whilst I could see both Spurs and Arsenal offering around the £125,000/£130,000 figure, He surely knows that he would be a bench warmer and his game time will be even more limited then it would be if he was to stay at Everton should he move down South. With the return of Wayne Rooney earlier in the month, I knew it would be great for all sorts of reasons, none more so then improving Ross Barkley. If Ross really wants to go and sit on the bench for Spurs, rather then spearhead our Attack on the Champions League, then he clearly isn’t this massive blue that he makes out to be.

With the signings of Wayne Rooney and Davy Klassen, and the proposed transfer of Swansea Attacking Midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson in the very near future, it is clear that Ronald Koeman has been planning for life without Ross for a while. It will be a shame to see Ross leave and waste his talent that we al know is there sitting on the bench for one of the teams that finished above us, However if he does not want to be apart of this amazing future that we have going forward at the moment then to be quite honest he simply isn’t the Blue that he has had us all believing he is.

Good Luck Ross, but I know for a fact whilst we are reaching heights we have never seen in the Premier League era, he will be devastated that he decided to move away all for an extra £15,000 a week.