The 23-year-old is a long way from being England’s main man these days.
To say 2016 has been a funny old year would be doing it a disservice. Yet, beyond all the political high jinks, the footballing hierarchy has gone rather awry too. As if Leicester City winning the Premier League wasn’t Avant Garde enough, Portugal followed it up by celebrating the Euro 2016 title on French soil. And now even Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti and Unai Emery have had their tactics grilled and their personalities probed.
However, few have endured a stranger 2016 than one Ross Barkley. An annus horribilis, featuring a no-show at the Euros, an exclusion from the England squad and a regression from homegrown hero to out-of-favour underachiever at Goodison Park.
This time 12 months ago, the 23-year-old was on his way to his most influential individual campaign in an Everton shirt, scoring six times by November. This season, that tally stands at two with new manager Ronald Koeman replacing Roberto Martinez’s carrot with his slave-driving stick.
And if Gareth Southgate was forced to pick an England 23 today, even the most anti-establishment within the tabloid press could struggle to lambast him for picking Jordan Henderson, Jesse Lingard, Adam Lallana, Dele Alli, even Jack Wilshere, over a player so many previously likened to Paul Gascoigne.
But maybe things could have turned out differently had Barkley followed the advice of a man who knows what it takes to succeed at international level, as best an Englishman can anyway.
“He’ll have to do a lot more defensive work, chasing and closing down, but it’s his work on the ball is his real quality,” legendary Three Lions captain Terry Butcher told talkSPORT last year.
“I think he should play and that England should virtually build a team around him.”
Butcher, the bloodied and bandaged emblem of English football, commented after Barkley more than held his own in a friendly against Spain, hardly looking out of place in the company of such esteemed midfielders. Namely, Andres Iniesta and Sergio Busquetts.
Yet, thus far, Barkley appears not to have taken Butcher’s advice on board. As Koeman has made clear, hard work, hassling and harrying is non-negotiable.
Perhaps all those minutes wasted on the substitute’s bench could have been avoided if one of the most naturally talented players of his generation had taken the initiative and bettered himself for the long-term.
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