Dele Alli: Everton midfielder in talks with Besiktas after just seven months at Goodison Park
Dele Alli is desperate for more game time after mostly being used from the bench since joining Everton, with Besiktas being offered the 26-year-old midfielder after making just one start in 13 appearances; Everton are close to completing the transfer of Idrissa Gueye from PSG
Wednesday 17 August 2022 11:08, UK
Everton midfielder Dele Alli is in talks with Besiktas with a view to moving to the Turkish club.
The deal could be a loan or a permanent move depending on how talks progress.
Meanwhile, Everton are close to completing the protracted transfer of Idrissa Gueye from Paris Saint-Germain.
The Merseyside club had already agreed with the Senegal international for him to return to the club he left in 2019 but issues between the player and PSG held the deal up.
Those have now been resolved and Gueye will complete the deal in the next 24 to 48 hours.
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Alli is desperate for more game time after mostly being used from the bench since joining Everton.
Although there was no initial transfer fee when he joined the club in January, Everton would have owed Tottenham anything up to £40m if certain performance bonuses were met.
The first £10m would be due after Alli's 20th Everton appearance. The club would also have to pay Spurs 25 per cent of any money they receive.
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The 26-year-old has made appearances in both Everton's Premier League games so far this season, but only from the substitutes' bench.
Since joining the club on transfer deadline day in January, Alli has made just one start - against Arsenal on the final day of last season - and played just 13 times in total, failing to score.
Alli was praised by Frank Lampard for his impact in the second half during Everton's dramatic 3-2 win over Crystal Palace in May, which preserved the club's Premier League status.
Lampard was asked by Sky Sports earlier this month about using the former Tottenham midfielder more regularly this season - given the absence of striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin and lack of recognised striker as an alternative.
Alli had scored twice during a friendly win over Blackpool and was seen among some fans as someone who could operate as a false nine in Calvert-Lewin's absence.
"I hope he has an important role to play," Lampard said of Alli's season ahead. "He had a great impact for a half against Palace and he was very important in terms of turning the game around, but now we're looking for consistency.
"That means in training, getting into the best condition, and showing himself to be able to start games. We're now in a more stable condition as a club than the intense environment that we were in at the back end of last season.
"Dele is here to help us on a more consistent basis and it's in his hands to show when opportunities come, he can take them. We saw in his performance against Palace what he can do. It's one for me and for him - we're all pulling in the same direction, and I hope he can have a good season for us."
Analysis: Offloading Alli is ruthlessness Lampard must show
Sky Sports football journalist Ben Grounds:
"When Alli joined Everton on a two-and-a-half-year deal back in January, it was hoped he could reignite his stalling career at Goodison Park.
"It had felt for some time that the player needed a fresh break from Spurs, where he had spent seven years of his career.
"Given how his stock had fallen sharply, and Everton's precarious financial situation, it was of little surprise that the potential £40m transfer fee was structured based on performance-related add-ons.
"It was up to Alli to perform, and were he to rekindle those early days at White Hart Lane, such a hefty fee would surely have been justified. That Alli, at the outset of the Mauricio Pochettino era, was a £40m player.
"In the black of night on deadline day, Alli told Sky Sports of Lampard's influence in convincing him to move to Merseyside.
"There is still a player in Dele and a move to Turkey now would feel like a resignation that his best days are behind him.
"Still only 26, the Super Lig has been treated by Premier League clubs as a scrapheap for finished footballers at clubs happy to take their bloated wages and bruised egos.
"A maker of 269 appearances in all competitions for Spurs and scorer of 67 goals, including 51 in the Premier League. The hope was that Lampard could spark something inside him, but given Everton's own problems, it may just have been the right player at the wrong time.
"His career stagnated in north London, but it has fully ground to a halt in Liverpool.
"In more stable times for Everton, thinking back to how James Rodriguez operated in those early performances under Carlo Ancelotti in 2020, Alli could well have thrived.
"Lampard is someone still fighting his own battle for acceptance at this level as a Premier League manager, and he can ill-afford passengers in a side desperate to prove last season's decline was merely circumstantial, and not something that will be repeated in his first full season.
"A winner of back-to-back PFA Young Player of the Year awards, a Champions League final runner-up, but sadly a poster boy now of an England generation that failed to truly fulfil its potential.
"The hope was that a place could be found for someone with such natural ability, but the club would be right to cut their losses on the Alli experiment.
"They arrived at Everton on the same day, so it will be with a heavy heart that Lampard is making one of the first ruthless calls of his Goodison tenure."
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