League Cup Round Two · Preston North End (a) · W 4–0 · 26 August 2026

Barry's hat-trick beats Preston, Johnson adds a first Everton goal

Moyes was asked before the game whether cups matter, and Barry answered for him with three goals in forty-five minutes.

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Everton won 4–0 at Preston in the second round of the Carabao Cup, and Thierno Barry scored three of the goals. Before the game David Moyes had bristled at being asked whether a cup run could ever matter more than staying in the Premier League, and Barry, the striker the forum spent August wanting to replace, had made the question look idle by the seventieth minute. Brennan Johnson came off the bench and scored his first goal for the club two minutes later, his first in thirty-five games by Sky's count. Wolves, who ended Everton's run in this competition last season, are the reward at home in round three.

The Week Before

The glow from the Palace win lasted about forty-eight hours on the forum. By Monday the board's most-read thread was arguing that David Moyes should go. The cause was his tone with the press, not anything on the pitch. Before the trip to Deepdale he was asked whether a cup run could ever rank above Premier League survival. He answered with a question of his own: "Of course we all want to win the cups. Yes, the cups are hugely important, would it be more important than staying in the Premier League? I'll ask you the question: is winning a cup more important than staying in the Premier League? What would your answer be?" Yahoo Sport's account of the press conference also had him calling the premise "dead stupid". One camp on the board saw a thin-skinned and peevish man. The other saw a man baited about ambition by people who would have called him arrogant had he promised Wembley. The thread that caught the week best was titled, more or less, the level of fume on here gets stranger by the day. The board knew it was rehearsing its anger. "Fume in training," as one poster put it, "preparing for the main fume event on September 1st."

Moyes fed the fume. On the owners' reported disappointment with last season he was unrepentant: "I am surprised they were disappointed, because I don't think anybody set out — there was never ever a time anybody said to me, 'David, you have to make Europe'" (Grand Old Team, from a Sky Sports interview). On the window: "We're still needing quite a few players to add to the squad. I'd like to do more if possible," and, asked for names, "I'm not going to tell you. But we're well aware of what's required and we're working hard to try and make it happen."

Everton are no nearer a right-back. Guela Doué remains the stated first choice. Strasbourg have rejected two bids, Read Everton reported, and want something near £40m. Paris Saint-Germain are now said to be interested. The same reports frame Castagne as the attainable alternative. Muñoz is still available and still, reportedly, not quite to Moyes's taste. Héctor Fort, the "frontrunner" of a fortnight ago, was by midweek reported bound for Real Sociedad instead. The fee is put in the €8m range, with Barcelona keeping a buy-back. The board barely blinked, on the grounds that he was "the least Moyes type player we've been linked with all summer." A forum poll put Doué well ahead of Muñoz as the preferred signing. The largest single bloc, more than a third, ticked the option that says Everton go with what they have. By Wednesday the rumours had turned bleaker: Doué to PSG, Muñoz to Forest. Neither could be verified, and the board believed both.

The striker news was calmer. Liam Delap, the £50m "demented" option of the preview, is reported to be joining Nottingham Forest. The board felt relief rather than regret. It had never expected Everton to pay that much. Everton have held fresh talks over Midtjylland's Franculino Djú, at around £21m, according to Read Everton's tracker. Fiorentina have enquired about Beto, and Everton will not entertain a sale without a replacement first. Grealish stays in the "contact maintained" column. Angus Kinnear, the chief executive, was reported to have said Grealish "was definitely loved here." Sunderland are now said to be in for him too. The board took that as the end of the matter. Iroegbunam's Hull move is in serious doubt again, this time over an adductor injury. Last week's hamstring-or-adductor confusion has settled on adductor. Nørgaard, still without a minute, was ruled out injured. Garner, back from groin surgery and on the bench against Palace, was said not to be ready for a full game. He then played sixty-four minutes.

The Match: Preston 0–4 Everton

Moyes made three changes from Saturday, none of them experimental. Keane came in for the rested Branthwaite. Garner replaced Hackney, who had a slight knock, by the club's account. Dibling started for George. The forum had spent the afternoon fearing far worse. One thread had seven changes, four under-23s and Jake O'Brien at right-back. The board was braced to blame a Keane–Tarkowski pairing for anything that went wrong. Nothing did. O'Brien stayed on the bench. Röhl played right-back for the third game running and did it well enough going forward that nobody asked about a right-back for a night.

Everton wasted chances before they took them. Sky counted about ten clear openings before the goal on 25 minutes. Dewsbury-Hall floated a ball over the defence to release Mykolenko down the left, and Mykolenko squared for Barry to sweep in. Preston's best spell followed. Röhl misjudged a bounce on 39 minutes and Burgzorg pulled back for Leroy to fire over. Lee Nicholls, on debut in the Preston goal, saved from Dibling at the near post on the stroke of half-time. Moyes said afterwards he had wanted the first half finished off better.

