When David Moyes returned to Everton in January last year to begin his rescue act of the club he had previously managed for 11 years, even his biggest detractors noticed a change in his demeanour. He was, quite evidently, happy to back at his spiritual home but he also seemed lighter, more jovial and easy-going.
Initially, that appeared to be reflected on the pitch. The home fixture against Aston Villa came too soon for his “new manager bounce” to take effect but the home clash with Tottenham that followed four days later felt like a revelation.
With poise and a deft touch, Dominic Calvert-Lewin put the Toffees ahead; Iliman Ndiaye cut through the Spurs defence with ease before smashing his shot into the roof of the net; and Archie Gray’s own goal off James Tarkowski’s header back across the six-yard box had Everton 3-0 up and flying.
Having held off Spurs’s late fightback, Everton went on a nine-game unbeaten run that included a victory at Brighton and 4-0 hammering of Leicester. The millstone of Sean Dyche had been cast aside and Moyes was showing signs that in all those years spent away from Goodison Park at Manchester United, Real Sociedad, Sunderland and West Ham he had evolved and grown as a coach.
When the team finished the campaign with three successive victories, optimism was high that, with the first phase of a required squad rebuild over the coming summer, 2025/26 could finally see the Blues challenging in the right half of the table.
After an erratic first half of the campaign and a near-crippling injury crisis, that is what Moyes was able to do. Since picking up a surprise win at Aston Villa in mid-January and right up to last weekend’s infuriating draw at Crystal Palace, Everton bounced between 8th and 10th place, dipping to 11th just once after becoming the only team not named Wolves to lose to relegation-threatened West Ham four weeks ago.
The comprehensive demolition of Chelsea on 21st March seemed to be the moment where the Toffees’ quest to accelerate their recovery under The Friedkin Group had crystallised into a realistic push for one of the Champions, Europa or Conference Leagues.
Throughout much of the campaign, however, the underlying numbers have painted an ominous picture, suggesting that the team’s relatively high league position had been founded on a dogged, low-risk defensive posture married with a reliance on success in transition and individual brilliance. Everton excelled in patches during games, rarely putting in 90-minute displays, and were, on the whole, out-performing their xGA (expected goals against) while leaning heavily on key moments — Dewsbury-Hall’s winners at Old Trafford and Craven Cottage, Jack Grealish’s deflected goal at Bournemouth, as examples.
You could perhaps count on three fingers the number of times the Blues have put in anything close to a complete performance over the course of the season and the regression to the mean we’ve watched unfold in recent weeks has been painful. Just when Moyes should have been galvanising his troops and using all of his extensive experience to sustain a concerted push for Europe, the team’s form has fallen apart.
Instead of exhibiting the expansion of his footballing outlook and the extent of his evolution as a coach that was hinted on his return, Moyes increasingly looks to be retreating further and further within himself; his stubborn nature has intensified rather than eased; any flexibility giving way to rigid, almost dogmatic adherence to the same systems and same personnel even while the side has been screaming out for change.
All the while, in contrast to his more amenable disposition when he first arrived back, his interviews and press conferences in recent weeks have become increasingly sullen, dismissive and defensive as his team’s form has collapsed.
Mitigating circumstances weighed against a wide-open target
It’s been spelled out ad nauseam that after three years of points deductions, worrying takeover sagas and close calls with relegation, Evertonians would have done almost anything for a season of boring mid-table mediocrity this time around.
Over the course of the campaign, though, the objectives and what might be possible have shifted. Having just survived the drop themselves in 2014/15, Leicester City probably didn’t have finishing in the top half in mind the following season let alone causing the biggest upset in the history of the English game; likewise Nottingham Forest, who finished below the Blues in 2023/24, couldn’t have conceived of spending so much of the next campaign in the top four. Things change, opportunities open up and they are there to be grabbed.
Europe wasn’t a goal that was spoken about much out loud from Everton at the start of 2025/26 but both Moyes and Kieran Dewsbury-Hall admitted at certain times that the manager had held conversations with the team spelling out what would be required in terms of points from each block of matches on the fixture list. Heading into that unwanted (and ultimately lethal) three-week hiatus in late March and early April, the door was very open, as it was at every turn until the closing stages of Sunday’s pitiful showing against Sunderland.
It is still mathematically possible for the club to sneak into the Conference League but it is highly unlikely — it would take Everton winning at Tottenham, Brentford losing at Liverpool (with the combined scores overturning a goal difference of five), Chelsea not beating but then drawing at Sunderland and Fulham and Newcastle also sharing the spoils at Craven Cottage. For all intents and purposes, the train to the Continent has left the station where the Toffees are concerned and it will go down as a colossal missed opportunity.
Moyes would, no doubt, point to areas of mitigation. Just as he was with Grealish, Moyes has been hit hard by the loss of Jarrad Branthwaite, a player whose importance to the team is almost incalculable. He hasn’t been without options, though; he has just steadfastly refused to use them.
