Johnson/McNeil Swap is Pragmatism with a Side of Optimism

We, obviously, don’t yet know the full extent of Everton’s summer 2026 transfer business and won’t until 6pm on 1st September when the window closes. For now, though, the club’s business has largely continued on the course set last summer of buying a mix of highly promising youth and more established players able to contribute meaningfully straight away.

Tyrique George (20), Merlin Röhl and Hayden Hackney (both 24) were acquired for initial combined fees of around £53m while Christian Nørgaard (32), an astute pick-up from Arsenal, took the spending to date to £60m. The baffling inability to land a right-back remains stuck in the craw of the fanbase and there may yet be a signing to set the pulses really racing before the deadline but pragmatic and unspectacular has been the order of the day thus far.

The mooted swap deal between Everton and Crystal Palace involving Brennan Johnson and Dwight McNeil is very much in line with that trend. Johnson, at one point in his career among the most exciting wide players in the country, has endured a difficult 18 months and is unlikely to be at the top of many fans’ wish list. But a trade that brings the 25-year-old to Bramley-Moore Dock and sends McNeil the other way makes a lot of sense, both footballing and financial.

McNeil, of course, came within minutes of joining the Eagles in January, only for the deal to collapse in that dead zone between the passing of the deadline and the absolute cut-off by which the final paperwork for a transfer has to be submitted to the Premier League.

For whatever reason — it was reported that there was either miscommunication or shifting stands over the agreed fee — Palace had a change of heart and McNeil, who had been eager for a fresh start having fallen down the pecking order at Everton, was forced to get his head down and try to break back into David Moyes’s team.

After giving him a month off to clear his head, Moyes, somewhat confoundingly at the time, obliged, handing him seven consecutive starts between the end of February and late April. As has been the case for so much of his time since the Scot returned to the Blues, however, Dwight struggled for consistency and, apart from a late cameo in the ill-fated final home game against Sunderland, he didn’t play again in 2025/26.

The writing has been on the wall for the 26-year-old ever since and it’s felt like a question of when, not if, he would be moved on this summer. Now, perhaps to his own surprise, it looks as though he’ll end up at Selhurst Park after all, not under Oliver Glasner but new Eagles boss, Pierre Sage.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s move to southeast London has turned into something of a nightmare. Having found himself surplus to requirements at Tottenham Hotspur, he secured what looked, at the time, like it could be the fresh start he needed with a £35m switch to Palace.

A star at Nottingham Forest where his 29 goals in 109 games put him on Everton’s radar but his valuation took him beyond then-sporting director, Kevin Thelwell’s reach, Johnson signed for Spurs for £47.5m in September 2003. There, he netted 27 times in 107 appearances in all competitions, including scoring the winner in the Europa League final last year against Manchester United.

His record at Palace, though, is sobering by comparison: 26 games, 0 goals, and when it came to the Europa Conference League Final in May, this time the winger had to watch on from the bench as an unused substitute as his team-mates beat Rayo Vallecano to lift the trophy.

Fast-forward to this month and, once again, it seems as though Johnson is looking for the exit door amid complaints over his lack of physicality and rumours of a heated bust-up with his new manager following Palace’s pre-season defeat to Bromley.

For Evertonians, who have seen a number of players come to their club down the years looking to reignite their careers and recapture former glories with mixed results, the way things ended at Tottenham and started at Crystal Palace for Johnson won’t inspire much confidence.

It’s worth remembering, however, just how important he was to Ange Postecoglu and how dysfunctional things quickly became at Spurs under Thomas Frank, a manager who presumably saw the Nottingham-born player as expendable. Glasner, meanwhile, has been building a reputation as a fairly tricky character and while he did steer the Eagles to a second major trophy last season, Palace were just never able to get it together in the Premier League. Like Everton, they failed to win any of their final seven matches.

If Johnson can find a home at Bramley-Moore Dock and Moyes can draw the best out of him, Everton would be getting a player who offers much more pace and ability with both feet than McNeil, has a willingness to make runs in behind and provides a goal threat (he was Spurs’s top scorer in all competitions with 19 in 2024/25), particularly when arriving late at the back post.

McNeil’s strengths are his vision, set-piece delivery and propensity to score spectacular goals from long range but his form has tailed off badly over the past couple of seasons and it does feel as though a new challenge would be in his best interests.

From a financial perspective, the trade with Palace also works and represents something of a win-win for both parties, although Johnson’s reported £120,000-a-week wages could have proved a bit of a stumbling block on the Blues’ end. (The suggestions are that he has reduced his salary to get the move to Merseyside over the line.)

If the deal is more than just a player swap and money ends up changing hands, the clubs can account for the transfer in ways that benefit them in terms of amortisation and the new Squad Cost Ratio rules.

On the face of it, Palace trading a player who cost them £35m just eight months ago for one valued at around £15m makes little sense, but if they peg Johnson’s move to Everton at £20m to £30m, their accounting loss is less alarming. They would also be able to jettison a £25m commitment over the next four years in wages for a player whose move to Selhurst Park simply hasn’t worked.

For Everton, the above valuation of McNeil, a £5m drop from what Palace were prepared to pay last January, represents a small accounting profit and will provide a small uplift in their own budget for the rest of the summer window.

Even if it becomes a straight swap, the ownership will have moved off the books a player going into the last year of his contract and with rapidly diminishing value for one who could command a significant fee even if the move to Bramley-Moore didn’t work out.

It’s tempting to look at the sharp decline in Brennan Johnson’s recent fortunes and feel apprehensive but there’s also something to be said for players excelling in the right environment where everything just clicks. Iliman Ndiaye, for example, made headlines at Sheffield United but flopped at Marseille before re-emerging as a star at Everton.

While Moyes has been reluctant of late to integrate his youngest players into the first-team, the Scotsman made a name for himself reviving the careers of players like Mikel Arteta and Steven Pienaar in his first spell as the Toffees’ boss. As a proven Premier League player who could offer many of the instincts and much of the movement in the box that Everton have lacked of late, Johnson could prove to be a valuable addition.