Getting his first Everton goals proved a rite of passage for Anthony Gordon and the Blues home-grown hero is now benefitting from making the physical development from a boy to a man.
That the verdict of the ECHO’s David Prentice, who believes the 20-year-old, who bagged a brace in Sunday’s 3-2 home defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion, now has the strength to compete at the highest level.
Speaking on the Royal Blue podcast, he said: “ Anthony Gordon is looking really robust and purposeful now isn’t he?
“He’s always been tidy and relatively creative but he needed to bulk up a little bit, he needed to improve his strength because the Premier League is so unforgiving in terms of physicality.
“He’s done that and he’s showing. His running with the ball is strong now and he’s shrugging off defenders and he’s making things happen.
“I got collared by someone in my local a couple of days ago, wanting to slag me off, over ‘my mate Unsy.’
“He said to me: ‘ Unsworth – when’s he going to produce someone decent from the Academy?’
“I replied: ‘Hang on, the squad has been full of Academy players over the last month or so, notably Anthony Gordon.’
“He just looked at me and went: ‘Argh, no, somebody of substance!’
“I told him: ‘You don’t think Anthony Gordon has got substance? We may as well finish the conversation now.’ And we did because he clearly had a beef about Gordon who has been one of the shining lights of this season and is getting better and better.”
In what was Gordon’s 47 th senior game at club level (36 for Everton and 11 on loan at Preston North End last season), he finally netted, not once but twice, repeating the feat he achieved on his debut for Lee Carsley’s England Under-21s against the Czech Republic at Turf Moor, Burnley, back on November 11.
Prentice hopes that getting on the scoresheet can now galvanise Gordon to kick on further in his development.
He said: “The one thing that was missing was a goal, an end product.
“His quality from the flanks has been good. He created the goal at Chelsea and his quality of delivery against Brighton was decent as well. He just needed a goal.
“You could tell it meant a lot to him. He’s talked in recent weeks how he’s been desperate to score a goal and how he’s visualised it.
MICHAEL BALL: DIGNE DECISION 'DISGRACEFUL'
CHRIS BEESLEY: POTTER'S 'LOOK WHAT YOU COULD HAVE WON' GOODISON MOMENT
ADAM JONES: EVERTON FANS RIGHT TO CALL OUT BALAGUE AFTER HE MISSES THE POINT
“I probably did visualise it down at the Street End but in a winning cause rather than a come from behind cause.
“He got a bit of good fortune with the deflection off Adam Lallana for the first one but he still kept going and kept going. He had the dig in the first place which is why he scored the goal.
“Then lovely moment and a lovely finish for the second goal as well.
“It was good to see the fans respond to that as well. They were booing at the end of the game but stopped very quickly chant Anthony Gordon’s name and make him aware of ‘no, you’re not part of this reaction’ because his performance was good, as was Demarai Gray’s.”
The respective displays of the attacking midfield pair were among the view bright spots to be taken from Brighton’s first win at Goodison Park in almost 109 years of trying and Prentice believes Gordon can look forward to the remainder of the campaign, if his team-mates can follow his example.
He said: “There are a couple of shafts of light but recently those positives just get completely swamped by the negatives and the mistakes.
“If you’re going to make schoolboy errors, no matter how much good work Anthony Gordon does or Demarai Gray does, you’re going to be fighting a losing cause.
“There were howlers throughout. That second goal was horrible. They’ve been working on corners all week but clearly people haven’t been listening in class because it was shocking, absolutely shocking.
“Let’s focus on the positives now because we’ve talked about the negatives so much. Anthony Gordon did look bright, he looked strong and he looks like a player who could enjoy a really strong second half of the season.”
.png?w=600)