Last season, the Scot hit upon a defensive formation that initially worked and had the added benefit of finding a role for Jake O’Brien who had been almost completely ignored by Dyche. It was a temporary means to an end that added defensive solidity while giving Vitalii Mykolenko greater license to get forward and results justified the decision.
This season, however, it quickly outlived it usefulness; many observers have been imploring the manager to ditch the experiment and try the deployment of a natural full-back instead (as he was forced to do around the turn of the year with Nathan Patterson when he had no other option), a move that would have allowed O’Brien to move inside to his favoured central-defensive role in the when Branthwaite was missing.
That would have precluded the use of the Tarkowski-Keane axis that has been gallingly vulnerable to conceding goals and Moyes has left himself open to valid criticism for not breaking up a partnership that anyone could see was a significant weak point in Everton’s armoury.
Further forward, he has had no answer to the drop off in the form and effectiveness of Ndiaye and Dewsbury-Hall, with potential avenues to mix things up ignored as younger players have stagnated on the bench.
Chief Executive Officer, Angus Kinnear said in his programme notes back in September 2025 that, “Charly Alcaraz, Thierno Barry, Adam Aznou, Mark Travers, Tyler Dibling and Merlin Röhl are some of the most exciting young talents in European football, with great potential for the future.
“I have no doubt in their ability to make a positive contribution this season, and that their contribution will only grow over time. Their transition will be accelerated under the guidance of David Moyes. His desire to champion young talent remains as strong as ever.”
A penny for his thoughts today as Aznou’s reward for winning a potentially vital penalty in the FA Cup tie against Sunderland was to not play again this season, Röhl was frozen out for three months after a swashbuckling outing at Villa Park, Alcaraz has barely featured, and Dibling has been given a solitary minute off the bench in almost three-and-a-half months.
Everything about Moyes’s approach this season, from his team selections and tactics down to set-pieces and the clockwork nature of many of his substitutions, has become predictable and formulaic. There’s seldom any imagination or inventiveness in what Everton do and it has made them easy to nullify and contain.
On rare occasions, the team has found a synergy, an energy and some explosiveness, as they did against Nottingham Forest last December, at home to Chelsea and Manchester City and away at Newcastle in recent weeks, but it’s been frustratingly fleeting; for the most part, they have reflected the staid character of their manager.
What do TFG want Everton to be?
With all of the above in mind, many Evertonians have been desperate for an inkling of The Friedkin Group’s longer-term vision for Everton Football Club. The first priority was, quite obviously, avoiding relegation, which Moyes had effectively achieved within a month of coming on board last year, and then a period of stability through this season; which, again, the 63-year-old was largely able to provide through the end of 2025.
Given that the plan when their takeover went through was to have Dyche see out the remainder of his contract before taking the next step forward last summer, had TFG had their way, it’s likely they’d have preferred to have secured Moyes on a shorter-term, 18-month deal. The Scot, however, had them over a barrel given Everton’s need and the hierarchy no doubt acquiesced to his demands on that basis.
Had things played out the way they originally planned, what sort of coaching setup, what kind of manager, and what sort of footballing outfit did they envision for Everton for the future?
Under Kinnear they have dispensed with the sporting director framework, opting for a flatter structure and Moyes has inevitably, as is his wont, become central to recruitment. As such, he bears as much blame as anyone for last summer’s transfer business which resulted in Dewsbury-Hall being the only new regular to the team that Moyes initially inherited from Dyche and those aforementioned young players watching on from the bench for weeks on end while players with little future at the club — like Dwight McNeil — were routinely selected ahead of them.
Nevertheless, while the doubts stack up in some supporters’ minds about the wisdom of keeping Moyes on for another year — let alone the notion that he might be offered new terms when his current contract expires — in his message to supporters before the Sunderland match this weekend, one that ended a largely miserable first season of home fixtures at Bramley-Moore Dock on the sourest of notes, Kinnear very much plumped for maintaining the status quo in the interests of stability.
“As we look back on the season, we can be ‘happily dissatisfied’,” he wrote, coining a term he may quickly come to regret. “The progress is clear but we have not achieved anything yet. David Moyes … continues to drive standards at Finch Farm, and be the architect of the team spirit which has been at the heart of this season’s progress. Whilst the media and other fanbases clamour for frequent managerial change, we value the stability that David brings and the ability this gives the whole Club to plan for the long term.”
To many, particularly those looking at what has played out at Tottenham, West Ham and, to a lesser degree, Nottingham Forest and how they echo Everton’s own experiences of chopping and changing managers, that will sound like a pragmatic strategy.
To others, who acknowledge that Moyes raises the floor but, crucially, lowers the ceiling, it might smack of stability for stability’s sake in a league that doesn’t generally reward you for standing still. After all, was not the root of the Blues’ problems — and those of the Hammers, Forest and Spurs, for that matter — hiring the wrong managers in the first place?
If the plan does involve Moyes seeing out the remainder of his contract, the sense now is that it would simply be in the interests of stability and pragmatism rather than ambition because there is little evidence now of actual progress having been made or that he is the man to take Everton to the next level.
