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Managers come and managers go, but Preview Percy hangs about forever. Perhaps we need to work on that. In the meantime, here’s his look at Monday night’s trip to Everton...

And so the latest new era starts with a Monday night schlep up to Liverpool where we will be hosted, for the first time at their new Bramley Dock ground, by Everton. Kick-off is at 8pm with Sky covering proceedings for the purposes of televisual broadcast.




So the Toffeemen, then. Bit of a mixed bag so far this season. They opened up with a 1-0 defeat away at Leeds before opening their account at their new gaff with a 2-0 win over Brighton. A trip to Molineux was rewarded with a 3-2 win at Wolves before a 0-0 home draw with Villa.

Their last outing saw them go down 2-1 to Liverpool in the midst of some refereeing which was ludicrous even by Liverpool standards. All of that has left them in 10th position with seven points from five played.

Having finally sorted out the ownership saga which lasted longer than a VAR review trying to deny a goal against Liverpool, they were able to do a bit of shopping in close season, having put their PSR issues behind them.

Daisy tells me that Carlos Alcarez’s signing from Brazilian outfit Flamengo doesn’t really count as he arrived on loan last January, with £15m being enough to make the deal permanent.

The first “proper” arrival came in the form of striker Thierno Barry who, despite his French nationality, has yet to play a first team game in his native land. Instead he has been about a bit in Belgium, Switzerland and, latterly, Spain where he netted 11 times in 35 appearances for Villareal.

Capped at Under 21 level by the French he cost £27m to bring over from Spain. Four of his five league appearances for the Toffees have come from the bench added to which he has had two League Cup starts, though he has yet to open his account.

They brought in goalkeeping back up for Jordan Pickford in the form of Bournemouth custodian Mark Travers. Travers found himself warming the racing car seats for much of his time at Dean Court to the extent that he spent most of the last couple of seasons out on loan.




Presumably the racing car seats at Bramley Dock are state of the art with inbuilt heating then. Travers has four full caps for the Republic of Ireland and, as one might expect, his only starts this season have come in the League Cup.

Spanish/Catalan-born Moroccan international defender Adam Aznou was next to arrive. A 19 year-old, he’s yet to bother the first XI but is worth a mention if only for the fact that he started his career with a junior outfit in Catalonia called FC Damm, something that might well be a name for our own club at the moment.

Bayern Munich was the source for the left-back who cost £7.8m or thereabouts, depending on where you buy your Euros.

£27m was enough to free Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall from Chelsea where the player had spent a season having followed Maresca down there from Leicester. Named after one of those stately homes that crop up from time to time in the writings of PG Wodehouse (probably) he has antecedents from the Republic of Ireland that would enable him to represent England or Ireland.

He’s been told, though his career to date has failed to see selectors from either nation tip him the wink. Although he featured heavily in Chelsea’s European campaign last season, league appearances were more scarce for the midfielder who was a product of Leicester’s youth system, though that didn’t stop him leaving once the Foxes went down. In truth it was probably as good a deal for Leicester, who don’t have an awful lot of dash to play with.

Tyler Dibling is not one of those quaint villages in the Cotswolds much beloved of lazy TV murder mystery programme producers. He is a winger for whom Everton paid £35m rising to £40m if the Midsomer CID don’t link him with the vicar’s murder first.

His youth career took an interesting path, including as it did spells with three different professional clubs - Exeter, Chelsea and Southampton, with whom he had no fewer than three separate youth spells, suggesting that either they weren’t sure about him or vice-versa.




By the time of their relegation however, Southampton were sure enough to request a decent-sized fee for the 19 year-old who has been capped at every England level up to Under 21.

They brought in a couple of loan signings. German Under 21 international midfielder Merlin Rohl will miss Monday night through injury. However, more significantly, Jack Grealish came in on loan from Man City. A player who falls into the “talented pain-in-the-arse” category, he will benefit from playing regularly in a “big fish-small pond” manner rather than the bit part he was playing in a City side on the way down from their better days.

