It was the summer of 2017, and we had some decent players. My beloved Romelu Lukaku was sold to Man Utd, and we received a very sizeable fee for him. We then proceeded to do the equivalent of a night out in Rude on the company credit card. We bought about 43 midfielders and an ageing Wayne Rooney, along with “you’re not crap if you score goals in Spain” Sandro. It was probably the most significant transfer window in our recent history.
The Players
Andrei Kanchelskis. The mafia that (allegedly) chased him. Standing on the ball. Goals pinging in off the post. All the things that stick in your memory and keep you wanting to support the mighty Blues. For me, I would have personally paid an extra £100 on my season ticket for him.
For some of us, it is scoring in the derby. It is winning trophies (remember what that felt like?). It is adding to the now very unedifying empty cabinet that made a very light journey from Goodison to HD Stadium. The players who turn out for the club are surely beyond any aspirations of gaining yet another generation of wealth. The cars. The homes. The holidays. The complex net of tax-evading measures put in place to protect their wealth. The events. The watches. The clothes. The women (or men, or anything else). The investments they choose to spend their wealth on. Most of that can surely be acquired in a single season of top-flight football.
Desires
Their desires on the pitch may well differ from those off it. If you have ever gained any material amount of money, you will know it does not last very long unless it is invested well, either in something that brings you happiness or in something that can bring more financial rewards.
Supporting Everton taught me that we grew to have more liabilities than assets. The stadium and the players both contributed to those liabilities. We could not extend the ground, and some players simply could not be sold because they had no value.
Why are we here?
No, not Friedrich Nietzsche (Chico). But looking at some of our recent signings and performances, you’d be forgiven for not getting philosophical in your old (or young) age. I know I often tell myself that “It’s just footy”. Our new home, HD Stadium, is not bad, is it? It’s surrounded by a city of sparkling new investment in shopping and real estate. Every time I go into town, there’s a new pop-up, and miles of algorithmically trained lemmings waiting to hand over money for the next “thing”. Which could well be said about us, eh?
We’re surrounded by possibilities here. As a modern footballer, would you choose to play in an £800m stadium on the seafront in a very famous city, with the promise of opportunity? That’s the question: where there is money, there is opportunity. But would you choose it over Milan? Munich? Paris? You see where I’m going with this. The opportune moment facing the club also faces the players.
We have history.
🔘 9 top-flight titles
🔘 5 FA Cups
🔘 1 European title
🔘 One of football’s most passionate fanbases
🔘 A world-class new stadium
Everton FC – a big club: past, present & future, @LeeDixon2. pic.twitter.com/cN3mkirQXa
— Everton (@Everton) October 14, 2025
Great timing, eh? It should serve as a polite reminder to those who like to use their very obvious haughty positions in the media to mock our great club, and also those whom we’re trying to entice to play on the pitch, which brings us to the point of this very wordy article. The players.
The Players
This is part 2 of my absolutely clueless assessment of Everton, with the first being “The Fans”. This is based on nothing more than being a lifelong fan. I don’t have an MBA, I don’t have a subscription to The Athletic, and I don’t (dare) pay for podcasts, and neither should you.
I do, however, understand what progress looks like. It is never linear. It goes up and down, but standing still is the most dangerous thing in competitive sports, like footy. Camouflaging stability as progress is something we have suffered from for too long. We’ve stared down the barrel of relegation for a couple of consecutive seasons after being bankrolled by a billionaire. So where do the players come into this?
Jack, Jacky, Jack the Lad. Those calves, eh? That hair, eh? Those assists, eh? That goal, eh? Remember, though: never fall in love with a loan player.
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the arrival of Landon Donovan: he scored goals, won (and broke) all of our collective hearts whilst saying all the right things, and then disappeared back to California, leaving us to wonder where we should go from here. A bit like the end of that night in Rude we spoke about previously.
Which brings us back to the beginning of this article, when we signed a load of players. Some we choose never to mention again, some we remember fondly, and some have chosen never to remember us. We’re back there today. In 2025, we signed eight players, or thereabouts. At least one or two likely will not see the grass on their boots at HD until it’s absolutely necessary, and a couple we’ve bought for the future.
This transfer process has been hailed far and wide by podcasters and paid subscribers as a more measured, less frantic approach than before. We’ve bought for the future, which brings the average age of the transfers to ~25, the same as it was during the 2017 window.
So we find ourselves facing a potential and hopeful return to Europe in 2027, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, eh, Blues? We know how painful European football has been for us, but it has also given us monumental experiences that some of us have yet to come close to feeling. This cobbled-together side (three centre backs as a defence) has managed to pull us well clear of the relegation toilet bowl, replaced by the very Spursy and still-gleaming sports bowl they play at. They also managed to flirt with European football, and to hire and fire managers in a way that would make Greek warlords look like teddy bears.
We set a precedent that, if nobody else takes note, the players should be reminded of.
The players represent the sum of many young and old Blues’ collective dreams and ambitions. Your weekends are exhausted just as much as your bank accounts are. The mileage on the cars, trains, and coaches that take you around the country should be a reflection to those on the pitch that dedication takes many forms, but success only takes one in the footballing world for us-the fans-and that’s on the pitch.
Just for the record here, I have never been to Rude.