Everton's new club-record signing Gylfi Sigurdsson unfazed by price tag as midfielder puts pressure on himself to succeed following £45m switch

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Gylfi Sigurdsson is joshing with Ronald Koeman about which of them was better at free kicks – 'the keepers weren't as good back then; it's a close call,' he says - and generally looking as if butter wouldn't melt. 

But there is steel behind the facade: 10 long and sometimes bruising years in English football have seen to that.

When Everton's £45m signing last made a big money move, to Tottenham in 2012, things didn't work and within two years he was escaping to the sanctuary of Swansea City. 

Everton's new £45m signing Gylfi Sigurdsson spoke to the media on Friday about his move

Sigurdsson says he is unfazed by the club-record fee and is looking forward to getting started

It leaves unanswered the question of whether he can deliver in a searing spotlight. 'What was I: 20, 21?' he says of the Tottenham spell. 

'So 'I'm far from being the same player now that I was back then. I wanted the chance to go back to Swansea and play football again. I wanted to use my time as a professional, because your career is really short.'

There is a pattern, here. He was equally dissatisfied to find himself playing reserve team games at Reading, having left Iceland as a 19-year-old in 2008. 

'I don't think the first team players wanted to be there so these games were not really very good.' 

So he went on loan to Shrewsbury and found himself playing in Accrington on a bitter October night in 2008. 'It was freezing and it was raining,' he recalls. 

'That was definitely tough. It was 0-0 or 1-1.' Sigurdsson's side lost 2-1, actually: they were two goals down inside six minutes.

Sigurdsson says pressure to succeed is healthy and he wants to help continue the club's rise

The former Tottenham midfielder told the media that he is ready for the stiff challenge ahead 

The Icelandic midfielder reflected fondly on his very first experience of Goodison Park

For a player whose journey within these shores started so early, the big money move has come relatively late, though his indefatigability is in keeping with the spirit of that Iceland team which finished off England in Nice, a year or so back. 

Sigurdsson was at the fulcrum of the Lars Lagerback side which did for Wayne Rooney and Co. Lagerback, who plays him in central midfield, describes him as 'one of the best team players I have worked with.'

He's flirted with Merseyside twice before: most recently in the summer of 2012 when he fatefully rejected the advances of Brendan Rodgers and chose Spurs over Liverpool, but also in September 2001 when as a 12-year-old he landed two weeks' training at Everton. 

Sigurdsson's recall of this visit is vague – it wasn't a trial, he says – but he wound up as ball boy for West Ham's visit to Goodison Park and definitely threw a ball back to Paulo di Canio during a 5-0 home win.

Sigurdsson said he may not be ready to play 90 minutes but says he has trained well for weeks

The 27-year-old revealed that it may be a case of starting with 45 minutes on Monday night

BACK IN BLUE...  

The picture on the right (below), which was taken in 2001, shows the Everton new boy outside Goodison Park's Dixie Dean statue wearing Toffees colours.

It has now emerged Sigurdsson trained for a week with the club, got to be a ball boy at Goodison Park and later went with Everton to Germany for a tournament.

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The player's brother, Olafur, this week tweeted an image of the young Sigurdsson during the visit, posing in front of the Dixie Dean statue in an Everton sweat shirt twice his size. 

'I think it was probably just a training kit or something I had to be wearing when I was arrived at the stadium as a ball boy,' he says. 

'I did develop physically until quite late so I was quite small and skinny. That kit was probably extra small but it was still too big for me.'

A tour of the city's sites seems to have followed. He has a photograph of himself in front of the iconic 1960s St John's Beacon tower, which offer panoramic views across the place, and promises to dig out more from the albums.

There will be little time for settling in on this occasion. The price tag carries monumental expectation, as does Koeman's outlay on nine new signings. 

There's a hum of anticipation about Everton, to which Wayne Rooney's arrival has also contributed. But even Koeman admits ahead of Monday's match at Manchester City that embedding 'seven or eight' is harder than 'one or two.'

The club are relatively wealthy with their Romelu Lukaku money and it has taken Sigurdsson's arrival to see them pay out more than they have received in this window. 

Sigurdsson was paraded in front of the delighted Everton crowd against Hajduk Split

The club's new record signing applauds the Gwladys Street End ahead of Thursday's first leg

But their newest recruit was at Tottenham in the summer of 2013, when the club made such a mess of spending the £85m Gareth Bale income. 

One of the £45m questions is how Rooney will fit in with Sigurdsson, his Euro 2016 nemesis. The club captain has that tendency to drift into the No 10 spot which Sigurdsson will look to occupy. 

It is a partnership which may take time to develop, though the Icelander is unlikely to start at Manchester City on Monday.

He does not wear the look of a player who will flinch, though. His determination to make this move happen led him to drop out of Swansea's pre-season tour of the United States, much to the club's surprise. 

'There was maybe no point in flying out there just to fly back the day after,' he reflects. 

'But then that was kind of the story of the summer. It was difficult sometimes mentally to finally get this over the line. It's not up to me what the clubs paid for me. I put the pressure on myself. That's all I need. That's all I focus on.'

Ronald Koeman has landed one of his primary summer transfer targets at a premium price