He seems to have a big grin on his face when interviewed these days, though Thomas Teuchel has yet to be convinced of his merits over, say, Jordan Henderson who surely would be most people’s pick for an England place. If they were stupid.

Next up and we’ll eschew the usual Wide and Wacky World of Association Football bit this week given the events of the weekend. Nobody ever accused Sullivan and Brady of ever behaving with class but to let Mr Potter go out and bumble his way through Friday’s press conference whilst in another room somewhere they were thrashing out the final details of Nuno Espirito Santo’s contract was a bit crass, even for them.

A bit like sacking your manager after an away match and telling him he can’t get the team bus home, which was one of their previous lows (Avram Grant, in case you're wondering). That’s not to say a change wasn’t necessary – results weren’t good enough. But if ever proof were needed that our owners have learned nothing over the years, then add Potter’s dismissal to the long list of misdemeanours to be laid at their door.

One has to feel a bit sorry for Potter whose best successes have come when working for a club with a clear and defined strategy relating to style of play and recruitment. If we’ve had any such plans, Sullivan and Brady have kept them well hidden.

And so welcome Nuno Espirito Santo, then. It will be an interesting signing. He left Wolves amongst rumours of a disagreement with the club’s owners over transfer policy. He left Forest after a fallout with a dodgy owner so public, divorce lawyers were tuning into Sky Sports News every night with a bucket of popcorn to hear the latest shenanigans.




And now he has our lot to contend with. Still those of us with older memories have already taken to referring to the new boss as a “Paul Hilton manager deal”. Hilts was the central defender who played for Bury in the 10-0 League Cup slaughter back in the eighties. Something that persuaded John Lyall to go out and buy him.

Why the comparison? Well we’ve only won the once this season. So we’ve brought in the manager of the team we’ve beaten. Still Hilton was a good servant for the club going on to be a coach. He was best remembered for a stormer in the 4-1 defeat of Chelsea that effectively kept us up in 1988.

Mr Espirito Santo’s first job will be to sort out the defence. Confidence is never good when you have a goalkeeper flapping about behind you and, though Areola came in for the Palace game, the shakiness was there for all to see. Such is the mentality of the side at the moment, the chances of coming back from a goal behind look limited.

Admittedly we managed an equaliser against Palace, but once we went 2-1 down following the accident-prone Mavropanos’s fatal slip at the wrong moment one look at the faces of the players told you all you needed to know about the likelihood of our getting anything out of the game. Hopefully Saturday’s first training session will have worked on those little things called corners, just as a starter.

On the absence front, it remains to be seen whether Wan-Bissaka’s “abdominal” injury will have improved with the departure of Potter. Soucek, meanwhile will have looked at any number of challenges that were made over the weekend and wonder why he has two more matches left of a ban to serve when Chiesa became the fith Liverpool player to avoid a red this season. Other than that, the new boss has a full squad to choose from.

So to the prediction. Other clubs have a new manager bounce. Take Leicester who we played off the park at their place and still ended up on the wrong side of a referee-inspired defeat. However, that sort of thing never seems to happen to us.

We lost Potter’s first game, if I recall correctly. However we ought, repeat ought, to be able to get something out of this and with that in mind I will go for a draw. So the £2.50 I was going to spend on a copy of the Moody Blues’ classic single “Go Now” to send to DJ Russ to play before matches will instead be sent to Mr Winstone’s Turf Accountancy App and wagered on a 1-1 draw.

Enjoy the game!




When last we met at Goodison Park Drew 1-1 (Premier League March 2025)
Should have won. Nearly lost. Soucek opened the scoring and we shut up shop. With the inevitable stoppage time equaliser.

Referee: Sam Barrott
Poor official out of his depth in his first season. So PGMOL kept him on. Go figure.

Danger Man: Jack Grealish
Has a point to prove. Dangerous.

Percy and Daisy’s Amazing Everton Fact Of The Week Type Thing
Goodison Park was apparently the first purpose-built football ground in the country. Which makes it twice they have moved to such facilities. For the benefit of our board, “purpose-built” means a facility expressly designed with football in mind, rather than something that just happens to hold thirty-five thousand families.

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