Everton FC correspondent Joe Thomas shares his thoughts on the impact of Dwight McNeil and the midfielder's legacy at the club after he signed for Crystal Palace
Dwight McNeil scored some vital goals for Everton as the club battled relegation
Dwight McNeil scored some vital goals for Everton as the club battled relegation
View Image
As Dwight McNeil’s four-year connection with Everton ends, there is a danger of forgetting his impact at the club.
He spent most of the past 18 months as a peripheral figure under David Moyes. When opportunities came, they did so on the right of midfield - an awkward fit that exposed both his reliance on his left foot and, last season, the struggle of Tyler Dibling to earn the manager’s trust.
It has, therefore, been a tough period for the 26-year-old, who suffered more than any other player through Sean Dyche’s departure in January 2025. Like Dyche, McNeil is in the unfortunate position of having played an essential role during Everton’s darkest hours. He was crucial in helping the club escape one desperate relegation battle and integral to the fightback that followed the points deductions of the 2023/24 season.
That is a nadir most supporters want to forget, understandably. With it, a few of the protagonists will fall into that mix - McNeil potentially among them. While I believe the Blues will improve with the swap deal with Crystal Palace for Brennan Johnson, I believe McNeil’s exploits for the club deserve genuine recognition.
I remember when I first met McNeil. It was a glorious late summer afternoon on the south coast, where his winning goal had given Everton a 2-1 victory at Southampton under Frank Lampard.
McNeil’s goal, his first in Royal Blue, was excellent. Alex Iwobi’s cross had drifted over the head of Amadou Onana to pick out the former Burnley man at the back post. His first touch set him up to rifle the ball into the roof of the net from a tight angle, teeing up a run to the touchline and the embrace of Tom Davies (who is currently back at Finch Farm working on his fitness as he looks for a new club after leaving Sheffield United).
It was his first goal for the club he had joined a few months earlier and it clearly meant a lot to him as we spoke outside the player’s entrance at St Mary’s an hour or so later.
"That's all I want to do is just play, and I was happy to be in that starting XI,” he told me before thanking those around him for the belief they had displayed in him.
That belief meant a lot to McNeil, whose arrival was the subject of some questioning after a campaign with the Clarets that had seen him fail to score and grab just one assist.
McNeil scored again later that month, contributing to the 3-0 win over Palace that represented the high point of Lampard’s tenure at Goodison Park.
Like Everton, McNeil failed to really get going under Lampard that season. For the midfielder, that all changed when his former boss Dyche arrived the following January amid the utter chaos that engulfed the club.
There could be few better illustrations of McNeil’s change in fortunes than Dyche’s first game. It was the winger whose corner was headed in by James Tarkowski for a morale-boosting 1-0 win over Arsenal.
In that first season, McNeil ended up being involved in almost one of every three goals scored by the Blues. Seven were scored by him and he created three. The team only hit 34 goals in the entirety of that Premier League season.
The obvious highlight was his disputed hat-trick in the 5-1 win at Brighton that shocked the footballing world and kept Everton’s fate in their own hands. I say disputed because he has officially been denied a hat-trick by one of the goals being credited as an own goal. But in terms of results, that was one of the club’s most important and he was man of the match.
In his second season, McNeil had nine goal involvements - so was central to one in every four of the 40 Everton scored in the league. That included providing the corner from which Dominic Calvert-Lewin set the Blues on the pathway to victory over Liverpool.
In 2024/25 he picked up 12 goal involvements despite missing four months of the season with a knee injury. His four goals included two off the bench to seal a comeback win at home to Palace under Dyche. Maybe his form against them is one of the reasons they want him at Selhurst Park.
McNeil is not Iliman Ndiaye and he is not Jack Grealish - he is not a player who will get you off your seat and, as Everton have moved away from the depths of despair they occupied until fairly recently, attacking midfield is an obvious place to look for growth and excitement.
McNeil has also not been helped by the insistence on playing him on the right - though for all the frustration that he may have been holding up Dibling’s development there at the end of last season, his run of games did coincide with the form that carried the Blues to the cusp of the Champions League places - he came in for the win at Newcastle United and stayed through beyond the thrashing of Chelsea, including the narrow defeat at Arsenal in which he twice came close to scoring.
I do think it is clear a parting of ways for both parties would now be useful. Certainly, if Moyes only considers him on the right, then Johnson is a much better fit. This looks like a good deal for Everton for a player who has lost his place at the club and now finds himself as a fringe player who, when he does get opportunities, gets them out of position.
But while it has been a long road to get to this place, an 18-month period of reduced opportunities, I do think McNeil deserves credit for the significant role he played during a terrible time for Everton. I hope he gets it.