Our Everton writers have their say on why David Moyes' men are struggling badly to replicate their form on the road at the club's magnificent new Hill Dickinson Stadium
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 10: Head Coach David Moyes of Everton during the Premier League match between Everton and Bournemouth at Goodison Park on February 10, 2026 in Liverpool, England. (Photo by Robin Jones - AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)
David Moyes reacts during the Premier League match between Everton and Bournemouth at Hill Dickinson Stadium on February 10, 2026(Image: Robin Jones - AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)
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What’s going wrong at Hill Dickinson Stadium? Everton have now failed to win in their last six matches at their new home on the Mersey waterfront and have now suffered more defeats than they’ve had victories at the 52,769 capacity venue.
Three Everton writers have their say for our latest Premium piece for ECHO subscribers...
Paul Wheelock
How do you solve a problem like Hill Dickinson Stadium? Well, on Tuesday night, in my opinion, it was simply a case of defenders and forwards not doing their jobs.
Had Thierno Barry taken one of the two gilt-edged chances that came his way then the game may well have been beyond Bournemouth before they profited from dreadful defending and goalkeeping to score twice. Throw in some justifiable gripes about VAR and a needless red card for Jake O’Brien, and it truly was a calamitous nine-spell even by Everton’s standards.
But it goes deeper than that. That’s now six games in all competitions without a win at home and one win, two draws and five defeats (including the FA Cup penalty shoot-out loss to Sunderland) in the last eight. Little wonder Evertonians trudged sombrely out of their new home into the endless rain on their walks back to car parks and train and bus stations.
The contrast to the away form is stark, with Saturday’s 2-1 triumph at Fulham meaning the Blues have now taken 18 points from their last 27 on offer on the road in the Premier League.
No-one is disputing that Everton are having a vastly improved season, certainly when you compare it to the turbulence of recent campaigns. But home form goes a long way to dictating the mood of a fanbase and the short burst of boos that accompanied the final whistle on Tuesday, aligned with the silence walking away from the ground and the loud frustration on social media, told you everything you needed to know.
What must be pointed out is that the present struggles in front of their own supporters is not a new phenomenon for the Blues, so you can’t pin the blame for the current home form solely on the club’s big summer move to the waterfront. In the last three seasons at Goodison Park, Everton only won only a third (19 from 57) of their home games.
So how can that change? After the loss to Bournemouth, questions were asked on social media of David Moyes, but I share the opinion of Joe Thomas that the dispiriting defeat was down to his players, and that you could see he was trying to change things before the equaliser inevitably arrived. That said, it’s clear that his set-up is not working at home as it is away.
Aside from questions over his best centre-back and the centre-midfield pairings, Moyes is hamstrung by his full-backs. The obvious solution would be to start a natural right-back in Nathan Patterson, rather than the out-of-position O’Brien, and the manager will surely have to do that against Manchester United given the latter will be suspended. But it could simply be the case that Moyes, like Sean Dyche and Frank Lampard before him, doesn’t fancy Patterson. His recent admission that the club has been looking for a right-back for a year suggests as much.
But that’s the rub. You cannot tell me there isn’t a right-back the Blues could not have signed in the summer or in January. In recent weeks alone we’ve seen Alex Jimenez, James Justin and Michael Kayode, who moved to their respective clubs in the summer, produce performances at Hill Dickinson Stadium that show why they would have been an upgrade, certainly in an attacking sense, on Moyes’ current options in the position.
The manager and the recruitment team need to solve this issue once and for all at the end of the season.
And it’s a summer that will also require the club to sign a left-back if Adam Aznou is not deemed ready. I actually thought Vitalii Mykolenko was better going forward than he was the other way on Tuesday night, and there's never any questioning his effort, but it’s been clear all season that to take the team on to the next level, it is going to need a left-back who offers much more.
Addressing both positions could help the Blues start more matches at Hill Dickinson Stadium on the front foot. More times than not that has not been the case, including on Tuesday, which in turn impacts the atmosphere. Speaking of which…
It’s not quite there, yet, is it? And I write this as a season-ticket holder, so I’m being as critical as myself as anyone else. And again, you have to take off the rose-tinted glasses.
In the final days of Goodison Park, outside of the fights against relegation under Lampard and Dyche, when the supporters dragged the club kicking and screaming to safety, the famous old ground wasn’t often at its bear-pit best, with some notable exceptions, of course, including the dramatic 2-2 draw with Liverpool in the last Merseyside derby at the Grand Old Lady exactly one year ago today.
But that’s not just an Everton thing. There is no getting away from the fact that VAR is sucking the enjoyment out of football, especially for those who go to games and who every match face the interminable wait to see if a goal is going to be given or not.
But I think another big reason for the Blues’ home discomforts is the shocking scheduling times. Tuesday 7.30pm; Monday 8pm; Saturday 12.15pm; Wednesday 7.30pm; Sunday 3pm; Saturday 8pm.. It’s all over the shop.
