Deal or no deal? A curious game of cat and mouse seems to be unfolding over Jarrad Branthwaite between Everton and Manchester United. But will the player still be turning out in a royal blue jersey for the historic final season at Goodison Park?

Everton's Jarrad Branthwaite

The Red Devils have been casting admiring glances at Branthwaite for several months now. Who wouldn’t?

Everton’s breakthrough star of the season has enjoyed a meteoric rise during 2023/24 and has become the brightest centre-back prospect in the Premier League. As his captain Seamus Coleman admitted after the Blues’ final game of the campaign at Arsenal: “You can’t really hide talent like that for long.”

Like Manchester United, England manager Gareth Southgate has been monitoring Branthwaite’s progress for a prolonged period having witnessed one of his most impressive performances to date up close when he attended Everton’s 2-0 win over Chelsea at Goodison Park on December 10. But despite calling him up for the high-profile Wembley friendlies against Brazil and Belgium in late March, Southgate failed to pick Branthwaite for either fixture.

Everton risikerer poengtrekk

Instead, after just a 28-minute run-out off the bench in the 3-0 victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina on June 3, the Three Lions boss decided to leave out the 21-year-old from his 26-man squad for the European Championships, even though Harry Maguire had already been ruled out through injury.

While Southgate has selected players on form in other areas of the pitch with Manchester City’s £100million signing Jack Grealish missing out, that is clearly not the case in central defence. As Toffee Tower pointed out on X (formerly Twitter), the England manager “Picks five centre backs with a combined 25 clean sheets this season (Marc Guehi, four; John Stones, four; Joe Gomez, five; Lewis Dunk, six; Ezri Konsa; six) yet the two centre-backs with a combined 25 (Jarrad Branthwaite, 12; James Tarkowski, 13) are not going.

“Absolute madness neither were taken. Especially when they’re used to playing the whole season with England’s number one (Jordan Pickford).”

On Branthwaite, Tarkowski added: “I think he deserves to be there. If I look around the Premier League, there’s some good centre-halves but Jarrad has played pretty much every game this year and has done very well and made very few mistakes, if any, really so I don’t see why he wouldn’t be in there.”