Everton manager David Moyes (left) and Liverpool's Ben Doak (right) while on loan at Middlesbrough
Everton manager David Moyes (left) and Liverpool's Ben Doak (right) while on loan at Middlesbrough
David Moyes rates Ben Doak. But with transfer rumours persisting, could the teenage prospect negotiate the ultimate Merseyside football hurdle and complete a transfer from Liverpool to Everton?
With on-loan pair Jack Harrison and Jesper Lindstrom (a couple of boyhood Reds fans by the way) now both having returned to their parent clubs Leeds United and Napoli respectively after flattering to deceive in 2024/25 and conjuring up just one goal and two assists between them, the Blues are in desperate need of new talent on the right wing, which remains a problem position.
Given that Moyes is relatively well-stocked for options on the opposite flank, having turned another loan man Carlos Alcaraz’s move into a permanent switch while also having Iliman Ndiaye and Dwight McNeil, in contrast, the attacking right-hand side of Everton’s team now appears light in numbers.
The Blues boss has got a long and impressive record when it comes to polishing up rough diamonds from the Championship into sparkling Premier League performers, having brought in Tim Cahill from Millwall and Joleon Lescott from Wolverhampton Wanderers first time around at Goodison Park plus Jarrod Bowen from Hull City for West Ham United.
Moyes is understood to still believe that the competitive nature of English football’s second tier makes it a fertile breeding ground for emerging talent with hungry young players able to successfully make the step up and Doak – not 20 until November 11 – fits the bill having spent the 2024/25 season on loan at Middlesbrough.
Unfortunately, after missing just one game out of 25 matches after making his debut in a 1-1 draw at home to Preston North End on September 14, the Ayrshire-born prospect picked up a hamstring injury after the 2-1 victory in the reverse fixture at Deepdale on January 25 and hasn’t featured since.
Without Doak, who also provided three goals and seven assists, Boro dropped out of the promotion picture, slumping from fifth to 10th and missing out on the play-offs, with Michael Carrick subsequently sacked as head coach this week after two-and-a-half years in charge at the Riverside Stadium.
Could Carrick’s loss prove to be Moyes’ gain, though?
While Doak’s injury has proven an area of concern for the Blues boss, his scouting network have been impressed by the promise they have seen and along with fellow right winger Tom Fellows at West Bromwich Albion, who Everton have been monitoring for more than a year, he remains a player of interest.
Farhad Moshiri ignored the reservations of chairman Bill Kenwright and director of football Marcel Brands to make the most controversial appointment in the history of the most passionate city in English football when he hired Kop Idol Rafael Benitez to replace Carlo Ancelotti in 2021.
Although the Spaniard’s bloody-mindedness persuaded him to take up the gauntlet at Everton after a spell at Liverpool had brought him success in the Champions League and FA Cup a couple of decades earlier, it was Benitez’s on-the-pitch failures – with what Kenwright would subsequently describe as an “unacceptably disappointing” record with the nine defeats from his last 12 Premier League matches in charge that cost him his job after just half a season rather than his past employment with the neighbours.
Having gone into an interim position at Chelsea as an unpopular figure at Stamford Bridge in 2012/13 and subsequently a trophy in the shape of the Europa League, the Madrid-born coach backed himself to cross the divide in a region his family had long called home having lived in Wirral since first arriving at Anfield in 2004.
In many ways, the wait for a manager to cross Stanley Park remained English football’s last taboo. Victorian pioneer William Barclay, who was Liverpool’s first manager between 1892-96, should not be considered comparable given that the Dubliner’s official title with Everton for the inaugural Football League season of 1888/89 was club secretary and the Blues did not have a manager in the way modern fans would understand until Theo Kelly in 1939.
Serving Liverpool per se has never been a bar for coming to Everton but many Blues struggled to overcome memories of Benitez’s branding of them as a “small club” after Moyes' men followed up a 3-0 thrashing at Goodison the previous September with a goalless draw at Anfield on February 3, 2007. Players though, like Doak, if willing to make the switch, have seldom have a problem, although what was once a relatively well-trodden path has dried up in the modern era.
