Everton's Season: From Champions League Hope to Mid-Table Struggles

Everton’s season was supposed to be about escape velocity. For months, they looked ready to leave the chaos behind.

Jack Grealish arrived on loan and lit the place up. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall kept deciding tight games almost by himself. Up front, Thierno Barry and Beto finally found their range after a sluggish start. On 21 March, a 3-0 dismantling of Chelsea at Hill Dickinson Stadium pushed Everton up to eighth, three points off the Champions League places with seven to play.

Europe no longer felt like a dream. It felt like a plan.

Then the bottom fell out.

From that Chelsea win onwards, Everton did not win another league match. It became the longest winless run since David Moyes returned for his second spell in 2025, and it dragged the club from optimism to anxiety in a matter of weeks. A 2-2 draw at Brentford on 11 April looked harmless enough at the time. Instead, it marked the start of a collapse that left Everton ranked in the bottom three on form for the rest of the campaign.

Across that stretch, only Burnley and Wolves matched their failure to win a single game. Both of those sides went down. Everton survived, but the mood told a different story.

Same position, very different feeling

Even as the form nosedived, there was still something to play for. Sunderland came to Merseyside for Everton’s final home game with European qualification still mathematically alive. In his programme notes, chief executive Angus Kinnear described himself as “happily dissatisfied” with the season — a phrase that jarred even before kick-off.

By full-time, it sounded tone-deaf. Sunderland, newly promoted and fearless, won 3-1. They would finish seventh and book European football for the first time in 53 years. Everton trudged towards another mid-table ending.

For Moyes, the symmetry is brutal. Thirteenth in 2024-25. Thirteenth again in 2025-26. On paper, almost identical. In reality, they could hardly feel more different.

When he walked back into the club 18 months ago, Everton were a point above the relegation zone and drowning in the aftershocks of financial breaches, points deductions and repeated brushes with the drop. He stabilised them quickly; that first season ended with the Toffees 23 points clear of danger.

Last summer, backed by the Friedkin Group, Everton spent £97m — a club-record net outlay for a single window — and finished in the same place, with just one extra point to show for it.

Yet former midfielder Leon Osman insists that, in context, this still counts as progress.

“When David Moyes first came in, we flew out the blocks and had a great start,” he said. “That continued for well over a year before the first sort of low period, which was the end of last season. I still feel that we made progress last season, which is what we wanted, along with stability.”

Stability is a modest target for a club that once chased the Champions League. Right now, it is also a fragile one.

Moyes against the market

Moyes, now 63, has not hidden his frustration at trying to keep pace with the Premier League’s heavy spenders. Over the past five years, Everton rank only 15th for net spend among current top-flight clubs.

The comparison that stings most comes from outside the traditional elite. Bournemouth spent less than anyone last summer and actually made a profit of £81m on player trading. They finished sixth. Brighton banked £41m and ended up eighth.

Everton, by contrast, moved into a gleaming new home and promptly turned it into a soft touch. Hill Dickinson Stadium was meant to signal a new era, but their 1.2 points per game at home last season was the lowest of any side starting life in a new Premier League ground. Away from home, they were among the division’s top seven on form. At home, they looked uneasy, almost inhibited.

Osman argues that Bournemouth and Brighton are simply “further along in their development” and that Everton’s adjustment to their new surroundings is still in its early stages. He also points straight at the moment that changed the season: Grealish’s injury in January.

The numbers are damning. With Grealish in the side, Everton won 45% of their games and averaged 1.6 points per match. Without him, the win rate collapsed to 22%, and the points return dropped to one per game.

“David Moyes is an intense manager and by the end of the season, a small squad couldn’t quite last,” Osman said. “Changes take time. No one is thinking about relegation which shows you what Moyes has done. He’s got 12 months remaining and I’d expect him to see that out.”

Recruitment puzzle: Grealish, Ndiaye and the kids

Everton’s recruitment has been a fault line for years. Under former owner Farhad Moshiri, eight players signed for at least £20m eventually left for nothing. The reset under the Friedkin Group brought nine new faces last summer, many of them young, but the return has been mixed.

Grealish and Dewsbury-Hall have been clear successes. Beyond them, the picture blurs. Tyler Dibling cost £35m from Southampton but started only six league games. Left-back Adam Aznou, signed from Bayern Munich, is still waiting for his Premier League debut.

Barry, at 23, offered a hint of old-school centre-forward play, winning more aerial duels than any other player in his first top-flight season, but his finishing wavered. Merlin Rohl, 24, barely featured until May, then impressed across four late starts — a tantalising glimpse rather than a body of work.

There is, though, a potential boost on the horizon. BBC Radio Merseyside reporter Giulia Bould says Grealish is set to return on loan towards the end of the window as he recovers from a stress fracture in his foot. His wages, though, are expected to remain at around £200,000 per week — a huge commitment for a club still trying to repair its finances.

At the same time, Iliman Ndiaye has been linked with a move to Saudi Arabia.

“I’d welcome Grealish back but only at a price that suits Everton,” Osman said. “Ndiaye, I’d hate to lose him. There may come a point that the price is right and Everton can reinvest in two or three players but I think they should do everything they can to keep him.”

Losing elite quality without shrewd reinvestment is a trap Everton know too well. With one of the smallest squads in the league, they simply cannot afford to get this summer wrong.

Small squad, big demands

No manager used fewer players than Moyes in the Premier League last season. Just 22 featured, and his 128 substitutions were at least six fewer than any other coach. In an era of five changes and relentless intensity, Everton ran hot with a tight core and paid the price in the run-in.

Yet the club continues to pour a significant slice of its budget into development signings. Central midfielder Hayden Hackney, 24, has arrived from Middlesbrough for £16.5m. Tyrique George, 20, joins from Chelsea for £18m after a loan spell at Everton in the second half of last season.

At the other end of the age spectrum, Celtic’s Alistair Johnston has emerged as a target for the long-troubled right-back spot, while 32-year-old Arsenal midfielder Christian Norgaard is reportedly close to signing — a nod to the experience vacuum left behind.

The numbers underline that gap. Players aged 21 or under logged only 1,088 minutes for Everton in the league last season, leaving them 17th in the division for youth involvement. At the same time, the departures of Seamus Coleman and Idrissa Gueye have stripped more than 600 Premier League appearances from the dressing room. James Garner’s groin surgery, which will keep him out at the start of the campaign, tightens the squeeze even further.

Moyes now finds himself in a strange position: potentially dependent on younger players he has so far been reluctant to trust.

“They need to show they’re capable and deserve to play,” Osman said. “I’m hoping that a year in, understanding the demands that are required, players like Dibling and George will make that progression and then suddenly our squad looks more trustworthy.”

That is the challenge in front of Everton. Turn promise into reliability. Turn a new stadium into a fortress. Turn two straight 13th-place finishes into a platform rather than a ceiling.

With Moyes entering the final year of his deal and the transfer market already moving, the question is no longer whether Everton are safe. It is whether they are finally ready to be ambitious again.