As things stand after that abysmal performance against Sunderland, we’re currently only one point better off than last season having spent £140m last summer. We’re no closer to knowing if Alcaraz can play a consistent part, if George is a worthwhile permanent acquisition or if either Dibling or Aznou, who have lost a year of crucial development, will ever pass muster.
Again, these past few weeks were an inflection point where, having negotiated a winter injury crisis and got the squad back mostly fit, you would expect a manager of Moyes’s vast experience to be able to marshal his troops and harness a rare moment in an unusually tight Premier League to gatecrash the European places.
Instead, he has been found desperately wanting at the crucial moment and often out-manoeuvred by younger, more dynamic coaches who have taken on board the need to be able to control the ball and take the game to opponents when required. In an echo of his last few months at West Ham, his side are leaking goals at an alarming rate.
Moyes has blamed the Blues’ poor home record of just six wins on “new stadium syndrome” but it has largely been an extension of the final year at Goodison Park when Everton won only five times under his predecessor who proved similarly unable to instil in his charges a coherent and reliable passing game.
Retaining Moyes for another year raises the question of whether it make sense to hand him a transfer war chest of a similar size to last summer’s if he is going to retain the final say and target more experienced players for the here-and-now over developing youth, all while showing little interest in or ability to experiment or make use of his full squad.
Is there wisdom in allowing this manager to continue the construction of a team that could well end up being taken over by a different coach in 12 months’ time? If that is, indeed, the plan and the man who fits your parameters for an Everton manager is available now — or could be tempted to the club — why not try and hire him now?
Succession?
There, then, is the next burning question: What profile of coach or manager aligns with the owners’ strategy in a league and domestic game that has demonstrably changed during Moyes's long career?
Andoni Iraola has captured the imagination for Bournemouth’s fearless, high-intensity football that blends youth with experience, an emphasis on fitness, and the Spaniard’s own game-management expertise.
However, Iraola has benefited on the south coast from a robust and proven recruitment structure under technical director Simon Francis that has allowed him to fulfil a focused brief as head coach. Whether he fits a model at Everton that has been geared towards more of a traditional, all-round manager figure in the Moyes mould is unclear. He would also place heavy demands on the recruitment team to deliver players more in keeping with his rapid style of play.
Two other men whose stocks are rapidly rising, Sebastian Hoeneß and Cesc Fabregas, have been working at Stuttgart and Como under sporting directors Thomas Hitzlsperger (formerly of Everton, of course) and Carlalberto Ludi respectively. So would the same question apply when it comes to their suitability to the setup at Finch Farm?
Or would someone like Oliver Glasner, who has been operating in a more recognisable managerial role since Dougie Freedman left Crystal Palace earlier this year, be a more natural fit? The Austrian has done a remarkable job at Selhurst Park and is on course to deliver the Eagles a second trophy in the space of 12 months (with the qualification to the Europa League that will go with it for sure this time) but there are question marks over his temperament and “stickability” given how often he has tended to move on.
All of this speculation is moot without knowing TFG’s overarching philosophy and plan for Everton on the one hand and in the absence on the other of any desire on the hierarchy’s part to make a change in the hot-seat this summer.
What appears very likely, even if the Blues have slumped to 14th when all is said and done this season, is that Moyes will be kept on. Kinnear certainly appeared to paint himself into a corner on that score with his comments this past weekend. Perhaps the wily old Glaswegian will mastermind a summer recruitment drive that addresses the key shortcomings in his squad and that most of the solutions can, as he said on Sunday, be found in simply bringing in better players.
Perhaps Everton will be fortunate enough to see another campaign where teams like Spurs, Newcastle, Chelsea and Liverpool falter and that the door to Europe will be as wide open as it has been this time around. History suggests it’s unlikely and that the competition in the top half next season is going to be fierce.
What is undeniable in the fallout after the Sunderland debacle is that some pro-Moyes Evertonians have had their faith in the boss tested while many of those who had been sitting on the fence have jumped off it to join those who are grateful for the job he has done in steadying the ship but are now hankering for change and a new direction.
One of the problems, as noted in a previous exploration on these pages of Moyes’s performance, is that Evertonians had 11 years between 2002 and 2013 to form opinions of him, with one of the charges against him being that he was never able to break the glass ceiling, either to the top four (as it was then) or to win any silverware.
He may have landed a trophy with West Ham but Everton’s mystifyingly lethargic run-in to this season, that has seen Europe go from likely in March to almost certainly out of the question as we sit today, has served only to reinforce long-held doubts about the veteran manager’s ability to deliver sustained success. You can see the appeal in a fresh direction, more in keeping with the comparatively smaller clubs that are now out-performing us, even if it inevitably comes with risk.
The question then remains: will The Friedkin Group read the room? And if they do elect to stick rather than twist, can David Moyes win the doubters over again and deliver European football in the next 12 months?
Either no responses have been submitted so far to this article or previous submissions are being assessed for inclusion.
Only registered users of Evertonia can participate in discussions.
Or Join as Evertonia Member — it takes just a few minutes and will allow you to post your thoughts on artices across the site.