Everton's Season Review: Stagnation or Progress?
For much of last season, Everton’s gaze was fixed upwards.
Jack Grealish arrived on loan and lit the place up. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall kept deciding tight games. Thierno Barry and Beto, who had looked lost in the autumn, suddenly found the net with regularity. The mood changed. So did the expectations.
When Chelsea were swept aside 3-0 on 21 March, Everton sat eighth, three points off the Champions League places with seven to play. A new stadium, a resurgent manager, a squad that finally looked coherent. Supporters dared to believe.
Then the season fell apart.
Everton did not win again. Not once. It was the longest winless run since David Moyes walked back through the door in 2025. A 2-2 draw at Brentford on 11 April, from a position of control, cracked the veneer. Performances sagged, confidence drained and, over the closing stretch, Everton’s form ranked among the league’s bottom three.
They ended that period grouped with only Burnley and Wolves as the clubs who failed to win a single match. Burnley went down. Wolves were in crisis. Everton were supposed to be leaving all that behind.
A familiar finish, a very different feeling
Even as the wheels wobbled, the table still offered hope. Sunderland at home, final game at Hill Dickinson Stadium in 2025-26, and European football still just about on the line.
In his programme notes, chief executive Angus Kinnear described himself as “happily dissatisfied” with the season. It was a phrase that felt strange even before kick-off, and downright jarring after a 3-1 defeat to a promoted Sunderland side that played with the hunger Everton once claimed as their own.
Sunderland rode that win into seventh place and Europe for the first time in 53 years. Everton, again, finished 13th.
For Moyes, the symmetry is cruel. Two seasons back at the club, two 13th-place finishes. On paper, it looks like stasis. In reality, the context is wildly different.
When he returned 18 months ago, Everton were one point above the relegation zone and emotionally exhausted by financial breaches, points deductions and survival scrambles. He steadied them, dragged them 23 points clear of danger and restored a sense of order.
Last summer, with the Friedkin Group in charge and the panic sirens finally off, Everton spent £97m – a club-record net outlay for a single window – and still landed in exactly the same spot, with just one extra point to show for it.
To some, that reads like failure. To others, including former midfielder Leon Osman, it looks like a step in the right direction.
“When David Moyes first came in, we flew out the blocks and had a great start,” Osman said. “That continued for well over a year before the first sort of low period, which was the end of last season.
“I still feel that we made progress last season, which is what we wanted, along with stability.”
Stability is a low bar for a club of Everton’s size. It is also something they had not known for years.
Moyes, money and a new home that doesn’t feel like one
Moyes, now 63, has not hidden his frustration at trying to keep pace with the Premier League’s heavy spenders. Over the past five years, Everton rank only 15th among current top-flight clubs for net spend.
The problem for that argument is that two of the clubs who outperformed them last season did so on a fraction of the outlay. Bournemouth actually made a profit of £81m in the last summer window and finished sixth. Brighton banked £41m and still claimed eighth.
Everton, by contrast, moved into a state-of-the-art home at Hill Dickinson Stadium with the promise of a new era, then delivered the worst home points-per-game record (1.2) of any Premier League side starting life in a new ground. Their away form was top-seven level. Their new fortress never became one.
Osman’s view is that Bournemouth and Brighton are simply further down the road in their development. Everton, he argues, are still adjusting to their surroundings after years of turmoil. He also points to a turning point that felt obvious to anyone watching closely: the loss of Grealish to a foot stress fracture in January.
The numbers back it up. With Grealish in the side, Everton won 45% of their matches and averaged 1.6 points per game. Without him, those figures dropped to 22% and one point per game.
“David Moyes is an intense manager and by the end of the season, a small squad couldn't quite last,” Osman said. The legs went, and with them the edge that had carried Everton into European contention.
“Changes take time. No one is thinking about relegation which shows you what Moyes has done. He's got 12 months remaining and I'd expect him to see that out.”
So the manager enters the final year of his contract with the club stuck between two realities: no longer in crisis, not yet truly competitive.
Recruitment puzzles: Grealish, Ndiaye and the cost of mistakes
If Bournemouth and Brighton have become models of smart, joined-up recruitment, Everton’s transfer strategy remains a work in progress at best and a cautionary tale at worst.
Under former owner Farhad Moshiri, eight players signed for at least £20m left the club for nothing. That kind of waste leaves scars. It also restricts what comes next.
The Friedkin Group responded to years of caution by bringing in nine players last summer, many of them young, many of them still more promise than product. Grealish and Dewsbury-Hall have justified the investment. Others are still waiting to do the same.
Tyler Dibling, a £35m winger from Southampton, has started only six Premier League matches. Adam Aznou, the highly rated left-back from Bayern Munich, is still waiting for his debut. Barry, 23, dominated in the air more than any other player in his first Premier League season, but his finishing veered from ruthless to erratic. Merlin Rohl, 24, barely featured before suddenly impressing with four strong starts in May.
There is quality there. There is also risk.
BBC Radio Merseyside’s Giulia Bould reports that Grealish is set to re-sign on loan later in the window as he continues to recover from his foot injury, with wages expected to remain around £200,000 per week. It would be a huge outlay, but Everton have already seen the difference he makes.
“I'd welcome Grealish back but only at a price that suits Everton,” Osman said, wary of the financial tightrope.
Another key piece, Iliman Ndiaye, has been linked with a move to Saudi Arabia. That interest will test Everton’s resolve and their planning.
“Ndiaye, I'd hate to lose him,” Osman added. “There may come a point that the price is right and Everton can reinvest in two or three players but I think they should do everything they can to keep him.”
This is the delicate balance Everton now live with: keep the few elite players they have, or sell to build depth they clearly lack.
Youth, trust and a squad stretched thin
Depth is not a theoretical concern. It is written into the numbers of last season.
Moyes used just 22 players in the league – fewer than any other manager – and made 128 substitutions, at least six fewer than anyone else. In a campaign that demanded rotation, he stuck with a core group until their energy ran dry.
At the same time, the club’s recruitment department has tilted heavily towards development players. Central midfielder Hayden Hackney, 24, arrived from Middlesbrough for £16.5m in July. Tyrique George, 20, joined from Chelsea for £18m after a loan spell at Everton in the second half of last season. Both fit the profile the club say they want.
The average age of signings in Moyes’ second spell is under 24, with three players 20 or younger. Yet players aged 21 or under totalled just 1,088 league minutes last season. That ranked Everton 17th in the division for youth involvement.
The message from the boardroom is clear: build younger, build for the future. The reality on the pitch is that Moyes has struggled to trust those same youngsters when the pressure rises.
That tension will only grow this season. Seamus Coleman and Idrissa Gueye have gone, taking more than 600 Premier League appearances with them. James Garner, a central figure in midfield, will miss the start of the campaign after groin surgery.
No wonder Everton are looking at experience. Celtic’s Alistair Johnston has been linked as a solution at right-back. Christian Norgaard, 32, is reportedly close to arriving from Arsenal to add know-how in midfield.
As things stand, Moyes could be forced to lean on the very players he has been slow to expose.
“They need to show they're capable and deserve to play,” Osman said. “I'm hoping that a year in, understanding the demands that are required, players like Dibling and George will make that progression and then suddenly our squad looks more trustworthy.”
That is the next test for Everton. Not just to spend, but to develop. Not just to stabilise, but to push.
The chaos of relegation battles has gone. The comfort of mid-table may not last. Which way this club breaks next will define Moyes’ final year – and perhaps Everton’s direction for the next decade.
