2025/26 Season Preview

You have to go back 11 years to the last time Premier League summer transfer deadline day passed without Everton being involved in a last-minute player acquisition. The Blues are not alone, of course, but it has always seemed that the urgency and agitating factor of the transfer deadline has been a significant part of the club’s transfer strategy under a succession of managers and directors of football.

For much of that period, of course — and, indeed, quite a few years before during the spells of austerity with which David Moyes had to contend during his first spell as manager — Everton have had to wait to see what the final days of the market might throw up. Loan deals, in particular, tend to happen more frequently up against the deadline as clubs look to farm out players that have become surplus to immediate requirements but sometimes the landscape just needs a few dominoes to fall to get things moving.

In all but two seasons since Moyes left, the deadline for incoming transfers to England has been set around the end of August or very early September, often once three or four games have already been played. So much the better for coaches to make last-minute decisions over what they might need to carry them through until January, but it does make assessing the Toffees’ prospects for a given season somewhat challenging.

That has arguably never been more true than this year, given the scale of the squad-building task that Moyes and a fledgeling recruitment setup at Finch Farm faced at the start of the summer — 10 first-team players left the club at the end of last season, six of them regular first-team starters.

Thus far, Everton have added six of the nine or 10 that Moyes admitted he felt he needed (one of them, it should be noted, was Charly Alcaraz who was already with the Blues for the second half of the 2024/25 campaign, having signed on loan from Flamengo in late January), some of them genuine upgrades on the players they will replace but some glaring holes remain, gaps that, if they’re somehow left unaddressed by 3rd September, could have serious implications for the team’s hopes of having a successful campaign.

Creativity at Last?

It was only a few short months ago that the Evertonians who made what is a persistently fruitless journey down to Bournemouth bore witness to one of the most depressingly one-dimensional and humiliatingly ineffective Everton performances in living memory… and, let’s be honest, there have been a few from which to choose down the years.

It marked the nadir of Sean Dyche’s tenure as the Toffees’ boss and it was, thankfully, the last match he oversaw before departing the club in January, to be replaced, of course by Moyes. The former Burnley boss had frequently bemoaned the lack of quality in his team and while some fans had sympathy with the argument based on the fare served up over the previous two seasons, there were others who felt Dyche wasn’t getting the most out of what he had at his disposal.

Moyes proved the latter point and while it wasn’t always pretty, the football over the final few months of last season under the Scot was markedly more effective than had been the case with his predecessor. Results — just four defeats in 19 league matches — illustrated this and the manager will use that run as a baseline for his charges in 2025/26.

The Blues were hardly prolific, however. After putting three past Tottenham and another four past Leicester, Moyes’s men would score more than one goal on only six more occasions and over the course of eight games between late February and late April, they were averaging fewer than a goal game. Echoes of Dyche’s reign, although not as dreary as the sequence between the start of November 2024 and that harrowing defeat at Vitality Stadium in which Everton, unfathomably, only scored in two of their 10 fixtures.

At the heart of the team’s issues was a lack of creativity and attacking quality, the by-product of four years of austerity as Everton’s hierarchy tried — and ultimately failed — to bring the club into compliance with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability rules (PSR) after a period of ambitious but often scattergun and reckless spending.

Bernard, James Rodriguez, Lucas Digne, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Richarlison Anthony Gordon, Alex Iwobi and Demarai Gray have all moved on since the breakup of the side that Carlo Ancelotti had taken to the giddy heights of second place in the table on Boxing Day 2020 before it all fell apart in dramatic fashion, culminating in the Italian jumping ship for Real Madrid.

And if the responsibility for carrying the burden of chance-creation in the Everton side last season fell to the likes of Jack Harrison, Jesper Lindstrøm, Dwight McNeil and Iliman Ndiaye last season and only two of those players ultimately passed muster, 2025/26 sees the Toffees blessed with what is, in relative terms, an embarrassment of riches.

Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, the £25m acquisition from Chelsea, brings positivity, attacking drive, an eye both for a pass and for goal as well as prowess from set-pieces. Jack Grealish, meanwhile, arrives on loan from Manchester City as the marquee signing of the summer, bringing with him his box of dribbling tricks, defence-splitting passes and general unpredictability.

If Moyes can add the missing flair piece he wants wide on the right flank — at the time of writing, the well-publicised push to prise Tyler Dibling away from Southampton remains at an impasse and the other reported targets, like Omari Hutchinson, Ben Doak, and James McAtee, are on the verge of joining Nottingham Forest — Everton will have an almost completely revamped and very exciting attacking midfield unit.

It should guarantee more chances but how many goals flow from the new steams of assists will very much be up to Beto and how well new signing Thierno Barry adapts to life in England following his move from Villarreal in Spain.

The Frenchman has scored goals everywhere he has gone — 10 in 22 matches for Sochaux B, 20 in 33 for SK Beveren in Belgium, 30 in 41 for Basel in Switzerland and 11 in 37 La Liga appearances last season — and he will be targeting what is assumed to be Beto’s first-choice spot in the early weeks of the new campaign.

It will be a stern test for Barry; the Premier League is a notoriously difficult one and it can often take foreign players at least a season to acclimatise and start finding their best form. He will be aided, though, by the creative talents of Grealish and Ndiaye behind him, though.

The same applies for the Portuguese but this is a hugely important season for him. Largely overlooked by Dyche, who preferred Dominic Calvert-Lewin when he was fit — Beto was handed the chance to shine under Moyes when DCL suffered a serious hamstring injury in January and responded with seven goals, five of them in a vital purple patch shortly after the Scottish boss came back on board that had the Toffees more or less safe from relegation by March.

His form, however, encapsulated by his ball control and finishing, has been inconsistent. Exhibiting ice-cold veins to convert when through on goal in games against Leicester, Crystal Palace and Liverpool he was frustratingly profligate in similar situations against Brentford, Wolves and in the return derby at Anfield.

That could be why Moyes might be targeting one more striker before the deadline if he can find the right profile of player, a move that could add experience and a touch more reliability to the forward line while allowing Youssef Chermiti to secure either a loan or permanent move elsewhere.

More Unfinished Business

Arguably one of the most important pieces of business that Everton got done this summer was retaining the services of midfield linchpin Idrissa Gueye. Even at the age of 35, the Senegal international remains one of the most important players in the side and his new deal ensures continuity in a vital area of the pitch.

While addressing the gaping hole on the right wing remains a priority, Moyes is on record as saying that the club are actively seeking another signing for central midfield where only Gueye and Garner offer effectiveness in a deeper-lying role.

It isn’t Gueye’s preferred position, however, and while it appears as though Garner would like to make it his own, the 24-year-old hasn’t, as yet, convinced that he can perform at a consistently high level. In any case, Everton unquestionably need more depth in defensive midfield but rumoured targets are thin on the ground.

The feeling is that if the recruitment team can identify and sign a top class operator for the No 6 role, it would hugely enhance the team’s overall effectiveness this season and lay the foundations for a justifiable push towards the fringes of the race for Europe.

Just as important could be addressing the current weakness at right-back, a problem part of the team that has not been properly addressed for many years now. Cuco Martina, Djibril Sidibé, Ashley Young and Nathan Patterson have been brought in to either provide back-up or, in the case of the young Scot, audition for being Séamus Coleman’s long-term successor but with middling success.

The problem has become more acute as it became clear that Coleman’s days as a first-team regular were numbered. An inability to stay fit or keep up with the demands of a busy domestic schedule have restricted the Irishman to just 19 appearances in all competitions over the past two seasons.

The need to draft in a player capable of being an automatic starter at right fullback remains acute but with he recruitment team’s game plan for the close season being to spend as little as possible on defence, it hasn’t been attacked with the necessary vigour.

