Ross Barkley and His Boyhood Club

Right, to start today’s post I want to give everyone a little insight into the hell I’ve had to put up with these last couple of days. A spider has been crawling out from under the skirting board of my house and then fucking off back under there whenever I get close to the bastard! I’m getting mugged off by a spider!

Just thought I’d share that with you all...anyways back to the football

There’s been growing speculation over the last couple of months that Ross Barkley will be leaving Everton. The 23 year old was a product of The Toffee’s youth academy and has gone from strength to strength since his Premier League debut back in 2011. Everton boss Ronald Koeman has even come out and said that he “100% expects” the young Evertonian to leave the club.

Should Ross Barkley Leave Everton?

It’s been reported that the star man has rejected a £100,000 a week contract at Everton which begs me to ask the question ‘what the fuck are you playing at Ross?’ It’s your boyhood club! I would take £1,000 a week if I got the opportunity to be a part of Sheffield Wednesday.

Everton are a club that’s currently on the up. They’ve got a top class manager who's building a top class squad that will play in front of a top class support...and Ross Barkley could be the focal point of their journey! He could be Everton’s answer to Steven Gerrard; one of their own who will drag them to success...but instead he’d rather screw over his own club for a bit more money...

Everton have currently priced Barkley up at £50 million. Personally I’d question whether he’s worth it but nowadays the market is so fucked Carlton Cole could break the transfer record at any moment. Some top English clubs are interested like Spurs as a bench warmer and Chelsea to fulfil their “homegrown quota.”

~ Side note: Why would Chelsea sell Chalobah £4.8m and then buy Barkley for £50m? What’s the point in even bringing youth players up at Chelsea?...that’s a post for another day ~

He can produce some moments of pure magic!

A possible replacement for Barkley if he was to go would be Icelandic midfield maestro, Gylfi Sigurdsson. Swansea have also put a £50m price tag on this lads head, most likely to scare off potential buyers...it’s not working. As both lads are priced the same and play similar roles I thought it best to compare the two and see how they fare.

~ Side note: I’ve written a more in depth piece on Sigurdsson and if you would like to read that then feel free to read that here ~

Creatively Ross Barkley created more goalscoring chances last season despite Sigurdsson playing more games. Despite this, the Swansea man has a better chance-to-assist rate as 16% of the chances he creates result in a goal (compared to Barkley’s 10%). This would suggest that either Siggy creates better quality chances that Barkley or that Swansea had better strikers...I’ll let you decide that one.

Gylfi also scored almost double the league goals that Barkley did as well as having a better chance conversion percentage. Sigurdsson scored 8% of the chances he received last season which, admittedly, isn’t a great return but is still better than Barkley who scored 6% of his chances.

The stat's show that Sigurdsson currently has the upper hand on Barkley.

Now to be fair the stats are quite near and with Barkley only being 23, he still has time to step up and possibly overtake his Icelandic counterpart. But from what I’ve seen of the England international he hasn’t really kicked on from that lad who burst onto the scene all those years ago. He has to step up next year whether that be with Everton or whoever else.

Speaking of which I saw an article today saying that Spurs want to sign the England international and convert him into a holding midfielder. Two words: Wont. Work. It’d be like when Man United played Rooney there; Barkley will just play simple crab passes and won’t contribute defensively or offensively. Plus Tottenham have better options there anyway.

My advice to Barkley would be to stay at Everton! Like I said before they are a club on the up. They’re getting huge investment and aren’t just throwing cash at average players. They’re building for the future and Barkley should be fighting tooth and nail to be a part of that future. On his day Ross is good enough to lead out a top European side and that is exactly what Everton are hoping to become. Fingers crossed he sees sense.

I'd give anything to represent my boyhood club...

All stats, facts and figures were lovingly given to me by the guys at www.WhoScored.com.

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Cheers for reading.