View Image
Never mind what David Moyes said after Everton’s 1-0 win over Ipswich Town, a throwaway figure from opposite number Gary O’Neil at the end of his post-match press conference told us all we need to know about the adversity in which the Blues boss is thriving.
Unlike their previous tilt at the Premier League in 2024/25 when under Kieran McKenna, the Tractors Boys quietly endured a wretched campaign despite splashing out almost £113million, going down after finishing 19th with just four wins, the newly promoted side went into their first ever trip to Hill Dickinson Stadium level on points with their hosts.
Yes, Everton made a meal of overcoming their newly promoted opponents who were reduced to 10 men midway through the second half but it could have all been so different if VAR wasn’t on a three-line whip over offsides after making such a hash of the winning goal in the Manchester Derby just six days earlier.
Despite being made to sweat for their victory, the Blues did triumph with a hard fought result that lifted them to fifth place in the table. Unbeaten in seven matches in all competitions, there is a nice positive symmetry to flip the seven games without a win which saw them plummet down the table during last season’s run-in, going from being just three points off a Champions League place after the 3-0 romp against Chelsea on March 21 to finishing 13th.
Calculations published last week by Football365 show Everton to be 19th in the Premier League net spend table over the past five years with only themselves and Brighton & Hove Albion, one of the biggest sellers in the game, displaying a trading profit over that period.
However, on the eve of the campaign chief executive Angus Kinnear, mouthpiece of The Friedkin Group, countered Moyes telling Sky Sports: “We’re still needing quite a few players to add to the squad,” by inviting BBC Radio Merseyside’s Giulia Bould and fan media groups to a series of interviews at Hill Dickinson Stadium in which he told the former: “I think the squad’s in a really good place.”
READ MORE: 'This nonsense must stop' - national media agree on one thing from Everton win over Ipswich
READ MORE: Gary O'Neil makes Everton supporters claim and has clear view on Thierno Barry's disallowed goal
Ratcheting up the pressure with claims that TFG are winners who “have bought Everton to win football matches,” further grenades were thrown with claims that missing out on Europe last season had been a disappointment and that qualification for continental competition this term was seen as being a realistic aspiration. This all came before the dog’s dinner that was the Blues’ final four days of the summer transfer window.
Coming perilously close to cashing in on the brightest home-grown hero for several years, Harrison Armstrong, the only Scouser in the squad whose sale could have ended a sequence of fielding locally born players every season stretching back to being founder members of the Football League in 1888 when Everton played at Anfield and Liverpool FC didn’t even exist, only a threat to riot from supporters who had made the long trek to Bournemouth convinced Dan Friedkin – the owner Moyes subsequently revealed has never spoken to him – to pull the plug on the sale.
But despite Moyes being told that the Blues’ £35million compensation bill to Burnley in June wouldn’t impact his transfer budget and Friedkin’s personal fortune currently estimated as being $12.6billion (£9.41m), some $1.7billion more than when the club left Goodison Park, by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s richest people, the word on football’s grapevine as September 1 approached was that Everton needed to make a big sale, hence Forest’s attempts to snatch Armstrong.
With the teenager remaining, Iliman Ndiaye (“here to stay” declared Idrissa Gueye on August 3 when his fellow Senegal international returned to training with the Blues) was instead the fall guy come deadline day, going to Manchester City. Despite pocketing over £100million selling their most creative talent, last season’s top scorer Beto, Tim Iroegbunam and Nathan Patterson, plus Adam Aznou loaned out, following the late collapse of the purchase of USA World Cup star Folarin Balogun from Monaco, Everton were left with a first-team squad of 18 outfield players that contains just one striker, one left-back and one right-back.
Which brings us back to the opening gambit. Moyes’ opposite number O’Neil had already discussed matters such as Thierno Barry’s disallowed goal, Abdul Fatawa’s sending off, disappointment over the deflection that resulted in the French striker’s earlier strike that proved the match-winner and Ipswich making the home fans nervous with their spirited display when a Japanese journalist asked him about compatriot Daizen Maeda starting on the bench.
The summer signing from Celtic nevertheless came on as a 74th minute substitute for Julio Enciso but O’Neil replied: “All is fine with Daizen, we have a good squad. We put a 27-man squad together for a reason.”
Even throwing in the three goalkeepers, Jordan Pickford, Mark Travers and Tom King, who were all in the matchday squad against Ipswich, that’s six more players than Everton have at their disposal. Moyes himself has acknowledged he doesn’t want a bloated pool but the figure of 18 he’s been left with – currently just 16 with Christian Norgaard and Merlin Rohl both out – is still shy of the ideal number of 21 outfield players he prefers to work with.
That’s why the Blues need to make hay while the sun shines, building a platform of points before the potential winter storms of injuries and suspensions kick in. Compared to last season, it might be a case of quality over quantity for Everton, albeit now shorn of magic man Ndiaye and without having a like-for-like alternative to Barry up front.
Stars such as Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Jarrad Branthwaite (read an interview in Monday’s newspaper for the latter) have bristled at suggestions that those who remain should already be written off. Such damning verdicts might be unfair but so is the idea that those same players, manager Moyes and the loyal but long-suffering supporters should put up with such an outcome and just take it on the chin without tempering expectations.
What we have seen emerge from the rubble of the deadline day debacle though is a fighting spirit and steely determination that exists in spite of absentee landlords in the USA and their proxies.
As Moyes, the man who steered the Blues to nine top-eight finishes, including their highest-ever Premier League position of fourth told the ECHO following the last-gasp 1-1 draw at Bournemouth when asked what his message to the fans was before the window closed: “Your manager is an Evertonian.”