Demarai Gray’s future may well be settled, with the winger likely to remain at Everton.
According to the Daily Mail, Everton would like to keep Demarai Gray at the club this summer, despite the Toffees needing to make sales and interest in the player from Fulham, West Ham United, and Crystal Palace.
Gray looked destined to depart this summer, with Sean Dyche having already deemed the attacker available for £10 million, as per The Sun.
It now seems, though, that the manager wants to reintegrate Gray into his plans. The 27-year-old is certainly capable of having a positive impact for the Merseyside club this season.
During Frank Lampard’s tenure at the club, he was one of the few Everton players to impress. At one stage, BBC pundit Garth Crooks even labelled the Jamaican as “electric.”
However, the £25,000-a-week wide man has struggled to make a similar impression under Dyche. The recent arrival of Arnaut Danjuma may well make game time harder to come by for Gray, too. If Dyche backs himself to be able to get Gray back to his best then it makes sense to keep him around.
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At the top of his game, Gray is capable of producing match-winning moments. Now he just needs to find the consistency to do so with greater regularity.
An alternative interpretation of this situation is that Everton are bluffing. The Toffees may well be threatening to keep Gray as a ploy to provoke Fulham, or any other interested party, into making a bigger offer for the player.
Despite this report, it still seems likely that Gray will make for pastures new this summer. Not least because Everton desperately need to raise transfer funds so that they can invest in other areas of the squad in serious need of an upgrade. Selling Gray is a viable means of achieving this.