Brennan Johnson is undergoing a medical at Everton today, with Dwight McNeil heading to Crystal Palace. Grand Old Team's forum had it nine days ago - here's why it's a deal the Blues should be comfortable with.
Nine days before Fabrizio Romano typed “here we go”, the story landed on the Grand Old Team forum. On Saturday 1 August, a thread appeared in the Everton Forum opening with two words – “Welcome to Everton” – and the detail that Dwight McNeil would be heading to Crystal Palace in the other direction.
Sixty-eight pages of argument later, it’s happening. The only thing that has shifted is the money: the deal has reportedly landed as a straight swap, with Paul Joyce reporting over the weekend that no fee will move in either direction, and Romano confirming on Monday morning that both players are completing medicals today.
Johnson will become Everton’s fifth signing of the summer, following Christian Nørgaard, Hayden Hackney and the permanent arrivals of Merlin Röhl and Tyrique George. McNeil, four seasons into his Everton career, finally gets the move to Selhurst Park that fell apart in January.
It is not a deal without risk. A winger who hasn’t scored in 26 appearances for his current club rarely arrives with a fanfare. But look at it properly and there is a lot here for Everton to like.
1. This was the last window to get real value for Dwight McNeil
Let’s start by being fair to him, because McNeil deserves that much.
There were long stretches of the worst years in modern Everton history where he was one of the few players capable of producing something. The obvious reference point is Brighton away in May 2023 – two goals, two assists, player of the match, and a 5-1 win on the south coast that lifted a side with one away victory all season out of the relegation zone. There were others. A left foot that could produce a goal or a cross from nothing, in a team that offered very little else.
But that was three years ago, and the last two seasons have been a slow drift. In January he had already agreed terms with Palace, completed a medical, and was only kept at the club because the paperwork didn’t land in time on deadline day. A player who has mentally left once rarely comes all the way back.
The contract situation settles it. McNeil is into the final 12 months of his deal. Do nothing now and Everton reach January with a player they can’t sell for anything meaningful, and then June with a player they can’t sell at all. Instead, the club converts a depreciating asset into a 25-year-old international with four years left on his contract. Whatever you think of Johnson, that is good business in isolation.
2. Brennan Johnson, at his best, has already proved he can do this
The Palace half-season has done a lot of damage to how Johnson is being talked about. Rewind slightly and the picture looks very different.
He was Championship Player of the Year at Nottingham Forest in 2021/22 with 19 goals as they went up through the play-offs, then scored eight and added three assists in his first Premier League season. That was enough to persuade Tottenham to pay £47.5m for him on deadline day in 2023 – a fee Everton, who had Johnson at the top of their wishlist a year earlier when the asking price was closer to £20m, were never going to get anywhere near.
Three seasons at Spurs brought 27 goals in 107 appearances. The middle year is the one that matters: 18 goals in 51 games in 2024/25, including 11 in the Premier League from 33 appearances, and five in the Europa League run – the last of them the scruffy, priceless winner against Manchester United in Bilbao that ended Tottenham’s 17-year wait for a trophy.
That season he ranked among the very best Premier League wingers per 90 for expected goals, non-penalty xG, dribble success and duels won. This is not a player who has never been good. This is a player who was, very recently, producing at a level Everton have not had from a wide forward in a decade.
3. Sometimes a player just doesn’t fit a club – and Everton have form for spotting it
Palace paid a club-record £35m for Johnson in January, then left him on the bench for a Conference League final. Twenty-six games, no goals, two assists. It hasn’t worked. At 25-years-old – that is not the same thing as him being finished.
Everton supporters should recognise the pattern better than most. Iliman Ndiaye spent a year at Marseille looking like a £17m mistake before arriving at Goodison and becoming the most watchable player in the squad. Steven Pienaar was surplus at Borussia Dortmund inside a season. Mikel Arteta was squeezed out at Real Sociedad and arrived on loan in January 2005 as a low-risk gamble; he left as one of the best midfielders the club has had in the Premier League era.
Two of those three were Moyes signings. He has always had an eye for the player whose problem was the shirt, not the ability – and Everton’s recruitment team will have done the work on exactly why the Palace move stalled: a January arrival into a settled, well-drilled Oliver Glasner side, a change of manager, a role that never really existed for him.
Everton have wanted Johnson before. They watched him at Forest, they weren’t in a position to fund it when Spurs came calling, and they have needed a natural right-sided attacker for as long as anyone can remember. As one GOT poster put it when the thread went up, it fits the club’s habit of signing players only after four years of monitoring them. Now he arrives for a player we had to sell anyway, with no fee attached.
If it works, it is the signing of the window. If it doesn’t, Everton have lost a winger who was leaving in twelve months regardless. That is about as favourable as a risk-reward calculation gets.