Everton's Season Collapse: From Hope to Stagnation
Everton’s season of promise did not so much fade as collapse.
By late March, the Hill Dickinson Stadium felt like the launchpad for something bigger. Jack Grealish, borrowed and brilliant, had lit up the place. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall kept deciding tight games. Thierno Barry and Beto, once misfiring, had finally found their range.
A 3-0 dismantling of Chelsea on 21 March pushed Everton up to eighth. Three points off the Champions League places. Seven games to go. Supporters were daring to look at the table and think: why not?
Then the whole thing fell apart.
From that Chelsea win to the end of the season, Everton did not win again. It was their longest run without a victory since David Moyes walked back through the door in 2025. The turning point, if there was one, came at Brentford on 11 April. A 2-2 draw that should have been a platform became a warning. Everton’s form nosedived, and over the rest of the campaign their results ranked among the worst three in the league.
Only Burnley and Wolves, both in deep trouble, matched their failure to win a single game in that spell.
A familiar finish, a very different feeling
The numbers say Everton finished 13th. Again. The story behind that position is far more tangled.
When Moyes returned 18 months ago, the club were one point above the relegation zone and emotionally drained by financial breaches, points deductions and endless fire-fighting. He dragged them to safety, 23 points clear of the bottom three. Thirteenth then felt like a minor miracle.
This time, after a club-record £97m net spend last summer and a season that briefly threatened Europe, 13th felt like a crash landing. One more point than the previous year, a lot more money, the same postcode in the table.
The mood around the final home game against Sunderland captured that confusion. In his programme notes, CEO Angus Kinnear described himself as “happily dissatisfied” with the campaign – a phrase that jarred even before kick-off. A 3-1 defeat to the promoted side turned irritation into anger.
Sunderland rode that result into seventh place and European football for the first time in 53 years. Everton trudged off with the sense of an opportunity wasted.
For Moyes, the irony is brutal. Two seasons, two 13th-place finishes. One greeted as salvation, the other as stagnation.
Former midfielder Leon Osman, though, sees a different picture. To him, back-to-back mid-table seasons after years of chaos still represent a step forward.
“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, however, has come at a price: expectation.
Moyes, money and the new home
Moyes, now 63 and into the final year of his contract, has not hidden his frustration at trying to compete with the league’s big spenders. Over the past five years, Everton rank only 15th for net spend among current Premier League clubs.
The counter-argument is parked in the same division. Bournemouth made a profit of £81m in last summer’s window and still finished sixth. Brighton banked £41m and came eighth. Both clubs have turned smart recruitment into league position.
Everton thought their own new era would be powered by bricks and steel as much as scouting. The move to the Hill Dickinson Stadium was supposed to signal lift-off. Instead, the numbers at home have been stark: 1.2 points per game, the lowest return by any Premier League side in their first season at a new ground.
Away from home, Moyes’ team looked far more comfortable, posting top-seven form on the road. At Hill Dickinson, the tension seemed to seep into every misplaced pass.
Osman believes context matters. Bournemouth and Brighton, he argues, are “further along in their development” than an Everton side still finding its feet in new surroundings after years of turmoil. He also points to a key moment: Grealish’s injury in January.
With Grealish in the side, Everton won 45% of their league games and averaged 1.6 points per match. Without him, the win rate dropped to 22%, the points return to one per game. The creative spark vanished, and with it, much of Everton’s attacking belief.
“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.”
Grealish’s return, Ndiaye’s future
Recruitment remains the great unresolved question at Everton.
Under previous owner Farhad Moshiri, eight players signed for £20m or more left the club for nothing. Value bled away. The Friedkin Group arrived and, after years of restraint, sanctioned nine signings last summer with a clear tilt toward youth. The payoff has been mixed.
Grealish and Dewsbury-Hall delivered instantly. Tyler Dibling, a £35m winger from Southampton, started just six league games. Left-back Adam Aznou, brought in from Bayern Munich, is still waiting for his Premier League debut.
Barry, 23, dominated in the air – no player won more aerial duels in his first Premier League season – but his finishing veered from ruthless to erratic. Midfielder Merlin Rohl struggled for minutes before finally impressing with a late run of four starts in May.
There is, at least, the prospect of Grealish returning. BBC Radio Merseyside’s Giulia Bould reports that the influential playmaker is set to re-sign on loan towards the end of the window as he continues his recovery from a stress fracture in his foot. His wages, around £200,000 per week, would remain a heavy load on the wage bill.
At the same time, Iliman Ndiaye has been linked with a move to Saudi Arabia. The prospect alarms Osman.
“I'd welcome Grealish back but only at a price that suits Everton,” he 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.”
Everton cannot afford to lose their best players without a clear, effective plan to replace them. The squad is already one of the smallest in the division.
Thin squad, heavy burden
No manager used fewer players in the Premier League last season than Moyes. Just 22 featured for Everton. His 128 substitutions were at least six fewer than any other coach. Trust, it seems, is hard-earned.
Yet the club continues to pour significant resources into development signings. Central midfielder Hayden Hackney arrived from Middlesbrough for £16.5m in July. Tyrique George, 20, joined permanently from Chelsea for £18m after a loan spell in the second half of last season.
Experience is being targeted too. Celtic defender Alistair Johnston has emerged as a leading candidate to solve the long-standing problem at right-back. Arsenal’s 32-year-old midfielder Christian Norgaard is reportedly close to joining, his know-how badly needed in a dressing room that has just lost Seamus Coleman and Idrissa Gueye – more than 600 Premier League appearances gone in one summer.
The average age of signings in Moyes’ second spell is under 24. Three of them are 20 or younger. Yet last season, players aged 21 or under played only 1,088 league minutes. That ranked Everton 17th in the division for youth involvement.
The contradiction is obvious. The manager is being handed youngsters, but rarely leans on them.
The situation is about to get even more delicate. James Garner, a key figure in midfield, will miss the start of the season after groin surgery. Without Coleman and Gueye, the dressing room has lost voice and know-how. Norgaard, if he arrives, will not just be a body in midfield but a bridge between eras.
As things stand, Moyes may have no choice but to turn to the players he has been slow 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.”
Everton stand at a familiar crossroads, staring at a league table that flatters and frustrates in equal measure. They have escaped the chaos of relegation battles. They have not yet found the clarity of a club on the rise.
With Moyes entering the final year of his deal, Grealish poised to return, and key decisions looming over Ndiaye and the club’s young core, the question is no longer whether Everton can steady themselves.
It is whether they are finally ready to move beyond 13th.
