After the Everton decision, Sean Dyche delivers Jarrad Branthwaite a clear message.

After the Everton decision, Sean Dyche delivers Jarrad Branthwaite a clear message.

Everton manager Sean Dyche has been impressed with Jarrad Branthwaite’s displays since he returned to the club following a loan spell at PSV Eindhoven last season.

There had been something of a clamour among certain sections of Everton’s fanbase for Branthwaite to be picked for their first Premier League game of the season at home to Fulham last Saturday.

But he was left on the bench alongside Ben Godfrey as Dyche named captain James Tarkowski and Michael Keane as his two starting centre-backs.

Although Dyche knows that pair, who are both 30, well from his time in charge of Burnley – he fielded Keane 108 times and Tarkowski 211 at Turf Moor – they only actually combined some 21 times for the Clarets.

The Blues boss is still getting to know Branthwaite, though, given his spell in the Netherlands last term and the defender having returned to pre-season later than most of his team-mates after being part of Lee Carsley’s England’s squad that triumphed at the UEFA European Under-21 Championships alongside club colleague James Garner.

Branthwaite did play in the friendlies against Stoke City, Monza, Sporting CP plus Monday’s behind closed doors training game against Manchester United at Carrington. And even though Tarkowski and Keane got the nod against the Cottagers, Dyche acknowledges he has other options in that area of the pitch.

He said: “Jarrad has done well in pre-season but he missed a couple of weeks so he is still getting fit and sharp but we like what we have seen so far and we’re just getting used to him. Ben (Godfrey) missed the end of last season coming into this pre-season.

“On the defensive side of things, the shape of the side, the energy of the side was all good (against Fulham). I think if we scored two there then the story is radically different and I think everyone says it was a really good performance and they deserved to win, I think everyone in the stadium thinks, ‘yes, they were the better side’, but sometimes you don’t get it.”