Go, Anthony Gordon...

As Alice band manufacturers prepare to target the Catalunyan market, Matthew bids farewell to the mop headed Scouser

First things first. The rapid surgical removal of Anthony Gordon from Tyneside this summer suggests that some very valuable lessons have been learnt from our previous transfer fiascos. Do deals early, quickly get shot of players who don't want to be here, and still get a decent price for them, preferably abroad. Halle-fucking-lujah!

It's to be hoped that we've also learnt another lesson. Dickheads should not be indulged. After all, Gordon left Goodison under a cloud (of blue smoke). He had shamelessly engineered a move in his own interests (yes, I know he's a footballer), all while his tangible contribution to Everton's cause had been far from spectacular - famously, more bookings than goals. Oh, and he had always been a mardy, thoroughly unlikeable arse on the pitch, not least on that post-takeover night at St James’ in early 2022 when we booed him relentlessly.

To be fair, it didn't have to end this way. It’s easy to forget just how good he was in 2023-24, when he was deservedly and comfortably our player of the season. His stellar summer in the victorious England U21 side set him up for his very own seasonus mirabilis - eleven goals and ten assists in the league alone were a level of tangible production that he had never come close to achieving before. He might have been a dickhead but he was our dickhead.

A rare beacon of light in what was otherwise a challenging season, it felt at times as though he was carrying us single-handedly. As a goal threat cutting in off the left, a creator of goals, and an energetic leader of the press, he was everything you would want from a modern wide forward in Eddie's high-energy system. Even his tackles were capable of changing the mood of a game.

It was all the more surprising because his first half-season had been a confusing disappointment, the dampest of damp squibs. Even by the standards of Eddie's maddening conservatism, Gordon's lack of game time was mysterious. Presumably when Mandy was persuading PIF to sanction the £40m that tipped us over the PSR cliff, all dutifully captured by the Amazon cameras, the sales pitch didn't involve an average of 25 minutes per match for the remainder of the season. The most memorable moment, save for his first goal at Chelsea on final day, was his petulant reaction to being subbed at Brentford.

His subsequent breakout season also brought full international recognition, even if the sum total of his contribution to Euro 24 amounted to one minute in the final group game against Slovenia. That suited us. And it was still enough to supposedly tempt a £75m bid from Liverpool in that first catastrophic PSR summer, when Anderson and Minteh were sacrificed instead. If only we'd known then what we know now.

Apparently having had his “head turned” - I've never been clear why this is seemingly acceptable behaviour for over-indulged footballers as if they are somehow hapless victims in it all - he started the following season “slowly” (a euphemism for crap). I remember watching him on opening day against Southampton from the East Stand and not understanding how his touch could be so clumsy, simple passes so impossible to execute.

Still there were moments. His contribution to the two-legged victory over Arsenal that took us to Wembley was pivotal. Not that he got to play on that day of days. Having been cup-tied two years earlier, he now found himself suspended after an idiotic straight red card that ultimately cost us the match against Brighton in our FA Cup quarter-final. Happily, it turned out we didn't need him quite as much as he thought we did. It was the first of many moments when I decided I'd had enough of him.

Rightly or wrongly - it's definitely the former, by the way - the red card cemented a reputation for poor judgement that belied Gordon’s privileged status in the squad and on the pay roll, a perception hardly helped by his equally reckless red card against Liverpool last season. By then, though, this was the least of a growing list of reasons that made him difficult to like.

It was impossible not to watch him play week in, week out without the suspicion that he was becoming distinctly selective in when he chose to expend his energy. The big, glamour ties of the Champions League, or against the English teams that he hoped might covet him, yielded much sharper and intense performances than more mundane fixtures.

Tackles were shirked, players not tracked, and the ball given away infuriatingly and often damagingly. Chances were missed - again and again and again. He wasn't a player of such prodigious talent that he could afford to coast. That we saw with our own eyes. At Burnley away this season I thought I was going to have an aneurysm such was the fury he induced as he lazily wafted a chance over the bar. The mood around me was positively poisonous.

Meanwhile, refs were increasingly wise to his propensity to collapse under the merest hint of contact, which had served him so well previously, especially in the box. Now it was a maddening liability. Even as play carried on around him, he would roll and writhe on the ground as if both Achilles tendons had been snipped with a set of rusty secateurs. Somewhere overhead the ghost of Allan Saint-Maximin smiled down approvingly.

Then there was the sense of favouritism from the manager as other players had to be shifted around to accommodate his preference to play on the left. In one of his less flattering moments, Howe even conceded as much in a post-match press conference. Presumably, Gordon also had a strong influence on the persistent and fruitless decision to play him up front. Apparently, he also had the final say each day on the colour of Eddie's smalls.

And finally there was the second leg of the semi-final at the Etihad, and an act of selfish cowardice unlike any I've seen before from a player in black and white. He simply chose not to play on. He simply gave up. In so doing, he broke the unwritten contract between players and fans. Simply unforgivable.

He may well rediscover his form at Barcelona. After all, there’s plenty of generous league opposition to pad out those stats. Then again, he'll have plenty more chance to perfect his bench warming technique this summer - it could come in handy.

Either way, he hasn't been committed to the United cause for a long time now and his best form in black and white is a distant memory. We'd reached the end of the road a long time ago. A miserable married couple going through the motions as resentment built on both sides.

So forgive me if I don't offer more generous words on his departure. The bare minimum is that those in whom we invest our hard-earned time and dedication give it back to us in effort on the pitch. And on that count, he was ultimately found wanting.

And that's without even mentioning the hair.

Matthew Philpotts