Jake O’Brien's Future at Everton: A Move to Centre-Back?

Jake O’Brien is edging toward the Goodison Park exit, and with him goes another slice of Everton’s long-standing Irish spine.

The 25-year-old has spent two seasons doing a job on the right of defence, but his patience with life as an auxiliary full-back is wearing thin. He wants to play where he made his name: in the middle of the back four.

Everton paid £17m (€19.9m) to bring him in from Lyon in the summer of 2024, a fee built on a standout campaign at centre-half. Thirty-two appearances, five goals, and a December player of the month award in Ligue 1 ahead of Vitinha, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandre Lacazette and Kylian Mbappé told the story of a defender on the rise.

At Everton, the rise took a different route.

He eased his way into the side in that first year, only to find his path blocked centrally and a gap opening up at right-back. An ageing and often injured Seamus Coleman needed cover. O’Brien became it. Not what he expected, but he took it on.

Last season, David Moyes doubled down. O’Brien was again the man trusted on the right, picked for his height, his reading of danger, his ability to dominate at the back post. Forty appearances underlined the manager’s faith and showcased his strengths: six foot six, dominant in the air, defensively disciplined, quicker than his frame suggests.

They are the tools of a centre-half. Out wide, they looked slightly out of place.

He offered solidity, not the surging overlaps and cut-backs that define the modern full-back. At set pieces he was a menace, his size causing chaos, but in open play he rarely resembled the attacking outlet that top-flight teams now demand on the flanks. For a natural centre-back from Cork, the compromise has started to grate.

The opening day of the new Premier League season sharpened the issue. O’Brien watched from the bench as new captain James Tarkowski and Jarrad Branthwaite locked down the middle and kept a clean sheet against Crystal Palace. Michael Keane and Nathan Patterson were the only other defenders among the substitutes.

On the pitch, Moyes sent a different sort of message. Versatile new signing Merlin Röhl, compared in style to Leon Goretzka, started at right-back. A midfielder by trade, trusted ahead of a specialist defender who has spent two years filling that exact role.

Clubs noticed. With the transfer deadline looming, interest has spiked. Sunderland, Leeds and former club Crystal Palace are all reported to be circling, joined by sides in Italy and France. For O’Brien, the timing might be perfect. For Everton, it is awkward.

A late sale would leave them light at right-back. Coleman, who has been back kicking ball with his old GAA club Killybegs, is still weighing up his professional future after leaving Merseyside last year. Replacing his influence is a task in itself. Replacing his position and his presence at the same time is something else entirely.

Coleman’s legacy hangs over all of this. Signed from Sligo Rovers for under £100,000, he went on to make 434 appearances in all competitions. Some within the game argue he ranks among the great value signings in Premier League history. Everton offered him a coaching role; he turned it down, determined to keep playing. His last cap for Ireland came in June, proof that, even at 37, he still has something left.

There was a sense that Coleman could have been the ideal mentor for O’Brien, an Irish right-back guiding an Irish defender learning the role. Instead, O’Brien appears ready to walk his own path and push for a move that returns him to centre-half.

If he goes, Everton’s Irish contingent shrinks again. Only Mark Travers would remain, the second-choice goalkeeper set for another season watching Jordan Pickford from the bench. Travers didn’t feature in the Premier League or FA Cup last season, making just two appearances in the Carabao Cup. The names of Kevin Kilbane, Lee Carsley, Kevin Sheedy, James McCarthy and Coleman, all of whom passed 100 appearances for the club, feel a long way from that level of involvement.

The clock is ticking. The transfer window shuts at 11pm on Tuesday. Everton’s room to manoeuvre is tight, and the squad is already taking shape.

Club CEO Angus Kinnear has been open about the need to act. Speaking to BBC Radio Merseyside, he admitted Everton had wanted a right-back in last season.

“I’m confident that we’ll bring a right back in,” he said. “It’s a position we’ve needed. I think Jake has done a sterling job for us in that position.

“It was something that we were trying to do last summer and didn’t feel that we could get the quality in.

“A right-back was top priority in the window, we would have liked to have got it done earlier.

“I understand the fans’ frustrations; I understand how they see it as being critical.

“So, we are working hard to bring one in and I’m sure we will. I’m sure it will be an improvement, and it will round off the squad nicely.”

Those words should have opened the door for O’Brien to focus solely on centre-back and fight Tarkowski and Branthwaite for a place. Instead, with interest growing and his patience at right-back spent, they may have come too late.

Everton face a brutal equation in the final days of the window: replace a captain’s influence, find a specialist full-back, and decide whether to cash in on a defender entering his prime who no longer wants to be a stopgap.