Exclusive: Marcel Brands explains Jarrad Branthwaite transfer, Carlo Ancelotti reaction and missed signings

Plucked from obscurity as a 17-year-old after just nine League Two games for his local club Carlisle United, Jarrad Branthwaite has been one of Everton’s most-astute purchases of modern times having developed into a potential £100million-rated player.

No True Blue wants to see the Merseyside Derby hero who has been the breakthrough star of the season for Sean Dyche’s side go anywhere soon but if one of his long list of admirers does try and prise the prodigious talent away from Goodison Park then they’d surely have to break the bank to do so. If the likes of Jack Grealish (Aston Villa to Manchester City in 2021) and Declan Rice (West Ham United to Arsenal in 2023) can command nine-figure fees, then why not Branthwaite given the premium on domestic talent?

Physically imposing, the 6ft 5in centre-back who was called up for the last England squad is also assured in possession, still two months’ shy of his 22^nd birthday and tied down to a contract with Everton until 2027. Wantaway owner Farhad Moshiri apologised for the turbulent financial storm on the horizon when he admitted to fans in the summer of 2022 “we have not always spent large amounts of money wisely” but for all the expensive flops that have put the Blues down a path that resulted in two points deductions this season for PSR breaches, the acquisition of Branthwaite has proven inspired.

One man who is not surprised by the Cumbrian’s rapid rise is PSV Eindhoven president Marcel Brands who as Everton’s director of football at the time oversaw Branthwaite’s transfer in January 2020 when the youngster officially became the first signing of Carlo Ancelotti’s tenure. Brands told the ECHO: “Jarrad has always had a huge talent and from day one when he first came into the club, he’s been impressing the other players and staff members. He had a very good loan spell with us at PSV so to see him do that is not a surprise to me.

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“To be honest, I have never had any doubts about him. In principle he has everything to become one of the top defenders in the world.

“He’s tall, he’s good in the air, he will always score some goals while also being comfortable on the ball with both feet and fast. The only thing he has to improve now is his experience because he’s still very young but playing on a high level.

“He’s already made it into the England squad. I spoke to Gareth Southgate a couple of months ago when he was at PSV’s game against Ajax to watch Jordan Henderson and he told me he was impressed by Jarrad’s performances.

“It’s great to see him fulfilling his huge potential because he’s a great kid from a great family with good parents who support him in the right way. I’m very happy for him and also for Everton because he will be a very valuable player in the near future.

“Jarrad’s advantage is that he can play in different styles. He’s now very comfortable playing alongside James Tarkowski who is a player who suits the system that Everton are playing now.

“I think Jarrad can also play in a system like Arsenal or Manchester City with a lot of space behind him because he’s so fast and he’s reading the game quite well for such a young boy. I expect he will have a great, great future both on a national and maybe even international level.”

Branthwaite had played only 14 matches in all competitions in his fledgling career when the Blues took a punt on him but given the attributes the rookie possessed, Brands was convinced from the start that it was a gamble worth taking. He said: “We got reports from our scouts. They were very good so we obtained some video clips of him and we watched some whole games and it was impressive because he was very young, just 17.

“He was already a regular player, sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left, also as a defensive midfielder. Every time you saw he was always comfortable on the ball, concentrating on what he was doing and he looked very good for a young boy.

“League Two is not the easiest of environments and it’s physically tough but he did very well. We saw immediately that he could be a huge talent as a central defender because he was left-footed but also very comfortable on his right foot and you don’t see that very often.

“He’s very tall and good in the air but he is also very fast. You don’t see that immediately but if you look deeper, it’s unbelievable how quick he is.”

Branthwaite made his Everton debut behind closed doors due to coronavirus restrictions as a substitute in a 3-0 defeat at Wolverhampton Wanderers on July 12, 2020, the first of four appearances he made before the end of that season. Restricted to a single Carabao Cup outing for the Blues the following season, going off injured against Salford City after just 24 minutes, he was loaned out to Championship Blackburn Rovers in the second half of the campaign where, after an early run in the side, he lost his place.

At this point the player still looked a long way off holding down a regular first team spot at Everton but after a mere six Premier League outings in 2021/22, finishing the season with a sending off at home to Brentford and then a chastening 5-1 thrashing at Arsenal on the final day, a spell at a Dutch ‘finishing school’ in the shape of a loan at PSV where he was reunited with Brands proved to be the making of Branthwaite. Brands said: “One of the qualities that we saw straight away was that he was always comfortable on the ball. The plan was that for the first six months he should be with the Under-23s at Everton but because of some injuries he got to train with the first team quite quickly.

“Carlo was quite impressed with his performances and I also got a lot of comments from all the players that his attitude was incredible. That was something special and he made his debut much sooner than we expected.

“In the Dutch league, it’s more important how your performances are in possession. He improved a lot in that aspect and we also have a very attacking team so he had to learn to defend with a lot of space behind him which was a little bit new for him of course.”

Although Brands maintains he was always happy at Everton, interference from the owner is understood to have hampered his efforts to fulfil his role in the way he would have liked. The 62-year-old revealed in a recent interview in the Netherlands that he’d “moved heaven and earth” to try and bring in former Goodison Park fans’ favourite Mikel Arteta as manager when Marco Silva was sacked – only for Moshiri to hire Ancelotti – while he told the ECHO that “Benitez was not my choice.”

Asked if he’d have liked to have signed more young prospects of a similar profile to Branthwaite than the big money, high profile names that Everton splashed the cash on during his watch, Brands said: “Sometimes when you scout good players, it doesn’t happen. That’s life in football, it happens everywhere.

“Jarrad was one of the guys who we could buy for a fee that was not big money because it was only a couple of hundred thousand pounds. At the end of the day that is not a big risk for what we saw in Jarrad, we saw some other players but at the end of the day, it doesn’t always happen.”