Matchday Three · Manchester United (h) · D 2–2 · 6 September 2026

Maitland-Niles curls stoppage-time equaliser from thirty yards on debut to deny United

The three substitutes Moyes had left made three contributions, in a week when his owners were reported to be looking for new investors.

Unashamedly written by a machine · The suffering is real

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Everton drew 2–2 with Manchester United on Sunday, and the point was won by Maitland-Niles, five days at the club, who hit a first-time shot from the best part of thirty yards into the top corner with almost the last kick of the match. Everton had trailed to Mbeumo a minute into the second half, levelled through George's first goal for the club, and fallen behind again to Šeško with two minutes left, so the three substitutes Moyes was left with had made three contributions between them. It ended a week that began with the Fans' Forum demanding competence in an open letter, went on to the Financial Times reporting that the owners are looking for new investors, and finished with Moyes admitting he has never spoken to Dan Friedkin. It felt like a win, Maitland-Niles said, and thousands stayed in their seats to sing as if it had been.

The Week Before

Deadline day ended with Moyes silent and the supporters not. By Wednesday morning the formal bodies had spoken. The Everton Fans' Forum published an open letter. "We were told there was a clear strategy. We were told the recruitment structure had changed. We were told lessons had been learned from the mistakes of previous years. Yet, once again, Everton have found themselves scrambling in the final days and hours of a transfer window." Its demands were "competence, preparation and accountability," and its questions were "Where is the planning? Where is the preparation? Where is the accountability when the plan fails?" It warned that supporters' patience "should not be mistaken for acceptance." The Echo took that line for its headline. The 1878s, the volunteers who make the tifos and the flag displays, announced they were standing down "for the foreseeable future," days after being promised fifty pence from every discounted pint sold at the ground. They called the state of the squad "full-on gross negligence" and said they would have filled the ground with flags saying exactly what they thought, but the rules on wording don't allow it. The Fan Advisory Board wanted answers too. The People's Forum, which has seen a great many statements, was harder to impress. Taking your flags home, one poster observed, is not a hunger strike. Another reminded the board that the chief executive is "Angus flipping Kinnear, not Dr Evil."

Thursday made the 1878s look prescient. The Financial Times reported that The Friedkin Group, less than two years after paying something over £400m for the club, is working with advisers on a process that could see new investors buy a significant stake. A source described the Premier League as "an arms race," and the division had just spent £3.48bn in a window Everton ended as a net seller. The Echo added that senior staff at the club were unaware of any such process. Christian Purslow, who has run Liverpool, Aston Villa and Chelsea's commercial arm, made the week's most damaging comparison on the Football Boardroom podcast, alongside Henry Winter. Roma, the Friedkins' other club, had "a great window," kept the midfielder Chelsea wanted because their coach said so, and are title contenders. Everton had "two million quid net spend," a "Championship player as their marquee signing" and "a glaring hole at centre-forward." The Friedkins, he said, "are running the risk of giving the impression" that Everton are second in the pecking order, and "there is no fanbase where that is going to be less welcome." Alan Shearer, for Betfair, called the window "embarrassing," said Moyes "might have been fuming," and said Everton would need "a lot of luck" to reach January but would not go down. Alan Stubbs, on a podcast, said what everyone had been avoiding about Harrison Armstrong: "He could be Everton's answer to Steven Gerrard, which is a big statement, but that's the potential." The Echo's Chris Beesley pieced together how close the Armstrong sale came. Forest were told Everton needed a big sale, the Telegraph reported. Kinnear notified the owners of the bid and it was green-lit "without manager David Moyes being informed," and Dan Friedkin himself pulled the plug after the Vitality away end had done its work. Everton, by the Echo's count, have had a local player in the first-team squad every season since 1888. That is what was nearly sold.

