Former Everton player Davy Klaassen turns 31 today but despite enjoying an impressive career, the Dutchman flopped at Goodison Park

Some recruits fail at Everton because they’re just not good enough but for all his undoubted ability there has arguably never been a major signing who looked so entirely ill-suited to succeeding at Goodison Park as Davy Klaassen.

The Dutchman celebrates his 31^st birthday today and while that’s a relatively advanced age when it comes to professional footballers, he remains at the peak of his powers having departed Ajax for a second time last summer to join Italian giants Internazionale. It was a transfer from a four-time European Cup-winning club to one who had lifted the trophy some three times, demonstrating the kind of pedigree that Klaassen possesses

But while the attacking midfielder is now gracing the San Siro having been a fan favourite at the Johan Cruyff Arena for many seasons, he looked like a fish out of water in L4. Appearances can be deceptive with Klaassen though.

His balding pate gave the impression that he was older than his age of just 24 when he arrived at Goodison Park in a £23.6million deal back on June 15, 2017 – on the same day that the club also signed goalkeeper Jordan Pickford who has gone on to make 264 appearances for the Blues. However, like Everton’s ‘Prodigal Son’ Wayne Rooney – one of a trio of number 10s snapped up that summer alongside Klaassen and Gylfi Sigurdsson – the Dutchman has now undergone a hair transplant.

Klaassen didn’t really have any locks to lose when arriving in England but keeping with the Biblical references, he seemed to suffer a Samson-like weakening of his strength from the moment he pulled on a royal blue jersey. Back home in the Netherlands, he is affectionately known as ‘Kaasstengel’ (cheese straw) due to his slight build but such was his seeming unsuitability to inhabit the rough and tumble of the engine room when playing in midfield for a Premier League side, Everton supporters could be forgiven for fearing that he might snap.

Despite a record-breaking spending spree that window, flaws in recruitment – the aforementioned acquisition of three players who inhabited a similar position followed by Nikola Vlasic, but no like-for-like replacement for Romelu Lukaka after Olivier Giroud’s late change of heart – ensured Klaassen came into a very difficult situation as things quickly unravelled for a much-changed Everton squad and their manager. It didn’t seem to matter who was in the Goodison dugout though, whether it was his compatriot Ronald Koeman, caretaker boss David Unsworth or Sam Allardyce, he resembled a lost soul in the English game with a lack of pace or power ensuring that matches just passed him by.

With translations back and forth for questions and answers, press conferences for fixtures in UEFA competitions can often be confusing but on one such occasion, ahead of a Europa League trip to face Atalanta in Bergamo, Klaassen – already resembling something of a rabbit caught in the headlights – was asked whether he was happy with the start he had made at Everton. It seemed to be an enquiry about the player’s personal form but he replied by referring to the team as if he was blind to the struggles that many others saw as obvious from the start.

In the end, it seemed no coincidence that Klaassen never once completed a 90 minute game of Premier League football. Failing to score in 16 matches for the Blues, only seven of those appearances were in the Premier League and a mere three were starts.

It was he and Rooney who both made way in a double substitution for Tom Davies and match-winner Oumar Niasse 10 minutes into the second half of a home game with Bournemouth on September 23 that proved to be Koeman’s last victory and Klaasen’s final Premier League start. After that, he’d only be picked from the kick-off for the 5-1 home drubbing against Atalanta and 3-0 dead rubber success at Apollon Limassol, both in a Europa League competition in which he reached the final the previous season with Ajax.

Between the Bournemouth game and final home match of the season against Southampton on May 5, Klaassen featured in just six minutes of Premier League football at the end of a 2-0 victory over Brighton & Hove Albion on March 10, so even with Allardyce dismissed at the end of the campaign and replaced by the seemingly more-progressive Marco Silva, a coach who would appear to be better-suited to getting the best out of the player’s technical ability, it came as no surprise when he was sold and at a loss of over £10million in the space of just a year.

Reflecting on his short and not-so-sweet time with Everton under Koeman’s successor Allardyce, Klaassen told the Athletic in 2019: “I never had the feeling I had any chance to play.

“We were making jokes. I said, ‘If everyone was injured they would still pick players from the under-12s to play.’ You had to make jokes, otherwise you would go under.

“The good thing is I love football, so I like training every day. But some days were tough and I just wanted to go home.”