Everton once paid £20m for an England international in a buy-one-and-go deal.
Unfortunately, the player did not live up to the billing at Goodison and eventually left the club in freefall.
However, the player’s time before Everton was truly remarkable and deserves to be praised.
In 2006, Arsenal signed an electrifying teenage winger from Southampton.
He was only 16 at the time, but manager Arsene Wenger felt he had seen enough of him at Southampton to pay a record fee for a teenager: £5m plus a £12m down payment.
Of course, the player was Theo Walcott.
Walcott then got his first call-up to the England squad, and went on to play in their 2006 World Cup campaign. He then spent the next 12 years at the Emirates, and despite a string of injury-plagued seasons, the skilful full-back was able to create so many memorable moments in north London’s red half before things began to take their toll.
In 2018, the player acknowledged that it was time to “let it go” and started looking for new opportunities.
How much did Theo Walcott cost Everton?
Walcott, aged 28, arrived at the club in January. Manager Sam Allardyce had been a long-time admirer of the player and had managed to sell the club to him brilliantly, capitalising on the player’s desire for a fresh challenge.
On the other hand, manager Wenger had little choice but to let Walcott go as he simply couldn’t guarantee him game time, especially in a World Cup year where a place in England’s World Cup squad might have been at stake.
Walcott signed a three and a half-year contract with the Toffees, worth £20m, with the club hoping to revive his somewhat stagnant career. He said at the time:
This has been a difficult time for me, but it has also been an exciting time. I want to get my career back on track and help Everton win trophies like they have in the past. The manager is hungry and that is exactly what I need right now. I have had a few conversations with him and right away I felt the hunger and the desire he had for me.
After a honeymoon period in which Walcott scored a brace in the next match against Leicester, Allardyce left Goodison Park at the end of an 18-month contract and Walcott suffered a series of injuries, both of which had a significant impact on his progress at the club. What was Theo Walcott’s value at the end of the season?
During his time at Goodison Park, Walcott made 85 appearances and scored 11 goals in all competitions. These weren’t the kind of goalscoring figures that inspired a career rebuild or the international call-up he hoped for. However, as previously mentioned, his injury problems were a major hindrance to his time at the club.
Did you know that he missed 11 games between 2018 and 2021 due to injury? That doesn’t sound too bad by itself, but let’s face it. The Premier League is one of the best leagues in the world, and missing a few games, especially if you’re fighting for a place in the starting line-up for both club and national team, can really hurt.
Even worse was the fact that Walcott’s injury in blue caused him to miss 112 days of football, which is a slightly more worrying figure. Wherever he could have taken part in pre-season training, he did not. This resulted in a decrease in game time and ultimately a loan move to Southampton in the summer of 2020.
Walcott then moved to St. Mary’s on a free transfer after a loan spell with his old club. When he finally left the club in 2023, he had a fine career but little to show for his time on Merseyside. In fact, it might have been a mistake to bring him in in the first place. A player of Walcott’s age will never command a high transfer price.
In fact, his transfer value dropped from £20m at Everton to a paltry £1m at the end of the season after leaving a bottom-dwelling Southampton.
Leave a Reply