There’s a version of this summer where Everton sign Jarrod Bowen and it’s deemed (maybe Grealish aside) the single best piece of business the Friedkin Group have done.
In a parallel universe, there’s another version where we look back on it as the moment we sold our most gifted forward to a direct Premier League rival to fund the purchase of a 29-year-old.
Right now, both versions are still alive, and that’s where it gets a little bit uncomfortable. Everon won’t end this summer with Bowen and Ndiaye.
Start with what we know…
Iliman Ndiaye’s contract talks have stalled, and Yakubu felt strongly enough about it to go public, telling ToffeeWeb that “now is not the time” for Ndiaye to leave and comparing him to Steven Pienaar — which, for anyone who watched Pienaar week in, week out, is not a comparison Yakubu throws around lightly.
At the same time, reports have linked a Ndiaye sale to Manchester City interest worth up to £69m, with the funds earmarked, at least in theory, for a move for Bowen — who has, per TEAMtalk, made his willingness to join Everton clear to David Moyes.
Put those two stories side by side, and you get something that’s interlinked. Whether that’s the plan Everton actually want, or the plan that’s simply available to them because Ndiaye won’t sign, is a different question entirely.
The case for it making sense
Moyes knows Bowen. Four and a half years, 60 goals, 41 assists, a UEFA Conference League final winner in a Moyes team when most of us had stopped believing Moyes could win anything continental.
That’s not recruitment department database stuff, that’s lived knowledge, and it counts for something when a manager is choosing between two similar players.
Bowen is also the finished article in a way Ndiaye, brilliant as he is, still isn’t — his end product has never quite matched his fancy footwork, and at £69m outgoing against a reported £20m incoming, the numbers genuinely work for PSR purposes.
There’s also a version of this where Ndiaye doesn’t want to be here in the way he once did. Players who talk publicly about Champions League ambition while their club sits mid-table generally aren’t usually doing so by accident. Often those comments are agent-inspired.
If he’s already halfway out the door mentally, better to cash in at £69m than lose leverage waiting for him to run his contract down.
The case against
Here’s my problem, and it’s the same problem plenty of you will have. Ndiaye is 26. Bowen 29. We’d be gambling three years based on ‘certainty.’ Bowen’s own public comments — calling it “disrespectful” to discuss his future while West Ham chase promotion — suggest either loyalty to a relegated club, or a player who isn’t as available as some reports suggest.
Either way, it wholly complicates the story.
And there’s a simpler point that gets lost when transfer sagas run in parallel like this: Ndiaye not signing a new deal doesn’t automatically mean Everton should sell him this summer. It might just mean a difficult contract stand-off that eventually resolves itself, one way or another.
Everton have leverage — he’s under contract until 2029 — and leverage is worth more than a great deal in sagas like this.
None of this is close to confirmed. No bid has landed for Bowen, no departure has been sanctioned for Ndiaye, and Yakubu’s comments are exactly that — just comments.
Everton fans must ask themselves, honestly, which version of this summer they’d actually want, and then just wait to see if the club agrees. Watch this space.
