Alex Iwobi stole the show as Everton returned to winning ways in the Premier League against Crystal Palace on Saturday.
The 26-year-old, who endured an indifferent start to life on Merseyside, has impressed in a central midfield role this season. Iwobi's first goal of the campaign - a wonderful curling effort from 25-yards - came in the defeat to Manchester United earlier this month.
Iwobi has impressed after being moved into the middle to cover an injury crisis at the close of pre-season. The forward joined Everton in August 2019 from boyhood club Arsenal for a fee that could yet rise to £34m.
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And the Nigeria international was the latest topic of discussion on our Royal Blue Podcast. Host Connor O’Neill was joined by Joe Thomas and Gav Buckland to discuss the midfielder’s impressive start to the season.
Kicking things off, Thomas said: “He should have more assists as well! I can definitely think of the Demarai Gray chance away at Aston Villa that Iwobi crossed for and Gray should have scored.
“He has been Everton’s main source of creativity for the season so far. We obviously had the goal against Manchester United, which was a stunner, abelit Everton struggled in that game.
“We are almost running out of superlatives to describe Alex Iwobi, at some point we are going to have thinking about and I wonder, maybe you two can help me with this, but at what does it need to reach before we can start discussing whether we can have a statute of him outside Bramley-Moore? When does that come into it?”
“He’s just been absolutely phenomenal and is another player Frank Lampard and his coaching team have been crucial to his renaissance really.
“The other thing with Iwobi as well is that we are fortunate to be able to speak to the players and interview them every now and then and I have spoken to Alex a couple of times and he is just a really, really nice guy. He seems to care.”
Before Thomas added: “He seems to be loving life at the minute and he deserves to be as he has been Everton’s player of the season so far.”
Following on from Thomas, Buckland explained why he feels Lampard deserves special praise for the transformation in Iwobi’s displays during his time in charge of the Goodison Park club.
He said: “Because of his fee and the fact he has not performed in two and half years, apart from scoring against Wolves every time we played against them.
“I actually thought on Saturday that there were times when he reverted to old Alex Iwboi, to be honest with you, but it is all about affecting games.
“One of my favourite phrases is affecting games and Alex affected it tremendously on Saturday at key times. Not only two assists, but I think you will find a great team move for the second goal he was the only player to make two passes.”
Before Buckland added: “It is a major sea change and I give Frank credit for it. It is no coincidence that his performances have improved since Lampard came in. I think Frank needs to take a hell of a lot of the plaudits for that and it is good to see Alex being consistent.”
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