'May as well have not been on the pitch' - O'Keeffe blasts EFC ace who lost possession 12 times

Greg O’Keeffe has been speaking on the All Together Now podcast about how poor Andre Gomes was for Everton on Saturday.

The Toffees slumped to a second league defeat under Frank Lampard, with both of them coming away from home, but it appears that the manager had his hands tied slightly, with midfielder Allan picking up a yellow card early on in the first half, which saw him hooked at half time for Gomes.

It was definitely an afternoon to forget for the Portuguese international, who failed to dribble with the ball forward more than five yards in the entirety of the game, which will be a massive concern for Lampard and Evertonians. He also lost possession 12 times.

O’Keeffe slammed Gomes for his dreadful performance, saying: “I was asking him [Lampard] after the game about Allan, who obviously went off. He got himself in that situation by getting a stupid booking and he was a walking red card and they had to take him off.

“He was saying how much that affected the game and how much he missed him, which is probably a backhanded way of saying ‘and by the way, I had to bring on Gomes’ – as you [co-host Tony Scott] and I have said, [he] may as well have not been on the pitch. One the worst performances I’ve seen from him.”

TIF Thoughts on Andre Gomes…

Considering Gomes arrived as an international footballer that had turned out plenty of times for Barcelona and cost Everton £22.5m, it would be fair to say that he’s underperformed, with just two goals and seven assists coming from his 96 appearances for the club.

Gomes is now nowhere near a regular for the Toffees, having started just 22 games since the beginning of last season in the Premier League, so Everton could likely do a lot worse than cutting their losses and shipping