By Daniel Feliciano
The way this whole Demarai Gray and Everton saga has been handled by both sides has been pathetic, and the latest update makes things worse.
The Jamaica international sealed a move to All-Ittifaq in Saudi Arabia on their deadline day this week, days after a war of words between player and manager Sean Dyche was made public.
Gray wanted to leave for more regular first-team football and Dyche was seemingly willing to let that happen, so long as the club got the right price.
Demarai Gray scored for Jamaica today.
His parting shot on leaving Everton this week was his claim to be ‘match fit’, having not been involved in a single squad after his return from international duty in the summer. Sean Dyche repeatedly cited fitness concerns for his absence https://t.co/NiM3LwxQWA
Because of that Dyche didn’t pick Gray for any of the opening four games of the season, leaving him out of the squad entirely despite being short of quality attacking options.
His reason was always fitness related according to his press conferences, but when Gray left the club he claimed that he was match fit and ready to go for his new side.
But Dyche was adamant he wasn’t fit enough to play and hadn’t been training. Yet last night Gray stepped into the Jamaica starting lineup and scored just after the hour mark to help them to a win over Honduras.
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Whether you think it was the right decision to sell him or not is irrelevant right now, because there is no doubting the fact he could have helped us in those first games.
We didn’t score a single goal in the first three games of the season as we fell to consecutive defeats without Dominic Calvert-Lewin (bar his cameo against Aston Villa), Dwight McNeil and Alex Iwobi for the majority of the time.
Gray didn’t have to start games, but having him as an option would certainly have given us a better chance of finding goals that would have led to points.
But not only have we gone against our word and sold him despite also selling Iwobi to Fulham, but we didn’t make use of him while he was here despite being fit enough to contribute.
Dyche looks stupid and Everton look stupid now because of it, and all we can do is hope it doesn’t come back to bite us later in the campaign.
In other Everton news, star tipped to start for int’l team today despite poor results this season.