Sixth in the table and up for sale: Everton have a new home, so who are they now?
Everton go into the international break sixth in the Premier League, through to a Carabao Cup quarter-final and with a manager about to pass a club record, yet the owners are trying to sell and the new stadium still doesn’t feel like home.
That is the strange place Everton find themselves in. Three wins on the bounce, including the 3-1 comeback against Coventry City, have lifted the mood on the pitch. Off it, The Friedkin Group put the club up for sale on 9 October, barely two years after buying it.
So who are Everton now? A plucky Moyes side punching above its weight, or a club with a genuine chance to become something bigger while the traditional giants stumble? The honest answer is a bit of both, and the next two transfer windows will decide which one wins.
Why is this Everton team working?
Moyes has always been at his best with his back against the wall, and he has rarely had less to work with. Everton let Beto go to Fiorentina in the summer without a striker coming the other way, and the squad is reported to be the smallest in the division. That has forced his hand, and some of the forced decisions have turned out to be good ones.
Jack Grealish missing four games is the clearest example. He reported sick for the defeat at Arsenal and was then dropped for a breach of club discipline, which opened the left side for Tyrique George. George has grabbed it. He floated the ball to the back post for Thierno Barry’s second goal against Coventry, and he looks more dangerous every week when he is allowed to run at full-backs.
Tyler Dibling has been given a proper run on the right too, mostly because there was no sane alternative. He hasn’t caught fire yet, but he is learning in a side that is winning, which is a far better place to learn than a relegation scrap.
Up front, Barry has been carrying the whole thing. Ten goals in all competitions before the break is a huge return for the only senior centre-forward at the club, and his assist for Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall against Coventry showed there is more to his game than finishing. We went through that night in our Everton 3-1 Coventry report, which also marked Moyes drawing level with Harry Catterick’s 592 games in charge.
What happens when Grealish is back?
Grealish played the full 90 minutes in Thursday’s 4-1 behind-closed-doors win over Derby County and has since apologised to the fans on Instagram. That gives Moyes a nice problem before Everton return against Brentford on 23 November. Our view is simple: George has earned the shirt in the short term, and Grealish should have to win it back rather than walk straight in.
A younger squad with no ceiling yet
The other quiet change is in who Everton buy. For years the club chased Premier League-ready players straight out of the oven. Now a good chunk of the squad is made up of players whose ceiling nobody knows yet: Barry, George, Dibling, Harrison Armstrong and Hayden Hackney, who arrived from Middlesbrough as the Championship’s player of the season.
That is exactly what you want from a club in Everton’s position. Players who might get a lot better are the ones who make a squad stronger without anyone writing a huge cheque, and they are the ones you can sell at a profit later if you must.
The risk is that the best of them get picked off. Chelsea have been linked with Armstrong, and Jarrad Branthwaite, who is having an outstanding season, is reported to be on their list of centre-back targets for 2027. Holding on to that core matters more than any one January signing.
Is the Premier League more open than it has been for years?
We think it is. When Moyes was here the first time, the top four was close to a closed shop. Today Arsenal look like the only big club without a serious problem. Manchester United have just changed manager again, Chelsea lost 1-0 at Sunderland last weekend, and the gap between third and sixteenth on any given day is much smaller than the money suggests.
That is the opening for a club like Everton. Brighton, Bournemouth and Brentford have shown that good people behind the scenes, in scouting, data and recruitment, can make up for a smaller budget. Revenue is not the only thing that matters any more. Decisions are.
And the cups are a short cut. A Europa League win brings a Champions League place no matter where you finish in the league, and Everton are one tie away from a League Cup semi-final, with a quarter-final at League Two side Fleetwood Town in December. Nobody at the club should treat that as a distraction.
Who is in charge of the football?
This is where we get frustrated. Everton dropped the traditional director of football model and replaced it with a transfer committee, with responsibility spread across a group of people. On paper that sounds modern. In practice, nobody outside the club can tell you who is accountable for what.
The summer showed the cost of that. Everton ended the window short of a striker and short of full-backs, as we covered in why Everton’s transfer window ended in complete chaos. When a window goes like that and no single person owns it, it is hard for supporters to know who to hold to account, and hard for the club to learn from it.
Our view is that Everton need one clear person running football operations, sooner rather than later. Moyes is papering over a lot of cracks with results, but that only lasts as long as the results do.
What does the sale mean for January?
The timing is the frustrating part. The Friedkin Group, who also own Roma, are selling just as the team has given them something to sell. The market is not helping either: buyers are more cautious than they were a few years ago, and the Manchester City case has made quick, money-led success look much less attractive to investors.
That may force the owners to stay longer than they planned. If so, the smart move would be to back Moyes in January, because a club in the European places with a new stadium is a far more valuable asset than a mid-table one. Reports have suggested the owners might only allow loans and free transfers, as we looked at in Everton’s January striker problem. With one senior striker and seven months of the season left, that would be a huge gamble.
Does the new stadium feel like Everton yet?
Not quite. The atmosphere has improved and the tifos have helped, but walk inside Hill Dickinson Stadium and too much of it feels like a smart, generic event space with a football club attached. Blank walls on staircases, branding that leans towards sponsors and very little of Goodison’s history on show.
None of that is expensive to fix. A summer of club photographs, heroes and history on the walls would go a long way. Everton have a 50,000 crowd every other week who are desperate for this place to feel like theirs. Giving them that is one of the cheapest wins available to whoever owns the club next.
Who are Everton now? A Moyes team, for the moment
Right now Everton are the club Moyes has built in his own image: organised, hard to beat, a little short of resources and very good when everyone writes them off. Dewsbury-Hall has been outstanding, Barry is scoring, Branthwaite is back to his best and a young group is growing.
But a club is more than its manager. If Everton want to be the aspirational side that wins at Stamford Bridge and turns a cup run into silverware, they need clear leadership above Moyes, owners who either commit or hand over quickly, and a stadium that feels like it belongs to the fans. Sixth in November is a brilliant platform. Whether anyone at the top is ready to build on it is the real question.