Almost incredibly, either Jake O’Brien or Merlin Röhl will line up in the right-back spot on Saturday afternoon, that despite Everton's hierarchy having had 18 months to address what is a glaring problem
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In five days’ time, Everton will kick off their 2026/27 Premier League season. They will almost certainly do so again without a natural right-back in their starting XI. If you’d said that would be the case to an Evertonian 12 months ago, when the Blues lined up at Leeds United with centre-half Jake O’Brien on one side of defence and midfielder James Garner as an emergency left-back on the other, the chances are they’d have laughed and said something to the effect of, “sounds about right!”
Which rather sums up where this football club continues to be despite all the steady progress made by The Friedkin Group over the past 18 months. The response to the assertion that Everton would have failed — again! — to address their perennial problem at right-back despite having two transfer windows to do it should be incredulity but it’s so very on-brand that no one would be surprised that they haven’t.
As ever with discussions like this, it’s important to acknowledge that, as a club, Everton are in a very different place to where they were two years ago and that is down to the takeover by TFG. With finishing the fit-out of Hill Dickinson Stadium (not to mention landing the legal firm as sponsor of the new ground), steadying the finances and improving commercial performance, the club’s financial picture is healthier than it has been for five years under the Texan firm's stewardship.
On the pitch, the ownership have been assembling a squad of talented young players, accented by key acquisitions to add experience where needed, with what appears to be an eye trained on the horizon beyond the current incumbent of the managerial hot seat's tenure.
For the second season running Everton will begin a new season with a fair amount of optimism, albeit for slightly different reasons. Last year it was the new stadium, the illusion of a new, more expansive David Moyes, and the arrivals of the likes of Jack Grealish and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall; this time it’s the pre-season form of a number of those younger players like Harrison Armstrong, Tyler Dibling and Thierno Barry coupled with the signings of Hayden Hackney and Christian Nørgaard.
There’s also a strong — albeit diminishing — chance that the club will sign a right-back before the transfer window closes on 1st September but, even if one were to arrive in the coming days before the kick-off against Crystal Palace, it’s almost certain that the new arrival won’t be in the side that faces the Eagles. It’s just not the Moyes way to throw a new arrival straight into the team.
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Which means that regardless of all the mitigation, the reasons for why and the excuses, Everton’s quest to find a new first-choice right-back has, indeed, been a failure. That failure will be categorial and unforgivable if one doesn’t arrive before the deadline but, for now, it’s damning enough.
Last summer, it was rationalised away as a step too far for a scouting and recruitment setup that was still incomplete pending the arrivals of James Smith and Nick Cox and which had been charged with replacing an unprecedented number of departing players.
Moyes spent most of the 2025/26 pre-season moaning about a lack of incoming transfers but the club eventually signed seven new outfield players, spending well over £100m in the process. It wasn’t quite the achievement of newly-promoted Sunderland, who acquired 15 players, but it was enough to provide hope of that a crack at the top half of the table was possible if all went well.
And, of course, despite an awful home record, a lack of any consistency in the centre-forward position, and a general struggle to settle into an identifiable playing style under Moyes, by March the door was open not only to the Europa League but there was also the sliver of a chance of making the Champions League.
What followed over the final seven games of the 2025/26 campaign is now painful history but if there were any lessons to be learned, chief among them surely were that Everton needed not only a quality starting right-back but there was a strong need to upgrade at left-back as well.
TFG had demurred when faced with the chance to twist last January, electing to keep their powder dry for this summer, but while another £60m-plus has thus far been committed on new signings to bolster the midfield, the full-back positions remain untouched.
We can only go on the dribs and drabs of information that seems to have leaked out in recent weeks but, where right-back at least is concerned, it hasn’t been for the want of trying. The sticking points, so the speculation goes, have been a lack of consensus among the transfer committee over the exact profile of player the club should be targeting and, like a year ago, Everton’s inability to offer European football to prospective targets.
Guela Doué was identified as the top choice but Strasbourg’s £40m valuation has proved a major stumbling block. As explored on these pages last month, the French club may end up reducing their demands but that will likely only bring in more competition capable of offering the Ivory Coast international the Continental football he reputedly craves.
RB Leipzig’s Riedle Baku has supposedly outlined to the Blues’ transfer committee the same desire, ruling him out as an option while Djed Spence’s form for England at the World Cup has landed him a plumb move to Internazionale.
Meanwhile, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, an expensive option who does not fit the age profile that Everton have been chasing, has emerged as a target for Aston Villa and Alistair Johnston, a possible stop-gap who would do a job for a season or two if all else failed, has been ruled out after sustaining another injury on duty for Celtic.
Where that leaves the Toffees with two weeks left of the window is anyone’s guess but, to be blunt, it’s become a little pathetic and embarrassing.
Daniel Muñoz has emerged in recent days as a possible target, again, with rumours of disagreement between the stakeholders at Finch Farm, either over the reported £20m fee to sign a 30-year-old or misgivings on the part of the manager over a player who has played primarily as a wing-back for Crystal Palace.
Fulham have approached over the availability of Timothy Castagne, another depressingly unimaginative but “okay in a pinch” option but the Blues have reportedly been knocked back. And Ben White, 28, is still theoretically available even though he, too, wouldn’t come cheap and isn’t a natural full-back either.
It’s all the more frustrating when you consider, based on Everton’s improvement over the course of their pre-season programme and the ball-playing additions the club have made in central midfield, just how big a difference having two high-quality full-backs would make to this team.
The committee are said to be eyeing reinforcements at both left-back and right-back with Adam Aznou still not regarded by Moyes as being Premier League ready from a defensive point of view. Vitalii Mykolenko has proven his credentials on the defensive side, is limited going forward but punting on upgrading his position would be palatable if some real quality could be acquired at right-back.
That looks a fair way off at the moment. Either O’Brien or Merlin Röhl will be on the team sheet in the right-back spot come Saturday and neither square peg belongs in that round hole.
In the 26 years since the turn of the millennium, Everton have signed precisely four players who could be described as specialist right-backs in permanent deals — Steve Watson, Lars Jacobsen, Seamus Coleman, and Nathan Patterson. (Phil Neville and Cuco Martina ended up playing there regularly, as did a number of centre-backs not initially signed for that purpose.)
Granted, the longevity of service provided by Tony Hibbert and Coleman negated the need to address that position for the better part of two decades but it’s a part of the team that has been neglected for far too long.
TFG are, of course, not responsible for the bulk of this sorry timeline but they have been for the last 18 months. It is very much their problem now and the ceiling of Everton’s prospects for the coming season likely depend on them resolving it in an effective manner.
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