Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall has done me a massive favour without realising it.
The midfielder has ensured I won’t feel totally apathetic towards Everton this summer. I mean, wow, the apathy is real having just lived through yet another abject season of supposed transition, building and ‘progress’ and right now, I couldn’t care less about Murrayfield but, one of the players has fronted up and it’s so refreshing to hear.
Posting on Instagram on Thursday evening now the dust has settled on the 2026/27 campaign, Kiernan said: “Awful end to the season after a promising campaign, miles off it to be honest. A long summer now to review & come back bigger and better next year. Thanks for all the love in my first season here.”
That, for me, is Nil Satis Nisi Optimum.
Why? Because ‘Nothing but the Best is Good Enough’ goes beyond anything other than first place being deemed a total failure. It’s more nuanced and goes deeper than that, especially where Everton of the last three decades is concerned. You see, it’s also about acknowledgement. It’s about acknowledging that the end of the season simply was not good enough. And here’s the important part. It’s also about striving to be better; striving to be the very best you can be.
‘Awful end to the season… miles off it to be honest’.
Honest it is. It’s a candid assessment, the unvarnished truth, and just reading a few words from Kiernan on social media has genuinely made me feel a little bit more in tune with Everton. Hearing someone from inside the club hold their hands up and say ‘yeah, we were nowhere near it there’ is almost a relief because some of the noises this May have left me shaking my head.
Kiernan isn’t ‘happily dissatisfied’ with the season like CEO Angus Kinnear. Dewsbury-Hall has also given fans a fair appraisal. It feels a million miles from tuning into the the club’s post-match interviews which are so often laden with positive takes around dismal displays.
Then there was David Moyes after the rancid showing at Tottenham on Sunday. The Liverpool ECHO’s Everton reporter Joe Thomas asked the Blues boss: “Given the way the season has ended, there’s some frustration and disappointment among the fans, do you understand that?” and the manager responded with a rather dismissive: “Well, it’s you firing that question at me… I don’t understand it, really, no.”
Come on. These are the people setting the tone at Everton Football Club. They drive the narrative around standards and control what is acceptable and what is not from Finch Farm to Hill Dickinson.
As the curtain came down on another totally forgettable season for the Blues, from my point of view, somebody whose first match was back in August 1996, this felt so, so samey. A great deal has changed, new owners and stadium, yet everything feels the same. It’s just Groundhog Day and a tired continuation of the ‘Good Times’ outlook used to describe the most mediocre of highs, losing on penalties to Fiorentina springs to mind, and crushing lows of, not relegation, but nothingness.
I want people like Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall driving the levels at the club. You may think I’m overanalysing a throwaway social media post but there’s no deep analysis here. The simple fact is, he’s called a spade a spade and that feels rare during my time supporting Everton.
I can take the team finishing 13th so long as I feel the club have done all they possibly can to at least try and be the best. I don’t feel they did this season. They didn’t recruit what was needed - not wanted, what was needed - and Moyes had already claimed January signings were unlikely in the first week of the month. That’s not striving to be the best. Nor is sticking with a failing backline that is conceding two goals every game. That’s acceptance and failing to act.
You don’t want to hear excuses and self-imposed setbacks being explained away year after year after year. No, be frank, be honest and acknowledge it. Move on (don’t keep referring to three-year old relegation battles) and aim for better through words and, most importantly, actions.
People often say that players ‘get it’ but with Dewsbury-Hall I think he does though maybe even beyond Everton. I think he understands what all fans want in the stands. He seems to have a real appreciation for what every supporter demands as the bare minimum. I get the impression he would carry himself in the same way whether he’s at Everton, Chelsea, Leicester or Luton. It’s in him, a will and a want to be better.
Of course, he hasn’t put in eight out of ten performances every single week and there were one or two times when he was part of a poor team display but this lad can be a driving force for Everton just by the way he carries himself. He wants to improve, and there is a quiet, ambitious determination about wanting to push himself and the club on. When it’s not good enough, he calls it out. Kiernan has been a real breath of fresh air since signing last summer.
I’m looking forward to a solid two months away from Everton and will properly switch off to it shortly but I can do so now with a sense of relief that at last someone at the club seems to share the true level of disappointment I and thousands of others feel right now. No, it wasn’t good enough and, yes, it has to be so much better.
Fair play, Kiernan. By simply acknowledging the season wasn’t good enough and striving for more, you’ve followed Everton’s motto there and set an example others should heed.
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