Frank Lampard given Alex Iwobi bonus he never expected at Everton

It’s taken them almost three years but Everton look to be finally getting the best out of Alex Iwobi, even though he’s evolved into a very different kind of player than Blues thought they were getting. From the moment he first through the Goodison Park entrance door, Iwobi suffered from who he wasn’t rather than who he was.

Many excited Evertonians went into transfer deadline day in the summer of 2019, hoping they might be able to snare Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha for a club record fee but a reported offer of £70million plus James McCarthy and Cenk Tosun was not enough to tempt the Eagles to part with their most prized asset and the Ivory Coast international stayed put. Arriving in his place as a late alternative – so late in fact that the player himself had to scramble off a boat in Dubai when he received the call with a deal sheet put through to the Premier League – was Iwobi.

Born in Lagos but raised in Newham in London’s East End from the age of four, Iwobi had been with Arsenal since primary school and it took a fee of an initial £28million, potentially rising to £34million with add-ons, to prise him away from the Gunners. Often deployed as a winger but apparently preferring to operate as a ‘number 10’ in a central support role behind the main striker, here was a player with undoubted attacking tendencies.

Yet in both of his first two seasons on Merseyside, Iwobi finished the campaign with just a solitary Premier League goal to his name. He doubled that tally in 2021/22 thanks to a dramatic late winner at home to Newcastle United in March – coming some nine minutes into 14 minutes of allotted stoppage time after the game had been interrupted by a protester tying himself to a goalpost by his neck – but it has