The second goal, on 59 minutes, broke Preston, and Paul Heckingbottom knew it. Ndiaye fed Dewsbury-Hall. Nicholls pushed his shot out, straight into Barry's path, and Barry finished. Heckingbottom had his substitutes lined up on the touchline at that moment. The goal "just changed the game," he said, and the changes he then made were not attacking ones because "we've not got attacking changes." Pickford saved a Callum Lang overhead kick on 65 minutes. That Pickford started a second-round tie at all showed how seriously Everton took it. Johnson had come on for Garner a minute before.

The hat-trick came on 70. Dewsbury-Hall, who had a part in each of the first three goals, found Johnson. Johnson won a yard and squared for Barry to finish from close range. Two minutes later Barry laid the ball off and Johnson's low shot beat Nicholls. By Sky's count it was his first goal in 35 games, and his first for Everton. It was also the first evidence for the "pace we desperately need" side of the argument that split the fanbase when he arrived in the McNeil swap. George, Aznou and Alcaraz came on late. Barry had by then gone down clutching something and got up again. The forum watched him on the bench and decided he was fine. Everton have never won the League Cup. For a night the "completes the set" thread on the forum was allowed its joke.

Post-Match

Moyes managed Preston into a play-off final a quarter of a century ago, and at Deepdale he was as warm as he gets. "It ended up being a little bit more comfortable than I thought it might have been before the game, but it's a really good result for us," he told Sky Sports. "I thought we played well at times and our football was quite good, but we need to finish things off a bit better in the first half than we did — but I'm really pleased we scored four goals." Barry has four goals in two games, half of last season's league tally already. Asked about him, Moyes said: "I told him he has to do a lot better than he did before. That's it. We want centre-forwards to score goals." On Johnson: "We want to find what he did at Tottenham when he was scoring all those goals. People who've watched Brennan over the years will tell you that looks a bit more like him."

Heckingbottom said more about the gap between the divisions. "We were playing against top opposition, we know that, but one or two things, fundamentally, don't help you keep clean sheets anyway," he said, before conceding that "because of where we are at the minute, it's hard to take the pressure off the defenders." That is what a Championship manager says about a Premier League side who have learned to hurt you. Everton have not heard it often in the past three years.

The Fans' Verdict

Peoplesforum.co.uk has no single match thread. The board reacted in twenty one-line bursts rather than one long conversation, and they all pointed the same way. Professional, comfortable, "could have had five or six." The board spent August wanting Barry replaced. It now counts his goals towards a self-set target of fifteen and updates the percentage after each one. The only argument worth reporting was over the man of the match. The raw numbers say Barry, three and an assist. A vocal minority said Dewsbury-Hall or the collective, on the grounds that all three goals were made for him. Armstrong, on loan at Preston last season by local accounts, was the young player the board praised most: "oozes class," "needs to stay in the team at the weekend." Dibling's 6/10 matched the board's own reading of a player still "playing too much within himself."

On Moyes, the win bought less credit than Palace had. "It is only Preston, of course," began the most generous post, before allowing that "he does seem to be getting things right for now". The suggestion that he now deserves slack drew an unprintable rebuttal, aimed at his pre-match interviews rather than his team selection. One poster awarded the performance to a first-team coach rather than the manager. No satisfaction poll was run this week. The mood reads as unchanged from the 4.92 of pre-season. His results are accepted and his manner is not forgiven. Beto's absence even from the bench started a small fire ("is he off?"). A fan claim of a substitution mix-up that had annoyed Moyes put it out. The claim is unverified.

Themes Carried Forward

The striker ledger is closed for now. Barry has four, Beto none, and Delap has gone elsewhere. Moyes's "revenge" framing from the preview looks less like a slogan every week. That lasts until Barry misses a game. A thread titled "we need a new striker" this week turned out to be about the knock he took at Deepdale. The question for the deadline is whether to buy a second striker, not whether to buy one. The right-back clock has run down with no signing and worse news. Two Doué bids have been rejected, PSG are reportedly in, Fort has reportedly gone to Sociedad and Muñoz reportedly to Forest. Röhl is doing a job he should not have to do, and doing it well enough that the club may talk itself out of doing anything. Five days remain. The Moyes barometer splits as it did in the preview: results accepted, manner resented. The difference is that the board's "gone by Christmas" prediction now sits beside two wins and eight goals. The temperature will be taken again after Bournemouth.

New this week: Johnson, with a goal and an assist in twenty-six minutes, after 35 games without a goal by Sky's count. Garner, last season's player of the year, with sixty-four solid minutes in a midfield that no longer needs him to be its best player. And the first serious sale rumour of the window, an unsourced £80m Manchester City interest in Ndiaye. The board rejected it in unison. No named outlet has carried it. Carried from the preview: Grealish, with Sunderland now in and the board resigned; Iroegbunam, adductor, Hull in doubt; Nørgaard, injured and still without a minute; and the deadline-day verdict, owed in the first article after 1 September. Everton have Wolves at home in round three, the side that ended last season's run 2–0.

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