Friday brought the press conference the week had been building towards since eleven o'clock on Tuesday night. Moyes had every reason to come out swinging and came out with his hands in his pockets. "Disappointed we didn't do more business, things did not go our way in the end," he told the Echo. "In football, you have to live with disappointments and move on. In this case, we will." Sales had been necessary: "I don't do the financials here, it's not me who does it. But I think what you're saying is right, I think we were looking to get some money in." On Ndiaye: "I've lost Wayne Rooney to Manchester United, I've lost Joleon Lescott and Jack Rodwell to Man City over the years. On this occasion unfortunately we lost Illy and we didn't want to lose Illy because we liked Illy a lot." On Balogun he closed the door: "It wasn't anybody's fault. It happens in football a lot. The player had a problem in his medical and that was simply it. There's no other story behind it." On the timing he gave a little: "We had made bids for several players on bank holiday Monday and it would be hard to believe the outcome got to where it was. Lots of things just didn't fall in line but we probably shouldn't have been as late as that." On the eighteen senior outfield players he has been left with: "I've never wanted a huge squad, I've always preferred it when the squad is tighter, but maybe not as tight as this." Then the two answers that made the week's headlines. On the stake sale: "I've had no conversations with them, and certainly not on any investment. That's beyond my jurisdiction … If you want success, then you all need to be aligned. I think we've got new owners in who are still finding their way at the club." On the owner: he has never spoken to Dan Friedkin, not once since January 2025. "My real contact is Angus. Angus is the one who I would go to see. Rishi is the next one and then the head of the Friedkin family in America. I don't really get any direct conversations with them." A reported Chelsea bid for James Garner was "completely untrue." Why stay? "Everton's different, I wouldn't have come back for anybody but Everton … People saw the face of Evertonians last week and it can be really powerful. I would expect them to be really powerful now. But powerful for the team, powerful for the players. What we're going to need from them is extra because we're short." He called it "a little bit of a bump in the road," and promised "no excuses." The Echo's Joe Thomas, who asked most of the questions, called the performance "remarkably restrained" and wrote that the days of an Everton manager having to front up for chaos at the club "should have been over." The forum had predicted a straight bat and split on whether it wanted one. "Why would I enjoy that?" asked one poster of a relegation struggle with eighteen players. Another pointed out that the only people disappointed by the restraint were the ones hoping he'd get himself sacked.

By Sunday morning Beesley's column had drawn the week's conclusion: the window "suggests Dan Friedkin lacks appetite for Everton". Sources in Houston, he wrote, had been hinting since the summer that the stadium was the attraction and the club a modest interest. Kinnear had said on 19 August that "this window again, I think we will spend more than most of our competitors, the owners are very keen to back us". Guela Doué, the right-back Moyes wanted, went to Leverkusen for a fee the Echo put at £25.72m. Everton spent £4m on Maitland-Niles. That would not have bought Andrei Kanchelskis in 1995. One figure runs the other way: last season's average crowd of 52,121 was the biggest in the club's history, beating the 1962/63 title season. The team news was cautious. Röhl kept his place at right-back for a fifth game. Johnson took Ndiaye's flank. Both deadline-day signings started on the bench. Grealish had played less than an hour of football since the stress fracture that ended his first loan spell, and Maitland-Niles had had, in Moyes's phrase, "a couple of days." The Echo's two Everton writers had picked opposite teams. Thomas would have started both newcomers, Beesley neither, and Beesley won. Seventeen-year-old Braiden Graham was the striking cover on the bench. A forum thread was titled Rohl right back experiment will do well to last until half time. United came with Michael Carrick, permanent head coach since May. They had beaten Ipswich 5–2, Bruno Fernandes scoring a hat-trick, after losing 2–0 at Hull on the opening day. The two clubs had split last season's meetings 1–0 each: Dewsbury-Hall's winner at Old Trafford in November, and Benjamin Šeško's, off the bench, at Hill Dickinson in February. The board's pre-match position was "spoon to a gunfight if Barry goes down," and its best joke, borrowed from elsewhere, was that Everton now have more stadiums than strikers.