Kenny Tete’s decision to stay at Fulham was a big blow after it looked as though the Dutchman was bound for Merseyside while Kyle Walker was, thankfully, overlooked and West Ham were allowed to hand Kyle Walker-Peters what is believed to have been a hefty wage to move to the London Stadium on a free transfer.

Ultimately, while depth has been added on the other side of defence with the addition of young Moroccan Adam Aznou for £9m, a temporary solution to the void on the right might well need to be found in the loan market. In the interim, Jake O’Brien has performed well as an auxiliary right-back and James Garner is capable of filling in there in an emergency when Patterson and Coleman are unavailable — provided, of course, a new central midfielder has been found in the interim to free him up to do so!

In the middle of defence, it was supposed to be a case of four centre-halves being enough. Michael Keane being retained on a new contract and fresh terms offered to Jarrad Branthwaite to ward off covetous eyes from elsewhere in the Premier League looked to have boxed off that area of the field but, foe the second season running, Everton have been rocked by an injury to the young Cumbrian.

Branthwaite tore a hamstring in training in the final week of pre-season and is now expected to be out until the end of September, missing up to seven very important games. Keane, for some fans an uneasy but palatable option, will be called upon to partner James Tarkowsi in those early weeks of the campaign and more of the excellent defending that under-pinned the last-day win at Newcastle in May will be the order of the day.

Modest Expectations

Where the outlook for this season is concerned, many Blues, like Moyes himself, will be looking at Everton’s form over the second half of 2024/25 as a guide. That would have been enough to finish eighth when extrapolated over a full season. While the club might kick off the new campaign at Elland Road with just one or two of their new signings in the starting XI, the squad has been upgraded and the plan is to bolster it further before the transfer deadline.

By the time Aston Villa come to L5 in mid-September, Grealish and Barry might well have joined Dewsbury-Hall as being automatic starters and there will, hopefully, be a new face lining up on the right flank and possibly a new right-back option behind him.

Expectations will be tempered but the Toffees landing a player of Jack Grealish’s calibre could, if the loanee brings his best form and is joined by further quality additions, be the catalyst that propels the Toffees into European contention by season’s end. Without knowing what business might be done between now and 3rd September and with Branthwaite’s injury and “Everton, that” nagging at the back of the mind, the temptation is not to get too far ahead of oneself.

A solid top-10 finish and a decent cup run should be attainable goals for 2025/26. While both Manchester United and Tottenham are expected to have wildly different fortunes to their experiences last season when they finished below the Blues, there are teams who might struggle to finish as high as they did last term.

Brentford have lost their manager, Thomas Frank, a vital player in Bryan Mbeumo and could yet see Yoane Wissa depart for Newcastle before the end of the month. Another top-half finish seems well beyond them. Fulham have struggled to improve their squad this summer. Crystal Palace also have bigger clubs looking to cherry-pick a couple of their star performers and they will have to deal with the distraction of European football. Nottingham Forest, meanwhile, will also have Continental commitments but they have bought extremely well; well enough, perhaps, the keep them in the top 10.

Again, much will rest on the final two weeks of the window and how well Moyes can gel the players he has acquired into a winning outfit. Whatever happens, it will be a historic year, not only as the first full season of The Friedkin Group era but also the first at Hill Dickinson Stadium.

The influence the new ground might have on the team’s fortunes at home is another big unknown. They will be comparatively unfamiliar surroundings but they will filled with wall-to-wall Evertonians and that would make anywhere feel like home. Encouragingly, the Toffees move into Bramley-Moore Dock on the back of an awful campaign at Goodison Park, equalling a club record low tally of home wins. Fortress Goodison it was not, so, looking on the bright side, it would take a spectacularly bad season to 2025/26 to be worse!

Just as low a bar is Everton' record at the start of each season since Rafael Benitez oversaw three wins from four — in each of the folllowing three seasons, the Blues failed to win any of their first five league games. In many ways, the only is up!  

Predicted Outcomes

Premier League: 9th
FA Cup: Quarter-Finals
League Cup: Quarter-Finals
Top Scorer: Iliman Ndiaye
Player of the Season: Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall