Everton midfielder was forced to retire after injury hell and leaked row with fans

Fabian Delph signed for Everton from Manchester City on July 15, 2019 but his time at Goodison Park was plagued by injury problems

On this day in 2019 Everton signed Fabian Delph, but five years on as Amadou Onana closes in on a £50million transfer to Aston Villa, the Blues are arguably still looking to replace him. Having just lost Idrissa Gueye, whose first spell at Goodison Park had ended with a £30million switch to petrodollar-fuelled Paris Saint-Germain where the Senegalese international was expected to be the ‘water carrier’ for the likes of Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Neymar, Everton were in need of a new on-the-pitch minder in their engine room who could protect the back four and Delph appeared to fit the bill nicely.

A couple of months younger than Gueye but picked up for less than a third of the price (£8.5million) from Manchester City with whom he had just won a second consecutive Premier League title, having previously turned out for Leeds United and Aston Villa, Delph, who had been capped 20 times for England, looked like he could be an ideal fit. The plain-speaking Yorkshireman from Bradford had also famously been caught on camera delivering his “Basics of football” speech to Pep Guardiola’s dressing room after a derby defeat and was seen as the kind of leader needed for a Marco Silva side requiring more backbone given that they had never once come from behind to win a Premier League game.

Deployed as the ‘carrilero’, shuttling between the lateral areas of the pitch that link defence and midfield while supporting the team through those two phases of play, the early signs were promising for Delph and despite the Blues having Dutchman Marcel Brands as director of football, chairman Bill Kenwright was happy to have his own role in the negotiations that brought the player from the Etihad Stadium played up. Unfortunately, something else that quickly started playing up were Delph’s nagging fitness problems.

He’d already missed Everton’s first three fixtures of the season with a calf injury and after a run in the side of just five games, muscle problems kicked in. By the time he had recovered from that problem, Silva had been sacked with the Blues in the bottom three.

Another defensive midfielder Lee Carsley once quipped that the Blues had to break their transfer record and shell out £15million on Marouane Fellaini replace him and it was perhaps telling that Goodison Park chiefs brought back Gueye plus Belgian prospect Amadou Onana for £33.5million to fill the void in the engine room. At a time when we’ve just seen Euro 2024 close, a tournament where several golden oldies who Delph is younger than figure prominently such as Croatia’s Luka Modric and Spain’s Jesus Navas (both 38) while 39-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo wasn’t even Portugal’s most-senior player alongside 41-year-old Pepe, Delph’s relatively early finish becomes even more lamentable.

For Everton though, as Onana heads for the exit door and towards Villa Park, there is yet another opening in the centre of the park. It’s understood that there was interest from the Blues in another Manchester City England international midfielder from the White Rose county, Kalvin Phillips, earlier this summer so perhaps he might fare a bit better?

Sean Dyche is known to be a fan of the 28-year-old whose £42million move to the Etihad Stadium has proven to be a nightmare. Director of football Kevin Thelwell has made clear that a sustainable football model has to be built on astute trading, in and out of the club and maybe rather than being a case of ‘once bitten, twice shy’, the chance to revive Phillips’ career at a time when his stock is low could, unlike Delph, prove a prudent move if the player is given the support he needs to get back on track.