There’s no question that every player who donned a Royal Blue jersey — or a white one, a pink one, or a yellow one! — during the nerve-shredding period between 2022 and 2024 played at least some part in preserving Everton Football Club’s long-standing top-flight status.
Some played outsized roles, however. Jordan Pickford, perhaps more than anybody else, will go down in the annals of Blues history for his heroic exploits; Richarlison and Dominic Calvert-Lewin scored priceless goals to earn crucial points; while the indefatigable Abdoulaye Doucouré was a vital source of energy, running and pressing behind the striker.
One more name to add to the list is Dwight McNeil, who joined Everton in the wake of the first of the more recent great escapes from relegation in 2022 when he was signed by Frank Lampard and then-sporting director, Kevin Thelwell.
Still just 21, McNeil had demonstrated his keen eye for goal in the 2020/21 Covid season when he lashed home a stunner from 25 yards for Burnley as the Clarets beat Carlo Ancelotti’s Everton 2–1 at Goodison Park. The Toffees drafted him in from Turf Moor for an initial £15m.
The early months of his career on Merseyside were inauspicious but by the end of the traumatic 2022/23 campaign, he had emerged as one of the most effective members of the team and top scorer for the season with seven goals. His first two — a winner at Southampton and the third goal in a 3-0 victory over Crystal Palace — came in two of Lampard’s only three victories before the Londoner was sacked by Farhad Moshiri in January 2023.
The appointment of Sean Dyche as the replacement manager reunited McNeil with the man who had blooded him at Burnley’s as a raw teenager and had eventually embedded him in the Clarets’ senior team. In all, McNeil played in 36 of Everton’s 38 Premier League games that season and was virtually ever-present after Dyche took over.
And, after bagging the winner against Brentford in March, a lovely, crisp left-footed drive across the goalkeeper, and bagging twice more in worrying defeats to Fulham and Newcastle, Dwight had a night for the ages in the early May 2023 as the Toffees pulled off a Monday Night Miracle on the south coast when they thrashed Europe-chasing Brighton 5-1 at the American Express Stadium to take a giant step towards safety.
It was McNeil’s chip towards the back post after driving forward from inside his own half that Doucouré unerringly volleyed home to put Everton 2-0 up inside half an hour. And it was his low cross from the byline that deflected in off goalkeeper, Jason Steele, to make it 3-0 seven minutes later.
In the second half, the visitors continued their rout, McNeil collecting Alex Iwobi’s threaded pass in behind the defence and leaving Steele on his backside with a feint inside before shuffling the ball over the line all with his left foot.
Who else but McNeil rounded off the scoring to kill off any minuscule hopes of a late comeback by the Seagulls, surging away onto Amadou Onana’s ball before hammering emphatically inside the near post from just inside the penalty area.
That performance illustrated what he was capable of when at this very best but the Rochdale-born winger’s career has been riddled with inconsistency. Once he had recovered from ankle injury at the start of the campaign, Dwight played in every league game of the following season, weighing in with goals in home and away victories over Nottingham Forest but his output was lower in 2023/24.
His 2024/25 season, one which saw Dyche depart midway through, was wrecked by a serious knee injury and he has battled to gain a foothold in the first team ever since under David Moyes.
Though blessed with that wonderful left foot, which makes him a threat from set-pieces and striking from distance, and possessing the kind of vision that prompted Dyche to experiment with him in the No 10 role, McNeil is painfully one-footed, lacking in pace and frustratingly inconsistent.
By the time Jack Grealish and Tyler Dibling had arrived at Bramley-Moore Dock last year, it looked as though McNeil had fallen to sixth or seventh in the pecking order for wide players at Everton and it felt like only a matter of time before he moved on.
That time has, of course, now come and he has made a switch to Crystal Palace just months after the same club broke his heart by pulling out of a £20m deal to sign him before the transfer deadline. A move to Selhurst Park had not only offered him the chance at a new challenge but also the promise of European football. Unfortunately, a last-second change of heart by the South London club left him in limbo before they returned this week with a fresh approach.
An unusual straight swap deal has seen McNeil join the Eagles while Brennan Johnson, a player equally out of favour at Selhurst Park, comes the other way. Both players are desperately in need of a fresh start; as such, the arrangement very much suits all parties.
Although quiet and unassuming, Dwight always conducted himself well and played a hugely important role in ensuring that Everton remained a Premier League outfit in 2023, while also helping the club climb away from danger in 2024 after the dual points deductions had plunged the back into a relegation fight that season.
He surely leaves Everton, with best wishes and the thanks of all Blues supporters for his contribution during some harrowing times.
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