Dele Alli: Everton midfielder completes season-long loan move to Besiktas after just seven months at Goodison Park
Since joining Everton on transfer deadline day in January, Dele Alli made just one start - against Arsenal on the final day of last season - and played just 13 times in total, failing to score
Thursday 25 August 2022 18:28, UK
Dele Alli has completed his season-long loan move to Turkish club Besiktas from Everton.
The deal could be made permanent depending on how the 26-year-old midfielder performs in Istanbul.
Everton will get a £1.86m (€2.2m) loan fee, and Besiktas will pay just £8,430 (€10,000) of Alli's wages per game.
Alli arrives in the Turkish capital desperate for more game time after mostly being used from the bench since joining Everton.
Although there was no initial transfer fee when he joined the club in January, Everton would have owed Tottenham anything up to £40m if certain performance bonuses were met.
The first £10m would be due after Alli's 20th Everton appearance. The club would also have to pay Spurs 25 per cent of any money they receive.
The 26-year-old has made appearances in both Everton's Premier League games so far this season, but only from the substitutes' bench.
Since joining the club on transfer deadline day in January, Alli has made just one start - against Arsenal on the final day of last season - and played just 13 times in total, failing to score.
He was an unused substitute in Everton's 1-1 draw at home to Nottingham Forest on Saturday.
Alli was praised by Frank Lampard for his impact in the second half during Everton's dramatic 3-2 win over Crystal Palace in May, which preserved the club's Premier League status.
Lampard was asked by Sky Sports earlier this month about using the former Tottenham midfielder more regularly this season - given the absence of striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin and lack of recognised striker as an alternative.
Alli had scored twice during a friendly win over Blackpool and was seen among some fans as someone who could operate as a false nine in Calvert-Lewin's absence.
"I hope he has an important role to play," Lampard said of Alli's season ahead. "He had a great impact for a half against Palace and he was very important in terms of turning the game around, but now we're looking for consistency.
"That means in training, getting into the best condition, and showing himself to be able to start games. We're now in a more stable condition as a club than the intense environment that we were in at the back end of last season.
"Dele is here to help us on a more consistent basis and it's in his hands to show when opportunities come, he can take them. We saw in his performance against Palace what he can do. It's one for me and for him - we're all pulling in the same direction, and I hope he can have a good season for us."
Where did it all go wrong?
Sky Sports' Michael Bridge:
"There is no concrete answer here. I actually find it quite sad. This wasn't a one-season wonder. This is a double PFA Young Player of the Year and scorer on his England debut and World Cup quarter-final. Ten goals and nine assists in 2015/16, 18 goals and seven assists in 2016/17, a big part of Tottenham under Mauricio Pochettino.
"Things then didn't start to go well, there were some private off-field issues, there was the well-documented scene involving Jose Mourinho in which he warns Dele about being a poor trainer and the sad thing is, if you end up in Turkey from the Premier League, something hasn't gone right.
"When the deal was done with Everton, it was weighted in Everton's favour, but the view from Tottenham was that if the transfer went well, they would receive money. That's not going to happen."
Offloading Alli is ruthlessness Lampard must show
Sky Sports football journalist Ben Grounds:
"When Alli joined Everton on a two-and-a-half-year deal back in January, it was hoped he could reignite his stalling career at Goodison Park.
"It had felt for some time that the player needed a fresh break from Spurs, where he had spent seven years of his career.
"Given how his stock had fallen sharply, and Everton's precarious financial situation, it was of little surprise that the potential £40m transfer fee was structured based on performance-related add-ons.
"It was up to Alli to perform, and were he to rekindle those early days at White Hart Lane, such a hefty fee would surely have been justified. That Alli, at the outset of the Mauricio Pochettino era, was a £40m player.
"In the black of night on deadline day, Alli told Sky Sports of Lampard's influence in convincing him to move to Merseyside.
"There is still a player in Dele and a move to Turkey now would feel like a resignation that his best days are behind him.
"Still only 26, the Super Lig has been treated by Premier League clubs as a scrapheap for finished footballers at clubs happy to take their bloated wages and bruised egos.
"A maker of 269 appearances in all competitions for Spurs and scorer of 67 goals, including 51 in the Premier League. The hope was that Lampard could spark something inside him, but given Everton's own problems, it may just have been the right player at the wrong time.
"His career stagnated in north London, but it has fully ground to a halt in Liverpool.
"In more stable times for Everton, thinking back to how James Rodriguez operated in those early performances under Carlo Ancelotti in 2020, Alli could well have thrived.
"Lampard is someone still fighting his own battle for acceptance at this level as a Premier League manager, and he can ill-afford passengers in a side desperate to prove last season's decline was merely circumstantial, and not something that will be repeated in his first full season.
"A winner of back-to-back PFA Young Player of the Year awards, a Champions League final runner-up, but sadly a poster boy now of an England generation that failed to truly fulfil its potential.
"The hope was that a place could be found for someone with such natural ability, but the club would be right to cut their losses on the Alli experiment.
"They arrived at Everton on the same day, so it will be with a heavy heart that Lampard is making one of the first ruthless calls of his Goodison tenure."
Follow the summer transfer window with Sky Sports
Who will be on the move this summer before the transfer window closes at 11pm on September 1?
Keep up-to-date with all the latest transfer news and rumours in our dedicated Transfer Centre blog on Sky Sports' digital platforms. You can also catch up with the ins, outs and analysis on Sky Sports News.
