Evan Ferguson was delighted to learn that he had earned comparisons with England top scorer Wayne Rooney after scoring in the home match against Fulham.
The 19-year-old’s 26th-minute strike made him the first teenager since Rooney in 2005 to score ten Premier League goals in a calendar year.
And he agreed that his low left-foot shot past Fulham goalkeeper Bernd Leno had put him in very good company.
“Yes, not bad, not bad,” he said. “Especially as a kid looking up to him and watching Wayne Rooney play so that’s not bad news.”
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Rooney, he said, had been something of a role model for a player trying to break into a Premier League first team while still a teenager.
“A little bit, yes. Obviously just seeing the way he was and seeing his documentary, how young he was and what he did at that age, it shows it’s not impossible, you know what I mean? People think it’s impossible but it’s just a part of the game."
The good news for Evan is that Albion still have nine Premier League games to play over the two remaining months of 2023. That gives him a great chance to beat Rooney’s total of eleven in 2005, which he scored in his first full calendar year after leaving Everton for Manchester United.
“Yes, hopefully,” he said. “I’ll try.”
He might already have surpassed that total but for an illness that laid him low soon after his headline-grabbing hat-trick against Newcastle United in September.
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“It was very frustrating for me, especially coming off the back of that. Having a bit of an injury, then coming back and then having an illness, but there’s not really a lot you can do about it.
“The illness took me out for a little bit and it was just trying to get your feet back and get your lungs going again. I just woke up one morning and didn’t feel great and I had it for a few days, nearly a week or so. But I’m all right now.”
That treble against the Magpies was widely praised by pundits including Alan Shearer, while in Ireland he had already been spoken of as a key player in the national team’s future. But Evan shrugs off any suggestion that he might be feeling any pressure to live up to the hype.
“I think it’s good [praise from Shearer]. You’d rather be good than bad! So it’s not a bad thing, but it’s all just talk, isn’t it? You can only do what you do on the pitch and they can only comment on what you do on the pitch. So whether you do good or bad, I’m sure they’ll say.
“I think it’s different if it’s Ireland. I think they’re calling out for someone so they try to put their dependence on someone, and I think it happened to end up being me.
“But we’ve got a good team and a young team and we’re only going to get better as a group because we’re young players. Hopefully in a few years we’ll be back to getting into tournaments and qualifying.”
Evan and the rest of the squad now have the unusual luxury of a few days’ rest before turning their attention to Saturday’s visit to Goodison Park. But he admits to enjoying the crowded schedule that Europa League involvement has brought this season.
“Yes, enjoying it of course,” he said. “It’s busy and that’s how we like it to be, trying not to dwell on the games. We have a week now to prepare for Everton next week and we’ll see how it goes.”