Tom Cannon has lived up to the hype surrounding his potential with four months that could change his summer.
The striker was handed first team experience by Frank Lampard either side of Christmas after a stunning start to the campaign for Everton’s Under-21s. Yet while his potential was in little doubt, there was uncertainty about what level would be best suited to him for his first spell of sustained first team football when he moved out on loan.
He has answered that in emphatic fashion with his eight goals in 19 Championship games almost firing Preston North End to the play-offs.
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Preston will just miss out on the chance to fight for promotion to the Premier League, meaning Cannon will be available for the club for the final time when Sunderland visit Deepdale for the last game of the regular season on Monday. That the challenge for the top six reached the final weeks of the campaign is partly testament to Cannon’s influence. Preston’s hopes were boosted by a run of six wins in seven games across March and April. The 20-year-old scored six goals in that period.
While Preston’s form has since faltered, the experience has been a positive end to a successful season for Cannon. The striker dominated academy defences for the U21s, collecting goals against Manchester United, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain’s youth sides, and fired the team to the latter stages of the Papa John’s Trophy as he proved too much for senior Football League defences. Highlights included his stunning strike at Lincoln City in December.
Before that he had made his first team then Premier League debuts in November, coming off the bench in the Carabao Cup against Bournemouth then doing the same against the same opposition in the league days later. He impressed further on the club’s trip to Australia, scoring in the penalty shootout win over Celtic and then during the 5-1 rout of Western Sydney Wanderers, after which he told the ECHO: “I back myself. When I'm in front of goal I back myself to score every time so I just need to keep going.”
Cannon trained with the first team and played the final minutes of the Boxing Day defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers before heading out on his first loan spell. Ryan Lowe, the Preston boss, had been tracking him for months and later told the ECHO he had trusted his instinct when placing faith in Cannon to have an impact in the top half of the Championship.
He said: “I had an instinct he had the attributes and I’m glad we could do the deal with Everton to bring him to Preston for his first loan. We feel we can work with him to get better - we have a responsibility to these young players and we want them to come here and learn. We need to make sure we coach them to the best of our ability - that is important to us. I think he has got a big, bright future and we would love to potentially do something with him next season.”
Whether Everton will be willing to allow him to play elsewhere next season will be a matter for the summer. With Cannon having responded so well to his first test away from a club and with a severe lack of depth in terms of first team forwards, he could not have done more to put himself into consideration for a greater role at the club he joined aged 10.
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