Precious Stones: Why he's the best since Rio

So Moyes went to Oakwell. When he signed Joleon Lescott from the Championship he watched him 22 times to make certain he could handle the Premier League. John Stones? He only needed to see him once. “He looked this young, thin boy, but he had a natural comfort on the ball, a comfort that didn’t look coached or taught but was just something he’d got. You could see he’d need to get stronger and work on his speed, but his ability to take the ball was special,” Moyes recalls.

“It’s something you don’t see a lot in British defenders and that’s what made him stand out. He’s the most comfortable English central defender on the ball I’ve seen since Rio Ferdinand. He reads the game and he’s calm in possession, a natural footballer. He has an ability to not look under any pressure.”

Stones, Moyes predicts, “will be an England defender for a long time”. He’s 21, and was 18 when he left Barnsley, his local club, for Goodison Park. A fee of £3m is regularly quoted, but Moyes, in his last transfer before leaving for Manchester United, handed over £1.25m for the new Rio.

“I have to give credit to my recruitment department at Everton,” Moyes says. “They were always looking exhaustively in the lower leagues. We always looked for British players, English talent, because that formed such a huge part of the identity of the club and the teams I built.

“We had John watched from the start of that season and the reports always came back positively and, because the deal was at the lower end of the financial scale, I was trusting my scouts anyway. But when I saw John for myself I didn’t take much convincing.”

Now Stones is being eyed again. Chelsea, throughout the transfer window, have worked on trying to prise him away and, on Monday, made a £30m offer for the player. It was rejected, just like two previous bids. A final offer is imminent and it will be in excess of the £31m that United paid Southampton for Luke Shaw last year, the record fee for a British defender. It could be as high as £40m once everything is included — though informed sources say £35m, guaranteed, is what Everton need to come to the table.

Manchester’s United and City had shown interest too, though it has cooled with both clubs busy on other transfers. Roberto Martinez, Everton’s manager, rejected stories that if Stones asked to leave he could force a move and he does not want to lose such a talent. Martinez, at least off the pitch, is a pragmatist though: he has targets in mind in case Stones departs, chiefly Swansea’s Ashley Williams, is close to completing a deal for Ramiro Funes Mori, the 24-year-old Argentinian-American centre-back, and has signed Mason Holgate, 18, also from Barnsley.

Aside from composure on a pitch, composure as a person is the thing that strikes people in football about Stones. Young players at the centre of transfer sagas tend to start jettisoning toys from prams — or get agents or media mates to do it for them. Not Stones. He’ll play against City today, uncomplaining, unfazed. Being too stressed by speculation to play? That’s for the Raheem Sterling and David de Gea.

“That’s down to him as a person and he’s got good friends around him here. We are a tight unit as a club,” says Phil Jagielka. “It’s a test and if he plays well in the next few games, it can only put him in a better light. He’s showing his maturity. If John was to spit the dummy and refuse to play that puts question marks up against your character. I can tell you now his character is fantastic, and he’s doing the right things to become the great centre-half we all know he can be.”

Jagielka and Stones are close. While at Sheffield United, Jagielka lived just outside Penistone, the South Yorkshire market town where Stones was raised and went to grammar school. “I used to see him around a bit,” Jagielka said. Stones was a promising, but not outstanding, talent then.

At Barnsley, he was even kept back a year and made to play with younger boys, before a growth spurt which, in Stones’ own words, was “a life changer. My size changed and, with that, I think my mentality changed too.” Strikers, selfish creatures that they are, can thrive in pairings even when they don’t like each other, but it helps if defensive partners are friends.

“John does get a telling off from me from time to time, but handles that in the right way,” Jagielka said. “He can give me a bollocking too and I would be disappointed if he didn’t. There’s trust on both sides.

“You can have a selfish partnership of big, fast, strong, good defenders. But one of you is going to make a mistake and if the guy next to him isn’t willing to help him out... maybe putting himself in a bad situation to do so... It’s like ‘if I sprint back here I could make a mug of myself, or I could jog back and not get anywhere near [the attacker]’. We don’t have those.”

The duo might need all their amity to get by against Sergio Aguero who, Jagielka feels, is underrated. “He’s scored a lot of goals while [Luis] Suarez and others have got the plaudits. It’s phenomenal what he has done. He’s strong, his thighs are massive for the size of him, he has great balance, can turn on a sixpence and, most importantly of all, he backs himself.”

Aguero is also facing a thoroughbred. “As a young boy, John took some risks, but his decision making got better and better and we played him at right-back for experience,” Moyes said. “He will need time and, at his age, he’ll make mistakes. There’ll be days he does things that he will learn from, so people need to be patient. But England could have a top, top centre-back if he’s allowed to develop.

“The way football is getting played now, the centre-backs have more touches than midfielders do. It’s often their job to start the moves and John’s attributes are perfect for that. And he’s got a good personality. He’s calm in himself and gets good support from his family. The first day he came in and said to our fitness guys “Whatever I have to do to get into the first team, I’ll do it”. He immediately impressed you as a likeable boy with a great aptitude for learning. Self-development is a vital quality in a young player.”

All parties involved expect Stones’ transfer saga to drag on until the end of the window. Kenwright has had to fold before, when the bidding for a prize asset has reached a certain point. Jagielka is desperate for Stones to stay, but expresses this with a certain sadness: he has been at his club long enough to know the realities when it comes to Everton and money. Though, once upon a time, not having the cash led them to a world-beater, for £1.25m.