Jacob Murphy: The Winger Everton Needs for European Ambitions
Arne Slot’s name doesn’t carry much warmth in the Everton half of Merseyside, but his words might yet shape their summer.
In trying to explain a Liverpool problem last season, the former Reds boss may have neatly summed up why Jacob Murphy could be exactly the solution Everton are now chasing.
Slot’s problem, Everton’s opportunity
Everton want to move. Not just away from relegation chatter, but towards European places. To do that, they know the attack needs far more than one marquee addition. The pursuit of Jack Grealish back to Hill Dickinson Stadium underlines the ambition, yet the squad still cries out for variety and end product in the final third.
That is where Murphy enters the picture.
The Newcastle winger has been a steady, Premier League-proven presence for years, a player who understands his role and executes it with discipline. He is not the headline act at St James’ Park, but he has become one of Eddie Howe’s most trusted supply lines.
Slot saw that clearly.
Speaking in a press conference before Liverpool faced Leeds United in December 2025, Slot laid bare what he felt his side lacked at the time. Discussing Alexander Isak’s adjustment away from Newcastle, he said:
“It makes it harder for [Isak] compared to his time at Newcastle but I think it is also him adjusting to his teammates and his teammates adjusting to him.
“But it is obvious and clear that we have not the profile of Jacob Murphy, for example, available at this moment at this time.”
The line landed badly with Liverpool’s fanbase. To some, it sounded like an admission that a club of Liverpool’s stature were short of a player in Murphy’s mould. Yet strip away the tribal outrage, and the point is simple: Murphy offers a very specific, very valuable profile.
And that profile is exactly what Everton are missing.
A winger who thinks like a supplier
Slot’s reference was not about star power. It was about function. Murphy is a winger who plays with the striker in mind first. His game is built on service: stretching the pitch, timing his runs, and delivering the kind of balls forwards live off.
Everton, by contrast, have laboured to create those moments.
Last season, the numbers were damning. They ranked 15th in the Premier League for shots on target per match, 15th for big chances created, and 15th for touches in the opposition box, according to FotMob. Mid-table for volume, mid-table for danger, mid-table for presence where it matters most.
Murphy operates at the sharp end of that problem.
For Newcastle last season, he created more big chances than anyone else in Howe’s squad. Ten in total. That figure alone underlines his importance on Tyneside, but it also throws Everton’s creative output into stark relief.
If Murphy had been in blue, those 10 big chances would have put him joint-second in Everton’s ranks, level with Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and only two behind James Garner. For a player often seen as a role player rather than a star, that is serious production.
Now, with Newcastle seemingly more open to letting him go, the door has edged open.
Why Murphy fits the L3 puzzle
Everton’s issue has not simply been finishing; it has been supply. Too often the striker has worked off scraps, the wide players drifting inside without providing the final ball, the box left underloaded at key moments.
Murphy addresses that in a very direct way. He runs to the byline. He hits early crosses. He plays with a clarity that forwards appreciate and defenders hate. His first thought is not to cut inside and shoot, but to ask a question of the back line and invite his striker to answer it.
That is exactly the kind of winger Slot wanted at Liverpool and did not have. It might be exactly the kind of winger Everton now need to push their way into the European conversation.
Liverpool fans mocked Slot for invoking Murphy’s name as a missing piece. If Everton complete the move, those same words may end up sounding less like a misstep and more like an early diagnosis of what a club across Stanley Park required all along.
