Jamie O’Hara has tipped teams to be “sniffing around” Jarrad Branthwaite despite the Everton star’s mistake against Crystal Palace.
The defender gave away a penalty in the Toffees’ 3-2 win over Roy Hodgson’s side on Saturday (11 November) but his blushes were saved thanks to goals from Viatlii Mykolenko, Abdoulaye Doucoure and Idrissa Gueye.
Despite his “mistake” at Selhurst Park, O’Hara was quick to praise the young defender’s overall performance and has said that he expects teams at the top end of the Premier League to be monitoring the 21-year-old’s situation at Goodison Park.
Speaking on talk Sport (11 November, 18:03) he said: “He made a mistake today to give away a penalty, but I’m a massive fan of his, I think he’s a young up-and-coming, a real good star.
“You’ve got a solid team, it looks like all of a sudden you’ve got a Sean Dyche side there who know how to stay in the Premier League.
“They need to get him signed up on a long-term deal because there are going to be teams sniffing around him at the end of the season.”
Barring the fact O’Hara must have clearly missed the fact that Branthwaite signed a new deal with Everton at the beginning of October that will see him stay at Goodison Park until 2027, a lot of what the presenter said is very true.
One mistake doesn’t immediately make Branthwaite a bad player and he wasn’t the only member of Sean Dyche’s side to step out of line at Selhurst Park, with defensive partner James Tarkowski also failing to clear his lines for Odsonne Edouard’s strike.
The 21-year-old had the tough task of trying to keep Eberechi Eze quiet for the home side and the Palace attacking midfielder has made plenty of the Premier League’s best defenders look off of the pace previously, with his electric footwork and technical ability.
Branthwaite still managed to win five of his eight duels in the match and was only dribbled past once, so barring his error (which didn’t prove costly) it wasn’t a bad afternoon for the centre-back.
Everton have done well to secure his future on Merseyside and should sides sniff around the defender, it is going to take a big fee.
