Anthony Gordon: Is Everton youngster the answer to Chelsea's attacking problems?
Chelsea are now prepared to pay up to £60m for Everton forward Anthony Gordon; forward had five shots on target against Nottingham Forest but failed to find the net, so would Chelsea's attacking output be greatly enhanced by his potential arrival?
Tuesday 23 August 2022 14:15, UK
The ball dropped out of the late summer sky and Goodison Park collectively held its breath.
It appeared Joe Worrall had fatally miscalculated the waspish presence of Anthony Gordon when a failed header back to Dean Henderson landed at the Everton youngster's feet.
Everton, hauled level by Demarai Gray just moments earlier, had the chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat but as the Gwladys Street bayed for Gordon to produce a lobbed finish or even round the Nottingham Forest goalkeeper, his execution would let him down as Henderson came rushing out to make a Schmeichel-like starfish save.
It summed up Gordon's afternoon. He created a number of chances for himself in the 1-1 draw on Saturday - the club's first Premier League point of the season - but was unable to find the net. Lampard feels there is a lot to work on but is convinced Gordon has the desire to do so.
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He said: "Anthony is a great professional, he has a great hunger as a young lad. He wants to work on his finishing.
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"Some of it is just pure development - as a young player who gave us so much last year in his output, the goals will just come. But it takes a bit of time sometimes to get that in your game.
"Even for some of the greatest players, to expect them to be plundering goals at 21-22 is not always the norm. There is the occasional exception, No 9s, (Erling) Haaland etc - it is their thing.
"But Anthony has a lot of strings to his bow and the goalscoring one will come."
It ended a week of heavy speculation surrounding Gordon's future, but the reports haven't gone away. Chelsea are now prepared to pay up to £60m for the dynamic 21-year-old.
The curiosity is that on the surface, he would be moving from one club playing without a recognised striker to another.
In the 3-0 defeat against Leeds, Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel played Raheem Sterling and Kai Havertz as split forwards operating down the left and right channels with Mason Mount urged to make penetrative runs through the middle.
The German's vision nearly paid off on a couple of occasions during the first half at Elland Road with the front three combining for Mount to be denied by Illan Meslier while Sterling was thwarted by an offside flag having cut inside onto his right foot for the second time in the opening 45 minutes.
Indeed, parallels can be drawn between Gordon and Sterling early on in his career, when his final end product and ability to stay on his feet was also questioned.
Tuchel prepared his side to face an intense Leeds on Sunday and this always had the look of an early acid test for his team given the nature of their opening two games. It was not one they would pass.
An unconvincing 1-0 away win at Everton was followed up by a frustrating draw with Tottenham which ignited the striker debate. Gordon has learned all about fitting square pegs in round holes as Everton have had to make do without the injured Dominic Calvert-Lewin, and he is a player still to discover his best position.
At his best last season, Gordon's furious energy as a left winger was witnessed in the 2-0 defeat at Liverpool where Trent Alexander-Arnold was given a rough ride.
Lampard and new director of football Kevin Thelwell are working hard to ensure the make-up of the Everton squad is far healthier come the end of the transfer window, but it already feels among supporters that the club are playing catch-up.
Leeds, Fulham, Forest, Brentford and Bournemouth have already got points on the board, and games cannot simply be thrown away. Gordon has only just passed his opening half-century of top-flight games, but the mood around him has already shifted among supporters.
Still one of their own but no longer a kid, the player needs to relish the greater responsibility on his shoulders. With Richarlison no longer around and Calvert-Lewin sidelined, there is certainly space for a new talisman.
Lampard has played a false nine in two of Everton's opening three league games; Salomon Rondon was handed a start in the draw with Forest, but the Everton boss abandoned the use of a focal point within 10 minutes of the second half in preference for a more fluid front three.
Gray, Dwight McNeil and Gordon have been instructed to interchange and take turns as a central prong but the emphasis has been on pressing the opposition. With Alex Iwobi reinvented as a central midfielder in a No 8 position in a 3-4-3 formation, energy behind the initial press has enabled Everton to produce 27 high turnovers so far.
That equates to nine per 90 minutes compared to 7.4 last season when Richarlison was in the side. The use of two additional substitutes is already having an impact on the way Everton - and others - are going about their intensity levels from the off, knowing fresh legs can be introduced more readily.
Chelsea have started in similar fashion, making 32 high turnovers - 10.6 per game compared to 8.1 last term. With Callum Hudson-Odoi seemingly on his way out of Stamford Bridge, Gordon has similar direct attributes that would make him an asset to any top side, especially one targeting young English talent as a central component of their transfer policy.
It has been widely reported that an improved Everton contract has been on the table for a number of weeks that still awaits his signature. Gordon's last deal was signed two years ago and runs until June 2025, and Everton are keen to reward their academy graduate with improved terms to double down on the club's stance the player is not for sale.
Chelsea are a side in transition having spent a league-topping £176.5m on signings, but Tuchel has provided an indirect message to new owner Todd Boehly that more business will be needed in the coming days following the loss at Leeds.
"The transfer period is still open and it gets later and later and we need to focus on what we have and what we can do," Tuchel told reporters in the corridors of Elland Road.
"We give goals away from huge errors too often. It is what it is. This is the squad. My energy goes to the squad we have. We try to make it better, but if we don't, we fight with what we have."
