'At risk' - Kevin Thelwell makes Jarrad Branthwaite transfer admission with Everton's stance confirmed

Everton’s director of football Kevin Thelwell opened up on the transfer situation of Jarrad Branthwaite in a rare interview.

The director, who has been a huge backer of Sean Dyche as manager, was quizzed on a variety of subjects from BBC Radio Merseyside’s Guilia Bould. Branthwaite was the subject of multiple bids from Manchester United during the summer, ranging from as low as £35m to £55m as the club stood firm on their valuation of around £75m-80m.

A stellar campaign on his return from a PSV Eindhoven loan, Branthwaite quickly became a key player for the Toffees and emerged as one of the best youngsters in his position. Therefore, he was one player that fans thought could exit to help raise funds due to their financial issues. Instead, Amadou Onana left for £50m to Aston Villa as the club side-stepped PSR issues with sales of Lewis Dobbin and Ben Godfrey.

Having undergone minor surgery in the summer, he is yet to feature this season but Dyche revealed that he will feature for the U21 side having returned to training on the grass with the group last week. His return will be a huge boost as he played 35 times last season and formed a formidable partnership with James Tarkowski.

Speaking to the BBC, Thelwell explained the situation and revealed how much he is valued as a player and how close he was to exiting this summer. “Without question, Jarrad was at risk throughout the whole of the window, certainly before the financial year as people thought we had to do business to complete our PSR problem and certainly afterwards when people were in buy mode in the final part of the window.

“It was always our plan for Jarrad to stay, that was always a conversation we had with him and the people who represented him but we understood that if we wanted him to stay then we needed to give something else up in the marketplace as everyone has seen the player who went was Amadou Onana, as well as others.

“Our situation of such is we can’t have a perfect picture unfortunately. If we want to try and keep someone like Jarrad we have to try and do something else to make sure that we resolve our financial problem. We’re still in a very difficult situation, we’re hopeful when that ownership situation is resolved then that’ll give us a much stronger position from a financial perspective.”