Everton manager David Moyes has spoken about the challenges ahead after Francis Jeffers’ suggested the Blues’ move to their new stadium could eliminate the need to sell their best young talent
Everton manager David Moyes and the club's new Hill Dickinson Stadium
Everton manager David Moyes and the club's new Hill Dickinson Stadium
Everton manager David Moyes admits the lure of European football remains a big draw for players when responding to Francis Jeffers’ suggestion that the Blues’ move to their new stadium could eliminate the need to sell their best young talent. Jeffers was one of the many former Blues paraded on the pitch following Goodison Park’s final Premier League fixture on May 18.
His fellow former pupil at De la Salle School in Croxteth, Wayne Rooney, who displayed a ‘Once a Blue, always a Blue,’ t-shirt when scoring for Everton in an FA Youth Cup tie but joined Manchester United as an 18-year-old in 2004, was heckled when speaking during Goodison’s ‘End of an Era’ ceremony.
Despite returning from Old Trafford as United’s all-time leading goalscorer having won every major trophy in the game with the Red Devils, Rooney had a second playing spell with Everton in the 2017/18 season.
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However, Blues fans showed that while they had forgiven, they had not forgotten and when he was trying to deliver a speech to the crowd, many started chanting “Manchester is full of s**t.”
Rooney hit back with an X-rated response of his own, saying: “I am a f*****g Scouser, by the way,” but Jeffers, another boyhood Blue who departed Goodison before his 21st birthday, signing for Arsenal in an £8million transfer in 2001, believes the financial benefits of the club’s relocation to the Mersey waterfront can prevent such moves from happening in the future and told the ECHO: “We shouldn’t be selling our best young players and hopefully we don’t have to now.”
Unlike another Scouser across Stanley Park, Trent Alexander-Arnold, who won a treasure trove of major honours with Liverpool before departing for Real Madrid, many of Everton’s bright young talents like Rooney, Jeffers and even Anthony Gordon, who joined Newcastle United for £45million in January 2023, have left early on in their careers.
When the question of moving to Hill Dickinson Stadium will help Everton in this respect was put to Moyes, he said: “I don’t know whether it’s the stadium or whether it’s success. I don’t think we’re comparing Trent’s period to Wayne in any way.
“Wayne left when he was an 18-year-old boy. He went to Manchester United who at that time were winning all the trophies and challenging at the top end of the league.
“People know, the story is that we’ve sold the best young players out of the academy, which means at the moment we don’t have that coming through. That’s another rebuild.”
The 62-year-old, who has missed out on signing Ipswich Town's Liam Delap this summer after the striker chose Chelsea, added: “Players, if they have the chance, want to play in the Champions League. I’ve just come out of a club (West Ham United) where three out of four years we played in Europe and what a difference it makes when you’re a club in Europe because the players are attracted, whatever European competition that is, is attractive to a lot of players and makes a big difference.
“We’re not at that at the moment so I don’t know if I can compare us selling Wayne but we were always a club that didn’t have a huge amount of money. We had to generate some money ourselves
“But then, the club had £500million to spend and in that period and I don’t think it was as good as when we spent carefully and were a little bit wiser.
“Obviously, we had to spend every now and again to buy. If you look back at recent times, I think you’d probably say that time we were spending less actually got us more success than when we were spending loads.”