It was almost four minutes into stoppage time, with West Ham requiring a goal, that Gianluca Scamacca did something they may have wished someone had done much sooner. He flattened Idrissa Gueye.
It scarcely helped their cause for an equaliser – indeed, it used up precious time, while the Italian collected a caution for a forceful challenge as each competed for a header – but perhaps it made him feel better. If it was one way of stopping Gueye, it was the only one West Ham found.
On a day when Everton revisited their past, when they welcomed back two of their finer servants of the 21st century, Gueye’s second full debut brought defeat for David Moyes. Many an Everton signing of the post-Moyes era has been sufficiently wretched that the only thing worse than buying them once would be to recruit them for a second time. There is no clamour for a comeback from Davy Klaassen or Jean-Philippe Gbamin, Cenk Tosun or Moise Kean, Yannick Bolasie or Ashley Williams. Gueye was different: the finest part of Steve Walsh’s legacy, from his ill-fated time as director of football, and, along with Dominic Calvert-Lewin, the best buy of the Farhad Moshiri era.
If there is too little competition for that title during a time when they spent half a billion and wasted much of it, Gueye was acquired the first time for £7m, the second for £2m. His return could be described in other numbers, of tackles and interceptions and blocks or even passes and pass completion rate when an essentially destructive presence showed his constructive side. If it was apparent in his air of authority, it was also evident in a tale of two summer signings. Lucas Paqueta represents Moyes’s biggest ever buy. The £50m Brazilian was snuffed out by Gueye, the flair player smothered into ineffectiveness.
Frank Lampard’s new-look Everton benefited from the blast from the past. “I think so and I think he will get even better,” Lampard said. “He has played in the Premier League and to be out for a few years, with a different pace of league, it is probably not easy but I thought he played really well: quality on the ball, a calming influence on the ball, positional awareness off the ball and the ability to win the ball back.”
Lampard cited the balance of the midfield: Gueye was flanked by a young player, in Amadou Onana, and a midfielder, in Alex Iwobi, who was a revelation when reinvented as a No 8. His history bodes well. Gueye was the facilitator in his first spell at Goodison. Andre Gomes now belongs in the ranks of the misfits, an expensive signing who was loaned out but briefly formed a fine partnership with the Senegalese as a sidekick. Maybe that reflects Gueye’s ability to do the work of two men. Even eight days from his 33rd birthday, it remains. He can hoover everything up.
Gueye has the look of a player with another gear if needs to accelerate further. It makes him the indictment of a supposed successor. It can feel a trick of the birth certificates that Allan is 16 months younger than Gueye as Carlo Ancelotti’s old ally did not even make the bench, his Everton career sent into a tailspin by his immobility. He is now the seventh-choice central midfielder and the common denominator among the six men ahead of him – Gueye, Onana, Iwobi, Abdoulaye Doucoure, James Garner and Tom Davies – is an ability to run. Allan cannot. Lampard’s verdict on his future was a non-committal: “We’ll see.”
Indirectly, Lampard was damning of him, along with many of the players he inherited. He felt Everton struggled in the spine of the side last season. “We are starting to fix some things: we are harder to beat, we don’t concede so much,” he said.
Gueye sums up the new ethos and Lampard’s vision has been a pragmatic one. In the first half, Everton’s lack of a playmaker felt like a shortcoming. It will cost them in other matches but heavy industry and a fine finish from Neal Maupay brought a first win of the season.
The scorer’s identity showed the difference between the downwardly mobile Gueye’s last two clubs. The previous time a teammate struck with him on the pitch, it was Lionel Messi. After the Paris Saint-Germain Galacticos, he has the Everton Grafticos. A star vehicle has been traded for a club whose running power comes from the energy in Lampard’s side.
Even amid the mayhem of some terrible decision-making, Gueye indicated the difference a high-class defensive midfielder can make. Everton never finished outside the top eight in his time at Goodison or in it since he left. Now they are in 13th and even that is their highest position in 2022. If that shows how far they fell, and if a win came because West Ham played poorly, Idrissa Gueye can specialise in making opponents play badly.