On joining Everton on loan from Wolverhampton Wanderers for the 2022/23 season, Conor Coady became the latest former Liverpool player to turn out for the Blues, while Moyes himself brought in Sander Westerveld – once sent off in a Merseyside Derby for trading blows with Francis Jeffers – on loan from Portsmouth to solve a Goodison goalkeeping crisis in 2006 with the Dutchman turning out twice (both away games) while Nigel Martyn, Richard Wright and Iain Turner were all unavailable.
In the opposite direction, Nick Barmby (2000) and Abel Xavier (2002) both moved in the opposite direction in the space of 18 months at the start of the new millennium with Kenwright using his dramatic sense of theatre to describe the former’s transfer: “He had used six of the worst words in the English language as far as Everton fans are concerned. He has said: ‘I want to play for Liverpool’.”
We have to go back to just before the Premier League era – almost 14 years before Doak was even born – for the last direct transfer from Liverpool to Everton. Scouser Gary Ablett, who would later go on to move back in the opposite direction as a youth team coach, was snapped up by Howard Kendall from Graeme Souness for £750,000 on February 22, 1992, and would go on to become the only man to win the FA Cup with both clubs.
Everton fans unfurl a banner featuring an image of former player Gary Ablett before the game against Brighton & Hove Albion at Goodison Park on January 2, 2022 (Image: Simon Stacpoole/Offside via Getty Images)
Passing away aged just 46 on New Year’s Day 2012, after a brave battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Ablett remains a respected figure with supporters of both clubs.
Ablett played alongside Peter Beardsley in both a red and then royal blue jersey with the deep-lying striker having crossed the park first the previous August for £1million when Liverpool beat Everton to the signature of Derby County’s Dean Saunders, who joined for a then-English record £2.9million fee, but after two years’ sterling service, Kendall was guilty of repeating Souness’ mistake of letting the player go too soon and he’d go on to enjoy an Indian Summer in a second spell with his local club Newcastle United.
After starting at Everton, David Johnson came back to the Blues from Liverpool, after initially quitting Goodison for Ipswich Town while another Scouser, Johnny Morrissey – dubbed the hardest winger in football – showed he’d never shirk from a challenge when he moved directly from Liverpool to Everton for £10,000 in 1962. Writing in Everton Player by Player, Ivan Ponting remarked that the move caused tumult in the Reds camp and “the transfer was sanctioned by the Liverpool board without the agreement of their manager, one Bill Shankly, who made it clear that any further transactions without his blessing would result in his departure.”
Shankly had good reason to be upset as the Scotland Road muscle man would go on to net 50 goals in 315 games for the Blues, while lifting a brace of league championships.
It was a more graceful wide man who was undoubtedly the biggest success story though when it came to quitting Liverpool for Everton with Kevin Sheedy providing Doak, who has turned out a dozen times for the Reds, with the most inspiration and possibly incentive to make the move.
After joining Liverpool from Hereford United for £100,000 in 1978, Sheedy had to wait two-and-a-half years to make his first team debut and managed only five appearances, netting twice. However, after switching to Everton in 1982 when his contract expired, the Republic of Ireland international would win two league championships and the European Cup-Winners’ Cup with the Blues – netting in the final – in what was one of one of six seasons that he registered double figures to finish with 97 goals in 369 appearances, the highest total in the club’s history from a non-striker.
When reflecting on his move last year on his episode of Goodison Park: My Home, Sheedy told the ECHO: “I realised Everton supporters would be thinking: ‘Well, if he’s not good enough for Liverpool, why should he be good enough for Everton’, so I knew I had to hit the ground running.
“I did well in pre-season, got really fit, and in my first few games at Goodison, I played really well and scored in one of my early games when Ray Clemence was in goal for Tottenham. I think I won the supporters over quite early, which was good and took the pressure off. I’ve not looked back since.”