Everton can use Richarlison route as Lucas Digne enters ‘new deal’ territory

Royal Blue: Jean-Philippe Gbamin, Seamus Coleman, Fabien Delph, Allan and Richarlison injury update

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In the last two-and-a-bit years Everton have handed out eight new contracts to regular first-team players.

That number is 10 if you count the 12 month extension that was triggered in Jarrad Branthwaite’s deal this summer or the extra year Leighton Baines agreed to last season.

But for the purposes of this discussion, we’ll focus only on the long-term deals.

The eight players to receive those new contracts have been: Jordan Pickford, Tom Davies, Richarlison, Mason Holgate, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Michael Keane and Anthony Gordon.

Those fresh deals have ranged between six and four years adding, on average, around two years onto those players’ previous deals with the club.

Gordon has been the youngest to be rewarded with fresh terms, at 19, while Keane has been the oldest at 27. The average age for a player getting a new deal since September 2018 at Everton has been around 22-and-a-half.

So who’s next?

Keane had crept inside the final two years of the deal he signed in 2017, when he put pen to paper on a new contract but the others have been negotiated, signed and then sealed with at least a little over two years left to run on existing agreements.

In and around the two year mark tends to be when a club will show their hand over new deals.

Keane’s was meant to expire in the summer of 2022 but he’s now committed to Everton until the end of the 2025 season. The same with Gordon.

Looking at the list of other players whose deals end in 2022, they may not be joined by many others in being offered fresh terms.

Everton have the option of a third year in James Rodriguez’s contract, and the player can trigger an extension by playing a certain number of games, so we’ll forget him for now.

But also on the 2022 list are: Gylfi Sigurdsson, Bernard, Fabian Delph, Seamus Coleman, Jonjoe Kenny, Cenk Tosun and Jonas Lossl.

If Carlo Ancelotti has a fully fit and available squad from which to choose, only one of those players could confidently claim to be a starter, at present.

So what about those players with just over two-and-a-half-years left? Those with deals that run out in the summer of 2023?

One name that jumps out is Lucas Digne. The other is Yerry Mina.

Sure, there are new-boys Allan and Abdoulaye Doucoure (Everton have an option to extend his deal) and Tom Davies is there too, but Digne, especially, is the player who stands out on that list.

It’s easy to say ‘player X’ deserves a new deal, and new contracts appear far more straightforward than they are, especially when the recipient trots out the usual line of: ‘It was an easy decision and I signed straight away’.

But no player in the Blues’ squad is currently more deserving of one than the French full-back, who has been excellent since arriving from Barcelona in August 2018.

For an initial £18m, he’s been a seriously good piece of business.

He may be older than the average age of players given new contract by Everton of late but the example of Keane, also 27, shows that the club will reward players in their peak years too.

They would also be protecting themselves. A contract extension strengthens the Blues’ hand if and when rival clubs make offers for Digne.

He spoke last week about ‘missing’ the Champions League and hopes he can return to the competition with Everton.

Digne is a Champions League-calibre player without the platform of any European club competition at the moment.

And so while there has been plenty of, understandable, talk over the need to match the ambition of Richarlison (who has, disconcertingly, given interviews in which he talked about promising Ancelotti one more season) perhaps the same applies to Digne.

But Everton are relaxed about the Brazilian’s situation – why? In part because Richarlison is happy and knows how highly valued he is, but also because, after signing a new deal in December 2019, he is contracted to the club until the summer of 2024.

The ambitious Digne appears happy and knows how highly he is valued so doesn’t it stand to reason that he should be the next in line for a new contract?

It would be more of a surprise if he didn’t get one, put it that way.