You have to go back six matches for the last 3pm Saturday kick-off, and with the next three home games being 8pm on a Monday, 7.30pm on a Tuesday, and 5.30pm on a Saturday, you’re going to have to wait until the first-ever visit of Liverpool to Hill Dickinson Stadium on Saturday, April 18 for the next one - and let’s face it, there’s no chance that’s staying in that slot.
It’s no surprise there were a number of empty seats in the ground on Tuesday night - and not just in the away end.
It does feel a bit of a slog at the moment but, like everything in football, it’s all about the results, and the bottom line is the Blues simply have to be winning more games at home. Roll on Man United.
Chris Beesley
I’ve gone on record several times now as saying that this current sequence of results is down to the way the Everton team are playing, rather than any sort of issue with their magnificent new stadium, which is geared up to provide them with as many advantages as possible. This is not an issue with Hill Dickinson Stadium per se, given that the Blues finished off with just five league wins in their historic final season at Goodison Park, which was the joint lowest total in their history, and they raced to four victories before the turn of the calendar year in their new surroundings.
Under the previous manager/managers, Everton weren’t winning many games full stop. David Moyes has cured those ills on their travels where the Blues now seem to be set-up well. That’s great for the likes of my ECHO colleague Joe Thomas and I and those supporters who hand over their hard-earned cash to follow the team away from home, up and down the country, and have been treated to 11 wins over the past year on the Glaswegian gaffer’s watch, an impressive 50% success rate from 22 matches.
However, for the vast majority of the fanbase, who only get to see the home matches – a dynamic that would exist at any club – they’re not getting to see the full picture and things have become increasingly frustrating in recent weeks.
While Everton have been able to absorb opposition pressure as the visiting side on numerous occasions and then picked their moments to hurt their hosts, they are quite rightly expected to be on the front foot in home matches.
To their credit, they at least attempted this against Bournemouth, but in a stark reversal of fortunes to the number they did on Marco Silva’s Fulham at Craven Cottage just four days earlier, it was the profligacy of Moyes’ men that let them down and when you throw a defensive collapse into the mix with two goals conceded in the space of three minutes, followed by a sending off just five minutes after that, it’s a deadly combination.
What was also alarming was that this capitulation occurred with Jarrad Branthwaite and James Tarkowski, the centre-back partnership that has been the rock the Blues have depended on in recent seasons, was starting together in those positions for the first time this season.
Elsewhere on the pitch, other than the long-term injury to on-loan Jack Grealish who is not expected to play again this season, Moyes now has all of his options available. There were mitigating factors in the earlier games on this winless home run, but they did not exist on Tuesday night.
It was a huge opportunity in terms of Everton’s hopes of staking a claim for European football, but in the end, it ended up being a sobering dose of reality.
There have been significant improvements this term following what has been arguably the most turbulent period in the club’s history, but while loyal but long-suffering Blues – along with their manager – understandably want to get back to competing in continental competition as quickly as possible, there is perhaps still a considerable distance to go in achieving that quest.
Connor O'Neill
The reality is that Everton have struggled at home for a couple of seasons now. Even last season the Blues only managed to win five Premier League games in their final campaign at Goodison Park.
The strange thing about this season, though, is that Everton actually started the campaign really well at home. But the honeymoon period is most definitely over now, and the big concern is where the next three points at home are going to come from.
One of the reasons I feel the atmosphere has been somewhat flat in recent home weeks is due to the ridiculous amount of midweek games that the Blues have played at their new home. It is a long day from leaving the house in the morning to head to work before making your way to the match.
One of the reasons why games under the lights at Goodison were so good and became such a magic occasion was because they felt like such a rarity. Now they have become the norm, and that is no good for anyone.
However, David Moyes has problems that are much bigger than Hill Dickinson Stadium. Firstly, the game on Tuesday night highlighted a lot of the areas where the team need to improve in the summer for next summer.
Firstly, Everton simply are not good enough in front of goal. Yes, Thierno Barry has managed to start scoring goals in recent weeks, but it is clear that he still has a long way to go before he can become a prolific centre-forward.
Another big problem Moyes has is that his defenders have become prone to switching off when it matters. A number of goals that the Blues have conceded at home in recent weeks could have easily been prevented.
Take Bournemouth’s equaliser on Tuesday night. That came as a result of Vitalii Mykolenko switching off at the back post. People are questioning the manager right now, and they have every right to, but there are some things that he simply can’t control, and his players switching off and losing concentration is one of them.
And finally, what has happened to Merlin Rohl? The midfielder had his best game for the club against Aston Villa, but we haven’t seen him since.
And if Tuesday is anything to go by, then Harrison Armstrong is clearly ahead of him in the pecking order. The fact is Rohl is set to become an Everton player in the summer, but it is worrying that he is not getting a look-in at the minute.
But back to Hill Dickinson Stadium, yes, things aren’t great at the minute, but let’s judge things at the end of the season and then take things from there.