Aiyegbeni Yakubu

 
Burly Nigerian striker Yakubu became Everton's record signing in late August 2007 when David Moyes shattered the previous record transfer fee of £8.6M paid by Everton for Andy Johnson the year before. The Blues paid Middlesbrough £11.25M for the player nicknamed "The Yak" after it became clear that the player wanted to move to pastures new.

Yakubu, 24 at the time, was initially refused a permit by the UK Department of Employment because he had failed to play 75% of his country's internationals in the previous two years — due more to a disagreement with Nigeria manager Berti Vogts than anything else — but Everton won an appeal and the striker signed a five-year deal at Goodison Park.

As a replacement for the hapless James Beattie, Yakubu brought Everton some much-needed goalscoring credentials — he was second only to Thierry Henry in the Premier League goal charts over the previous four seasons and, therefore not surprisingly, the highest-scoring African player in top flight history.

He started his career at Israeli team Maccabi Haifa under Avram Grant, where he won two championships and had a phenomenal scoring record, both in the domestic and international competitions, breaking several club records. He came to England in 2001 and trained with Derby County but could not obtain a work permit. 

After scoring 7 goals in 8 European Cup appearances (including a hat-trick against Olympiakos) in the 2002-03 season Champions League, Yakubu moved to Portsmouth in January 2003.  His goals helped fire Pompey to the Football League Championship title, scoring at a rate of one goal every two games.

During the club's debut Premier League season, he scored 16 times in 35 starts, including four in a single game as Portsmouth defeated Middlesbrough 5-1.

After the 2004-05 season, he joined  Middlesbrough for £7.5M and continued to rack up the goals, scoring against all the so-called Big Four teams.

His goals dried up in the second half of the 2006-07 season, however, with Boro's Premier League prospects several rungs lower than when he had first joined. Throughout the 2007 close season Yakubu was constantly linked with moves away from the Riverside and it seemed as though he had made up his mind to leave as soon as strike partner Mark Viduka was sold to Newcastle United, a move that Yakubu deemed as confirmation of Middlesbrough's lack of ambition. While the likes of Portsmouth, Manchester City and Everton were all reported to be lining up bids for the frontman, it was David Moyes who eventually won out just a week before the closure of the transfer window.

Despite his goalscoring record, his arrival at Goodison wasn't greeted with universal approval, the enormity of that transfer fee perhaps unsettling supporters who aren't used to such sums being spent by an Everton manager.

And although he scored just 10 minutes into his debut at Bolton Wanderers, some fans remained sceptical that Yakubu would make the grade at Everton, if only because Everton weren't playing to his strengths.

Yakubu is a ball-to-feet player who uses strength to turn defenders and has the explosiveness to out-run them over short distances. His first few appearances in a Blue shirt were undermined by a lack of fitness consequent low workrate and the Blues' reliance on the long ball.

But when Tim Cahill returned from long-term injury and Steven Pienaar came to life in the five-man midfield formation that the Australian suits so well, Everton suddenly blossomed into a terrific footballing side. The increase in slick passing, quick interchanges and improved throughballs suited Yakubu down to the ground and he scored a hatful of goals between October and December 2007, including a hat-trick in a 3-0 win over Fulham.

True to his reputation, Yakubu was demonstrating that even with the greater graft required by Moyes of his players, the Nigerian is a finisher and can single-handedly turn a game with the right service. 

His first season at Everton proved once again what a superb goal scorer the big Nigerian was.  Lazy?.. yes, perhaps .. more like superbly economical with the expenditure of unnecessary energy that too many Everton's labeled as laziness — who could possibly quibble about 21 goals??? When was the last time ANYONE managed that?!?!?

And so great promise for the big 2008-09 season, when Moyes would finally take the Premier League by storm... That was until he blew his Achilles tendon at the end of November, after scoring just 3 goals, and ruling him out probably until next November...

Many even wondered if he would ever fully recover from such a cruel injury.  And word is that the support he got from the club in recovering from this horrible injury wasn't what it should have been, with the club publicly saying he was overweight... it had an effect on his attitude and didn't help his recovery. He returned to training in July 2009, and was eased back into making senior appearances again in September.

At one level, it was astounding that The Yak could actually play Premier League football again after such an injury. But it had clearly affected his pace, if not his finishing, which suffered from the perennially poor final ball that seemd to be a trdemark of Everton's "best ever" midfield powerhouse.  The Big Guy was of course criticised by plenty of fans for being fat and lazy (nothing new there!) and was linked with a move to West Ham at the end of the 2009-10 season, Everton rebuffing a £5M bid and reputedly asking for £10M..

Yet he still wasn't fit to start the new season, as Moyes finally explained, describing the 27-year-old as "out of condition" at the start of the campaign, and he was still not fully fit three months after Nigeria's exit from the 2010 World Cup, but Everton's shortage of strikers has increased their reliance on the £11.25m signing from Middlesbrough.

"He would have liked the opportunity to have left," Moyes said when asked why Yakubu had not been fit to play. "But we never received an offer that was enough for him and because of that he never really got himself in the right frame of mind. But I see now that he has. Maybe it's down to the window being shut and he's back here and getting himself back in contention to play."

West Ham had a £6M bid rejected by Everton in the summer, yet followed that up with a £5M offer for a player who has struggled to regain a regular first-team place under Moyes after rupturing an achilles tendon in November 2008.

Moyes said: "I've never had any problems with Yak; I've always had a good relationship with him. I think he probably felt he wanted a change as last season we had competition for places and he was maybe thinking that he wasn't guaranteed a start here all the time.  It's part of the game but he's under contract and he couldn't have left without our say-so.  We played a part in keeping him as well.

"We said we thought Yak was worth more than we were offered.  We were offered £6M and the next offer was £5M so we made a decision to say No.  His goal-scoring record in the Premier League makes him worth more than that and we made a decision that we were not going to let him go for that price.  It was as simple as that."

But to say he was used sparingly by David Moyes is something of an understatement.  He played a bit-part on a few games in the autumn, scoring a nice goal at Stoke but he was then played less and less as a sub, the chatter being that he and Moyes had fallen out, presumably over the manager's lack of faith in him.

The loan move to Leicester in January 2011 seemed inevitable when it happened, even though it meant stepping down to the Championship... but at least Sven believed in him, and was rewarded with a return of 11 goals in 20 games.  Not bad... but not quite enough to secure promotion, however.

Surely Yakubu had played his last game for David Moyes. But a transfer was not forthcoming and he reamins on the books as Everton returned to pre-season training, when he was surprisongly named to start at Bury... and more surprisingly scored the opening goal!

The 2010-11 season started in earnest and the fans pondered which of Moyes's striking riches would be used to greatest effect. But Yakubu wasn't to be one of them, as he finally left the club for a paltry fee of £1.6M, to join Blackurn Rovers rather than Leicester City.

By Michael Kenrick and Lyndon Lloyd
Last updated July 2011