BRIGHTON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 25: The players of Everton and Brighton & Hove Albion clash at full-time following the Premier League match between Brighton & Hove Albion FC and Everton FC at Amex Stadium on January 25, 2025 in Brighton, England. (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
The players of Everton and Brighton & Hove Albion clash at full-time following the Premier League match at Amex Stadium on January 25
It is 11.38pm. I have been driving for a couple of hours. It will be another three before I am home. It is snowing. In the car park at Warwick Services, I am the first to leave my footprints.
That was the lowest point of the season. It was cold, I was tired and the M40, a pristine track of glowing white that was starting to freeze, would hold some nervy moments.
The demons that really tormented were not on the road, however. They lay 140-odd miles away at Bournemouth. It was January 4 and Everton had started a new year in a familiar fashion with another limp defeat at the Vitality Stadium. Not even a shot on target this time.
Looking back, that was the night the season changed.
I led the way when Sean Dyche emerged for the post-match press conference. They can be tough after displays like that, whoever the manager is. But why always Bournemouth? It was in the bowels of that same stadium some two years earlier that I asked Frank Lampard over his future for the first time.
Dyche was sometimes combative, sometimes defensive, always looking to gain the upper hand. But he seemed different that evening.
A few days later he would tell new Everton owners The Friedkin Group (TFG) he had taken the club as far as he could go. That much was clear in his eyes and words as he looked down to me from his raised platform after the defeat that left the Blues staring down the barrel of a fourth consecutive relegation fight.
It is 11.38pm. I am back at Warwick Services. I have been driving for a couple of hours already. I will be home quicker because the weather is better. So is Everton’s outlook.
It is January 25. Just three weeks have passed since *that* nightmare in Bournemouth. It could have been a year. Now, David Moyes is in charge. The Blues have just sealed a battling, hard-fought, surprise win at Brighton.
A second straight win has them seven points clear of trouble and Moyes, who celebrated with the away end as his players fought on the pitch and home fans yelled in fury at the away team and their staff in the press box, has already dispelled the doubts over his return.
As I reflect back on this season, as is natural this time of the year, I think that was the day Everton’s season changed. It was not the takeover that finally lifted the club from financial chaos, nor the handover of the keys to the sleek, state-of-the-art new stadium that is a symbol of everything this club wants to become.
Nor was it necessarily the appointment of Moyes - it is easy to forget but there was trepidation over his return in most quarters, with the manager himself expecting it to take time to re-forge the bond and rebuild the confidence in the team.
The win at the Amex came at a cost, with Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Orel Mangala suffering serious injuries, but it was the day belief returned. You could hear it in the cracked voices celebrating in the away end, you could see it in the way players hurled their bodies into tackles. I could see it in Moyes’ eyes when I questioned him after the final whistle.
The Blues went on to stay up with ease. More great away days followed at Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest, Fulham and Newcastle United. They were made possible by the transformation achieved at Brighton.
It is just shy of five months since Dyche started the conversation over his exit with TFG. He deserves real credit for the way he dragged Everton to survival over the two previous seasons.
If the move to the Hill Dickinson Stadium leads to the Blues exploiting the potential of the bright future that appears to be ahead of the club then the value of the work of Dyche - and departed director of football Kevin Thelwell - during those toughest hours of chaos will only grow.
That is Moyes’ task now. Having succeeded, far more emphatically than felt possible in mid-January, the challenge is to build on that over the summer and take the momentum gained through those excellent wins in the final three matches of the season down to the banks of the Mersey.
A long, complicated close-season awaits with the team overseeing recruitment at the club not yet fully in place. Everton, in fact, are yet to announce sign-off on the final outstanding players whose contracts are set to expire at the end of this month. And with all of that there is still a squad to build.
But that grim night in the snow at Warwick Services, thankfully, feels a world away now.