David Moyes has returned to Goodison Park as Sean Dyche's successor, charged with rescuing Everton from relegation — just as he was 23 years ago as a relative unknown from Preston North End.

The 61-year-old's appointment will be confirmed today by the Club following swift negotiations over salary and a contract that would run to the summer of 2027 if he saw it through.

Moyes takes over with Everton sitting a point above the relegation zone and will now begin preparations for the clash with Aston Villa on Wednesday evening, the first of back-to-back home fixtures in the Premier League, before he takes his new charges down to the south coast to face Brighton later in the month.

The announcement of a relatively painless new managerial hire, expected to come this morning, completes a remarkable turn of events that first saw Dyche relieved of his duties just hours before the FA Cup Third Round tie against Peterborough United on Thursday evening and then Moyes reinstated today to the role he left in 2013, having run his contract down to join Manchester United as Sir Alex Ferguson's hand-picked successor.

Moyes inherits a squad that has been pared back over successive seasons by the need to sell players to comply with Premier League profitability and sustainability rules (PSR), has been blighted in recent weeks by injuries to the likes of Dwight McNeil, James Garner, Armando Broja and club captain Seamus Coleman, and has seen both deteriorating attacking metrics and waning confidence as Dyche seemingly ran out of ideas.

The arrival last month of The Friedkin Group as Everton's new owners has ushered in an era of financial stability after years of chaos under Farhad Moshiri but they will remain constrained in their ability to invest in the squad until the summer when the £63m losses incurred in the 2021/22 season drop off the three-year rolling accounting cycle for PSR. 

That will require skillful movement in the January market in trying to add to a team that is desperately in need of creativity, pace and goals and Moyes is expected to have input alongside director of football, Kevin Thelwell, on the targets that will be lined up before the deadline on 3rd February.

For Moyes, as well as a reunion with Seamus Coleman, whom he signed 16 years ago, and Jordan Pickford, his goalkeeper in that fated 2016/17 season at Sunderland, it marks his return to Club where he forged his reputation by steering Everton to top-half finishes in nine of his 11 seasons at the helm, including a fourth-place finish in 2004/05 that so nearly led to qualification for the Champions League group stage.

He guided the Blues to an FA Cup Final in 2009, only to meet the juggernaut that was Chelsea that year at Wembley and should have had another crack at winning the famous old trophy three years later but his team crumbled against Liverpool despite having taken the lead in the semi-final.

As Everton struggled financially in the early 2010s, the Scot battled to maintain the standards of fare his team had established in the middle of his tenure, when the likes of Steven Pienaar, Steven Pienaar, Yakubu, Leighton Baines and Leon Osman were at their peak and by the time he was preparing to depart in the 2012/13 campaign, the feeling was that he had taken the Club as far as he could.

Building on the foundations he had laid, Moyes's successor, Roberto Martinez, briefly looked as though he could be the man to take the Toffees to the next level and in most seasons in the Premier League era, the 72 points he amassed in an often scintillating campaign would have been enough to qualify for the Champions League.

As it was, Arsenal pipped Everton to Europe's gravy train that year and the Catalan's lack of defensive organisation eventually cost him his job in 2016 and the Farhad Moshiri years that followed were one failure after another, leading ultimately to a reliance on Dyche to keep the Club afloat while the Anglo-Iranian tried to offload his majority shareholding.

Ideally, TFG would have preferred to have seen out this season with Dyche in charge but the Blues' alarming form and ominous drift towards the bottom three in recent matches left them with little choice. Their faith has now been instilled in Moyes, Everton's most successful Premier League manager, to see the team to safety and help rebuild for a new future at Bramley-Moore Dock.


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