Everton manager Sean Dyche has been talking through his reasons to name Jarrad Branthwaite among the substitutes at Southampton
Everton manager Sean Dyche has explained his decision not to hand Jarrad Branthwaite a recall to the starting line-up for his side’s 1-0 defeat at St Mary’s. Everton’s most valuable player, who was the breakthrough star of last season, has started just one game so far this term and his outings against Fulham and Southampton have been restricted to a couple of late cameos off the bench.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference to preview the trip to West Ham United on Saturday, the Blues boss said: “You can’t explain every single detail about every single injury, but some injuries are a lot more delicate than others, they have to be really careful. If that approach goes too far, in a split second you can affect someone for three or four weeks.
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“Unfortunately, we’ve had a few of those, where they’ve been coming back from semi-serious injuries – not career threatening but semi-serious, like Jarrad’s one was. It starts as a very simple situation with a minor operation and then it leads to a secondary phase and then a third phase of that injury, then he gets fit and then he gets re-injured.
“That’s the Jarrad story. There’s no lack of thirst to get these players fit, I can assure you, because that’s what helps us.
“You’ve got to get them fit to actually play. If you put them out there too early, I thought it was a bit early for Jarrad, but the consensus was ‘no, I think he’s right to go and play,’ and then two days later he got injured again.
“So, I’m not saying I’m right, but I just thought it was a bit too quick. So, we had to be careful, got him back again, because if not, you go through that period again where they play a few, get injured, play a few, get injured, we’re trying to push that away because we’ve had so many injuries.”
Returning from a loan spell at PSV Eindhoven in 2022/23, Branthwaite went on to make 35 Premier League appearances for Everton last season and won his first England cap against Bosnia and Herzegovina at St James’ Park on June 3. However, Dyche insisted the player would have to bide his time and said: “He’s had one season in the Premier League. Don’t get me wrong, one very, very good season but it’s still only one season in the Premier League.
“He’s got a lot of learning to go and a lot of developing to go in my opinion. Fitness is a big part of that to physically be out there.
“He was out quite a long time. He came back in and got re-injured, so we didn’t want that of course.
“In the bit in between, we’d won games. In my opinion, we should have won the last one and we didn’t, so it all looks different.
“So if you win that, all of a sudden you’re three wins and three draws from those six and everyone looks at it differently and that’s just the nature of being at Everton Football Club and being the manager. When you’re talking about teams, and we know that he’s a very good player, Jarrad, and that unit did very well last season, the back five if you like.
“There were some changes, but that unit played together a lot, so, we know all that. We want to address every part of the pitch and the key one is still scoring goals, we created enough chances last week to score goals and gave away very, very little in terms of good chances for the opposition.”
During Branthwaite’s absence, understudy Michael Keane has been enjoying a consistent period of form and asked whether it was a case of keeping hold of the shirt for those in the side, Dyche said: “There’s a bit of that but not literally. I’ve always felt when I was playing, I held that in high regard if I was playing well and doing the job, I expected to get a chance to keep playing.
“It’s not always about that. Jarrad’s a very good player, he knows that.
“Keano’s done really well this season and is a very good player, as is Tarky. And Jake’s doing great as well so it’s a tight four there.
“Like I was saying about the centre-forwards, if all four were fit, they all push each other for the shirt. You want that internal competition as well as the external, which is playing the opposition of course.”
