Comparisons to Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard do not leave too many players looking great.Ross Barkley, however, was paraded as a picture of wonder. A player who has the world at his feet. His following innocuous, dry performance saw him hooked at half-time against Sunderland, with his team proceeding to play with a great deal more freedom after his removal.The Everton midfielder has suffered a period of worrying – if explainable – stagnation. Roberto Martinez’s Everton tenure became a horror show for many at the club, as frustration rang out across Goodison with erring familiarity. Barkley was arguably the epitome of this frustration, this team. So much promise, such potential, but too often failing to deliver when most needed, or on a consistent basis.His career numbers add up well, but this season is time for the England international to become far more than a player with promise. He must show his worth in the biggest games and produce the goods for Ronald Koeman throughout the season…

As Koeman showed at the Stadium of Light on Monday, he is not afraid to drop a player even as popular as Barkley. Gerard Deulofeu – who suffers similar consistency issues – was his replacement and he turned the game, immediately looking more in tune with the play of Yannick Bolasie, Romelu Lukaku and Kevin Mirallas.

Too often anonymous, too regularly making the wrong decisions, Barkley is far from the finished product. His quality is without doubt, but there is a concern around his pattern of development. The failings of his game that were prevalent during his breakthrough campaign in 2013/14 are not vanishing, or even reducing. Creatively, he has seen slight improvements, but the benefit of Romelu Lukaku’s arrival has not been as a significant as many would have imagined.

Now only a few months from his 23rd birthday, Barkley must see this season as the most important in his career to date. If he is to get near the heights of Lampard and Gerrard, Everton’s frustrating midfield powerhouse has to show some signs of notable improvement this year. Koeman will, with the other attacking options at his disposal, not afford Barkley the same sort of patience that other managers may have done.

That disappointing display against Sunderland is not a one-off, it is a representation of a player that must finally push on to the ‘next level’ in his career. Barkley has all the tools to dominate the majority of Premier League sides and this is his year for him to prove that he is not going to be next failure of the English hype.

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