Alan Stubbs says Everton pulled out of Eric Dier deal in 2012 due to £1m+ asking price

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Stubbs says the Toffees were priced out of a move for the then-teenager.

Former Everton reserve team manager Alan Stubbs has revealed to the Liverpool Echo that the club decided against signing Eric Dier in 2012 as the asking price was over £1 million.

Dier was a promising youth talent at Portuguese side Sporting Lisbon when he joined the Toffees on loan in January 2011 around his 17th birthday.

Though he never played a competitive senior game for the Merseyside club, he ultimately remained at Goodison Park for 18 months before returning to begin senior action in Lisbon.

Two years after leaving Everton he would joined Spurs in a £4 million move, and he has since become a household name in the Premier League as well as an established England international.

However, Stubbs has now revealed the reasoning behind Everton deciding against making a permanent move for the youngster in 2012, explaining that Dier’s struggles to settle in England and a seven-figure asking price were enough of a deterrent.

Stubbs told the Echo: “We wanted to sign Eric and, at one point, thought we were going to get him. When he came, he was way off the pace because he had come from a really different culture. He was brought up in London but had gone over to Portugal and was with Sporting and you could see that he was used to that slow tempo of football, whereas here it was fast, frenetic and he struggled fitness-wise to start off.

“Everything was happening too quick for him. It took us the best part of eight months to get him up to speed but you could see his game coming on tenfold and that was when we decided we wanted to sign him and we were in negotiations to do it but, at the time, it was going upwards of £1m, which wasn’t where Everton were at the time.

“Now they wouldn’t blink at two, three or four million for him, so for Eric at that time it would’ve been a case of right place, wrong time.”

Though is is all too easy to ask “what if?”, Everton fans may be ruing their club’s cautiousness in light of what Dier has achieved since.

The defender-turned-midfielder scored on his Premier League debut just weeks after joining Spurs, and has since racked up 121 appearances for the North Londoners, as well as winning 15 England caps and playing and scoring at Euro 2016 last summer.