The £50m midfield prodigy Everton could sign on 1st January with season’s transfer business not done yet
He starred for England at Euro 2024 but has fallen out of favour for club and country
The 2025/26 season is already shaping up to be a special one for Everton, and David Moyes should already be looking ahead to January to reinforce his squad with an eye on securing only the Toffees’ second top-half finish since 2019.
The campaign began drenched in pessimism following a winless pre-season, injury to the talismanic Jarrad Branthwaite, concerns that they’d encounter similar new-stadium slumps as Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham and a dour opening defeat to Leeds which threatened that the worst Moyes’ tendencies could be returning.
Yet Everton have quickly banished that narrative, christening the Hill Dickinson Stadium with a resounding win over Brighton and scoring seven goals in their three fixtures following the Elland Road catastrophe, as Jack Grealish, Iliman Ndiaye and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall have shone with new signing Tyler Dibling waiting in the wings.
Apart from the Merseyside derby, Everton shouldn’t be outright underdogs in another game until the second half of October when they face Manchester City, and they could even be above Pep Guardiola’s side at that stage.
Everton will have tougher run-in – 50% of their remaining opponents after the January transfer window closes either qualified for the Champions League this season or are Manchester United – but that gives Moyes an opportunity to bolster at the squad before facing his toughest test of the campaign.
And with Everton providing a great service to Thomas Tuchel by reviving Grealish’s career, and giving Dewsbury-Hall, Dibling, Branthwaite and Jordan Pickford the platform to press their cases for a place on the plane to North America next summer, they could continue in that vein by signing another wayward England star in the form of Kobbie Mainoo.
Fearless Mainoo can empower Toffees to hit top gear
You don’t start every knockout game of a European Championships including the final as a teenager without being something special. That’s exactly the summer Kobbie Mainoo was coming off 12 months ago, having been thrust into the fire in Germany after Sir Gareth Southgate had exhausted his other more experienced central midfield options without success.
But after replacing Conor Gallagher at half-time in England’s final group match, Mainoo never looked back to cap a fairytale season for club and country. Mainoo played almost 2,000 minutes in the 2023/24 Premier League having featured for just 10 in the campaign before that, and also won Man of the Match in the FA Cup after scoring the eventual winner against Manchester City.
It’s beggars belief that he’s now apparently on the fringes of the Manchester United squad, but that prodigious talent remains and it can elevate Everton into genuine contenders for a top 10 finish or more this season. Mainoo’s composure on the ball is almost unmatched across the Premier League and could transform Everton’s build-up play.
In 23 games against top flight opposition in Moyes’ second spell on Merseyside, the Toffees have enjoyed over 50% of possession just four times, so introducing a player in the heart of midfield who’s so comfortable taking the ball under pressure and not just retaining possession but turning upfield, shaking his defender and pushing his side closer to the top of the pitch could be revolutionary.
It’s exactly that ability that rescued England in Germany last year while Mainoo has demonstrated at Old Trafford that he’s both capable of influencing games that his side do dominate, and effectively interfering with the opposition out of possession.
Amorim must decide: stick or twist on Mainoo
“I want Kobbie to stay,” Amorim told a press conference after denying Mainoo a move away from Old Trafford.
“He needs to fight for his place, and we need Kobbie, so that is not going to change. I understand that the players that are not playing in this moment are disappointed. Everyone will have the same opportunity to play. You have to fight during the week.”
But given Manchester United will only play Premier League games between now and the start of January the obvious follow-up question is: how?
The Stockport sensation has clocked just 671 top-flight minutes in 2025 and Amorim wants him to compete for a starting berth with Bruno Fernandes who’s played three-times that amount and only missed 166 minutes over the same period. Assuming Amorim doesn’t drop his captain and the only player who stopped Manchester United getting d
