Everton have seen one of their former loanees score a dramatic late equaliser in the Champions League on Wednesday evening.
And the worst part about it is that Everton tried to sign the player in question, but they were priced out of a move.
The loan market has proved a useful option for David Moyes over the summer, with one massive addition, Jack Grealish, landed.
Since making the move to Merseyside, Grealish has been named Player of the Month for August in the Premier League.
Finally playing regular football again, Grealish has been brought to the Hill Dickinson Stadium to help push the Toffees closer to the European spots.
There is one former Everton loanee who is now thriving in the Champions League and even scoring a late equaliser to earn his side a point.
Former Everton loanee scores late Champions League equaliser
Back in 2011, Everton signed a young Eric Dier on loan for the season from Sporting CP’s academy system.
The Englishman joined Everton’s youth setup for the 2011/12 campaign, before he jetted back off to Lisbon to make a go of things at his parent club.
On Wednesday evening, Dier scored a late equalising penalty in AS Monaco’s Champions League clash against Manchester City.
Dier made 14 appearances for Everton’s U21s side, where he mainly played at centre-back, as he has done for most of his career.
Since moving on from Everton, Dier has certainly enjoyed a career across Europe, having played for Tottenham Hotspur, Bayern Munich and now Monaco.
Striving for a spot in England’s World Cup squad, Dier has even added goals to his game at Monaco after sealing a 2-2 draw against Man City through his last-gasp penalty.
Dier admitted he found his time at Everton tough, but this did not stop the Blues from attempting to sign him from Sporting CP.
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Everton were priced out of signing Eric Dier
Speaking to the Liverpool Echo, Alan Stubbs admitted that the Blues were really keen to keep Dier around at Finch Farm.
However, Sporting raised their asking price to over £1m for a player who was still extremely young at the time.
“We wanted to sign Eric and, at one point, thought we were going to get him,” said Stubbs.
“It took us the best part of eight months to get him up to speed but you could see his game coming on 10-fold and that was when we decided we wanted to sign him and we were in negotiations to do it but, at the time, it was going upwards of £1m, which wasn’t where Everton were at the time.”
Everton can boast a strong defence these days, but they may well regret missing out on Dier considering how little the fee turned out to be in hindsight.
Having represented England alongside Jordan Pickford, Dier has turned into a quality defender, who could have proven a valuable asset to the Toffees.
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