It is perhaps too simplistic to say the heavy reverse highlighted the need for an out-and-out striker yet again.
After all, Leeds were without Patrick Bamford as Rodrigo was used in a more advanced position with Brenden Aaronson nominally playing as a No 10 but popping up pretty much everywhere.
Despite Tuchel's refusal to deem it as a significant factor, that Chelsea were outrun by more than 10km further enhances the argument in favour of Gordon - especially when the departed Timo Werner's greatest attribute was his work rate.
'If only Chelsea had a £100m striker available', has often been said in these opening three weeks in reference to Romelu Lukaku, but Werner's true value to Chelsea is perhaps only now being fully appreciated.
As for Gordon, Evertonians will believe for now his best years are still ahead of him at Goodison Park. The two years left on his current deal, and Richarlison's £60m sale to Tottenham, means Everton are in no rush to cash in again.
While Wesley Fofana was omitted from the Leicester squad against Southampton by Brendan Rodgers amid Chelsea interest, there was no chance of Lampard doing the same with Gordon, whose attitude and commitment to the cause couldn't be faulted.
Virtually everything he tried didn't pay off amid an increasingly fraught environment last Saturday, but it wasn't for the lack of trying.
Gordon was the first Everton player on record since Opta started collecting such data in 2003/04 to have five shots on target in a Premier League game without scoring.
Lampard is keen to help Gordon develop into an efficient goalscoring midfielder - he has just four goals in 52 Premier League games - for as long as he remains at the club.
One of the next phases in Gordon's development will be to improve his finishing. Having been a prolific goalscoring midfielder himself, this is a subject the Everton manager knows plenty about.
As a player, Lampard joined Chelsea at the age of 22 in 2001 and went on to become their record scorer over the course of a glittering 13-year spell with the London club.
Interestingly, however, Lampard is not sure he would have hit the ground running had he moved to Stamford Bridge at a similar age in the modern game.
Lampard said: "At 20 years of age I wouldn't have got into a modern-day Chelsea team with the way I was playing. I would probably have had to go there and find my way into the team.
"I wasn't feeling as confident to rack up big numbers until I was in my low to mid-twenties - 23, 24 and onwards.
"It is a process, and players absolutely can improve on it by working time and time again, recreating situations and positions to get better at it.
"The more they see that works, the more confident they get and the better players they become. We work on it all the time. It is a general thing we work on with attacking players."
In a disappointing result against Forest, there was at least encouragement in how Gordon performed. He didn't hide, even when he showed for the ball at times when a pass could play his team into trouble, as on a couple of occasions in the first half.
Ross Barkley's final noteworthy act in an Everton shirt was to score a winning goal in front of the Gwladys Street, a 1-0 in over Watford in May 2017. His celebrations were muted, having been given an ultimatum over his future by then boss Ronald Koeman.
He would then miss the first half of the next season through injury before completing his move to Chelsea the following January. It is fair to say Barkley hasn't caught fire, with his name not in the conversation for this winter's World Cup in Qatar. Barkley last played for England in October 2019.
Now 28 and surplus to requirements, Barkley has been loaned out to Aston Villa, scored just six league goals for Chelsea and been offered around to clubs. It is a cautionary tale for Gordon, who cannot allow for his own career to be swallowed up by King's Road stockpiling.
In June 2020, Gordon was part of Everton's youngest-ever starting XI in a Premier League Merseyside derby, but by then he had already shown a maturity beyond his age.
At the peak of the pandemic, he moved out of his family home in order not to expose himself to his stepfather Paul's vulnerable immune system, spending lockdown period on an "army camp" with Liverpool personal trainer Callum Webb.
In an interview with Sky Sports, Gordon said: "I wanted to get that edge that could possibly turn me into a Premier League player. I was up early mornings doing two to three sessions a day and it pushed me to my limits."
Gordon has found that edge, and he is now considering whether his own ambitions can be matched by Everton.
But the player has far from outgrown the club. Barkley made 150 league appearances before he headed for west London - almost three times as many games as Gordon, whose goals for the club have largely had a degree of good fortune.
The first of his two strikes against Brighton last season was courtesy of a heavy deflection - as was his winning goal against Manchester United - while the only other time he has netted in the Premier League was against Leeds, with Richarlison's shot ricocheting in off Gordon's heel.
During that interview over two years ago, Gordon revealed he was reading Dr Steve Peters' The Chimp Paradox, which provides a mind management programme that helps elite athletes to conquer their fears and operate with control, focus and confidence.
"It's teaching me that people can have two voices in their heads - the good voice and the bad voice - so it's about how to balance them and deal with that."
Gordon may well be wrestling with a similar dilemma to make the right choice now for his career. But if Chelsea are to offer £60m for a player reluctant to sign a new deal, Everton must also consider what is now best for them.
At the final whistle last Saturday, he applauded those who had stayed behind in the stands but there was no suggestion he was waving goodbye, as Fofana had done during Leicester's 4-2 defeat at Arsenal a fortnight ago.
The ferocity of Forest's fast start to life back on England's top table ignites a fear among fans that this could be the year Everton are squeezed off it.
Keeping hold of Gordon is central to their hopes, but Chelsea's own attacking need could well test the club's stubborn resolve in the final week of the window.
