Everton

St Domingo's, and a record nobody else holds

Everton were founded in 1878 as St Domingo's FC and took the name of the Liverpool district they played in the following year, in November 1879. They were among the founder members of the Football League for the 1888-89 season and have since spent more campaigns in England's top division than any other club: 123 as of August 2025, with only four seasons spent below it.

The honours list runs to fifteen major trophies — nine league championships, five FA Cups and the European Cup Winners' Cup of 1985. The last of those FA Cups was won in 1995, and nothing has been added since. That gap of thirty-one years is the fact that shapes everything else about the club's mood: the crowd, the size of the ground and the weight of the history all belong to a team that has not been presented with a trophy in the lifetime of most of the people who now watch it.

The losses, the deduction, and a change of owner

The nadir of the recent period was administrative rather than sporting. In November 2023 the Premier League docked Everton ten points for breaching profit and sustainability rules — the largest deduction in the competition's history — after the club posted losses of £371.8m over three years. Survival in those seasons was fought for against an arithmetic handicap rather than only against other teams.

Farhad Moshiri's ownership ended when The Friedkin Group, the vehicle of the American businessman Dan Friedkin, which also owns Roma, completed its purchase on 19 December 2024. Three weeks later, on 9 January 2025, Sean Dyche was dismissed with the side 16th. Leighton Baines and Séamus Coleman took temporary charge, and on 11 January David Moyes was confirmed as manager, returning twelve years after his first spell ended. Everton finished that season 13th on 48 points from 11 wins, 15 draws and 12 defeats.

Three miles down the waterfront

The move was the larger project. Everton left Goodison Park after 133 years for a new ground at Bramley-Moore Dock on Liverpool's northern waterfront, built at a cost of around £750m and opened on 17 February 2025. It holds just under 53,000, was designed by Dan Meis with BDP Pattern, and takes the form of a single steep bowl whose south stand — a 13,000-seat bank modelled on the terrace at Borussia Dortmund — was the element the club talked about most before anyone had sat in it.

The first competitive fixture there was a Premier League game against Brighton on 24 August 2025, won 2-0 in front of 51,759, with Iliman Ndiaye scoring the ground's first goal. Naming rights went to the Liverpool law firm Hill Dickinson. Goodison did not close: it has been handed to Everton's women's team and is now the largest dedicated women's football ground in the country.

The new stadium has already been given work beyond league football. It staged a Rugby League Ashes Test between England and Australia in 2025, hosted the Super League Magic Weekend in 2026, is down for an England rugby union fixture against Fiji in the Nations Championship, and is one of the venues for the European Championship in 2028.

Two seasons of consolidation under Moyes

The first full season in the new ground, 2025-26, ended with Everton 13th again, on 49 points from 13 wins, 10 draws and 15 defeats. There were 3-0 home wins over Nottingham Forest and Chelsea and heavier days on the other side of the ledger — beaten 3-0 at home by Tottenham, 4-1 at Newcastle. Beto was the leading scorer with nine league goals and ten in all competitions. Both cup runs stopped in the third round.

What the season did establish was that the ground fills. The average home league crowd was 52,132, close to capacity every week, in a first year when the club was still working out where its noise was going to come from.

A rebuilt squad and an unbeaten September

The summer of 2026 was the first window in years in which Everton sold from strength. Ndiaye went to Manchester City for £65m, Tim Iroegbunam to Hull City for £22m and Beto to Fiorentina for £15.4m. In came Tyrique George from Chelsea for £18m, Merlin Röhl from Freiburg for £17m, Hayden Hackney from Middlesbrough for £16.5m and Christian Nørgaard from Arsenal for £7m, with Brennan Johnson arriving in a swap that sent Dwight McNeil to Crystal Palace, Jack Grealish returning on loan from Manchester City after 22 appearances the previous season, and Ainsley Maitland-Niles signing from Lyon on deadline day. Moyes said afterwards that the squad was still short.

The start was the best in years. Crystal Palace were beaten 2-0 at home on 22 August, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall scoring on 42 minutes and Thierno Barry on 53. A week later, on 29 August, James Tarkowski headed a 91st-minute equaliser to draw 1-1 at Bournemouth. On 6 September, Manchester United were held 2-2 at Hill Dickinson: George put Everton ahead on 83 minutes, and Maitland-Niles, a debutant signed days earlier, struck from distance in the 96th. Grealish came off the bench for his first football in six months after a foot injury. "He kept the ball very well and made some very good passes through," Moyes said. "He is someone who the crowd here love." Of the club generally: "I want us to be a club that is building, ambitious, and can aim to challenge the top teams."

The fifth game, on 19 September, was the one that showed both sides of the team. Barry scored inside 11 minutes when a Tarkowski shot from range came off him and wrong-footed Christian Walton, and Everton then had 21 shots and put two on target in beating Ipswich Town 1-0. A Barry header from a Dewsbury-Hall corner was ruled out by VAR for Johnson interfering from an offside position, which Moyes disputed — "The goalkeeper wouldn't have saved the header. Did he interfere, really?" — and Abdul Fatawu was sent off on 67 minutes for a second booking, for simulation. Everton went into the international break unbeaten on nine points from five, two wins and three draws, six goals scored and three conceded, in the top half.

The open question above the manager

The unresolved matter is Moyes himself. His contract expires at the end of this season and no extension has been offered. The former Everton chief executive Keith Wyness has argued that if the position is not clarified by January, Moyes should "start talking to other clubs and make it known publicly", adding: "I think he deserves at least that courtesy." Complicating it is reported uncertainty over the ownership, with The Friedkin Group understood to be seeking fresh investment in the club; one reading is that a rolling one-year deal keeps continuity on the books during any such process.

Against that, the ledger looks better than it has in a decade. The debt taken on under the previous regime has been dealt with, the regulatory jeopardy that produced the points deduction has passed, and the club owns a new stadium outright rather than renting an old one. What it does not have is a trophy, or, yet, a settled answer on who will be picking the team next August.