The Match: Everton 2–2 Manchester United

The ground made a hostile noise from the first whistle. The Echo's phrase for it was "anger and unity", and the biggest roar before kick-off was for Armstrong's name. The Guardian noticed what was missing: a stadium "shorn of the tifos and flag displays" after the 1878s stood down, and, for all the week's letters and podcasts, "no visible or audible shows of dissent against the Friedkin Group inside the ground". The protest stayed outside. The football took a while to start. Maguire needed treatment for a bloodied nose inside three minutes after meeting Barry. On eight Fernandes volleyed Mbeumo's knock-down against the crossbar. It was the twenty-fourth time United have hit the woodwork since the start of last season, more than any side in the division. Barry went down between Martínez and Mainoo looking for a penalty. The home end wanted it and nobody else did. The BBC's Simon Stone called it "a clear dive" and thought him lucky to escape a card. Dalot dragged George back without a booking, and Moyes would return to that afterwards. Armstrong was booked on thirteen minutes for "needlessly dragging Bruno Fernandes round the neck," and played the rest of the afternoon on a warning. The pattern of the half was Rashford against Röhl, and it was not a fair fight. On 22 minutes Rashford reached the byline and cut back for Cunha, who steered wide. Rashford went past Röhl often enough to make the point, again, that he is not a right-back. Johnson was booked on 34 for chopping down Cunha as he set off for the box, a foul Stone thought "probably worth it." On 43 minutes Röhl produced the cross of the game, whipped in from the right. Barry drifted off Maguire's shoulder, met it cleanly and headed over from close range. Branthwaite headed a corner at Lammens a minute later. In first-half stoppage time Fernandes released Cunha and Rashford lined up a shot. Branthwaite came across with a tackle so well timed he celebrated it in his own box, then got up and blocked Fernandes's follow-up. Goalless at the break, and flat by every account, with Everton's final third the flattest part.

The second half was 61 seconds old when it stopped being flat. Mainoo found Mbeumo with a cross-field pass. Mbeumo cut inside across the edge of the box, past Mykolenko and George, and curled it into the far corner. The Echo blamed both of them. "Pretty shabby," was Moyes's word for it. For a while the game belonged to United and to Rashford. On the hour he beat both centre-halves and backheeled to Cunha six yards out. Tarkowski's sliding challenge took the ball off Cunha's toe, and Paul Howard's VAR check agreed it was clean. Lee Hendrie on Sky called it "outstanding defending," and the afternoon turned on it. Minutes later Tarkowski launched a long ball straight to Lammens. The crowd groaned, and Stone heard "a stream of invective from his manager." Shaw was booked for ploughing into Röhl. Röhl was booked for hauling down Rashford. On 66 minutes Moyes sent on Grealish. The away end sang "City reject." The home end did the opposite, and the game changed. Grealish demanded the ball, kept it, and ran at Dalot until Dalot pulled him back and was booked at last. Dewsbury-Hall, on his birthday, kept finding space and kept hitting tame shots at Lammens. United took off Rashford and Cunha for Dorgu and Šeško on 70. The Echo's live blog noted that "the side is so short on numbers they cannot strengthen at this stage in the same way others can." Then came two minutes the same blog said "summed up this past week". On 75 Moyes took off Röhl for Hackney and moved Garner to right-back. Garner had been flagging, and had a hernia operation in the summer. Within a minute he went down, and cramp was the hopeful diagnosis. On 77 Maitland-Niles came on to play right-back after all. Sky's cameras found Angus Kinnear in the stand looking, in the Echo's word, "glum." Why the two substitutions were not made the other way round is a fair question.

Because on 83 minutes Hackney, who has now come off the bench in successive league games and changed both, drove forward, lost the ball, won it back, and slid it to George. George had moved to the right when Grealish arrived. From a tight angle near the byline, "a ridiculously tight angle," in the Guardian's report, he put his laces through it and beat Lammens at the near post, into the roof of the net. The Guardian called the finish unstoppable. It was his first Everton goal, in his fifteenth appearance and from his sixteenth shot. At 20 years and 214 days he is the club's youngest league scorer since Branthwaite in December 2021. Carrick at once took off Dalot, a second yellow waiting to happen, and Mainoo. Five minutes later United led again. Fernandes ran at Maitland-Niles, Shaw overlapped and hung up a cross from the left, and Šeško, who had done exactly this in February, got between Tarkowski and Mykolenko and headed past Pickford's fingertips from seven yards. The Echo's blog called it "a catalogue of errors". Branthwaite had left Tarkowski two men to mark, Tarkowski got caught under the ball, and Pickford got a hand to it and no more. Two minutes remained. Five were added. George went for the near post again and Lammens saved, though the flag was up. Grealish teed up Hackney, who blazed over. Dewsbury-Hall won a corner. Hackney swung it in. United cleared it to the edge of the box, where it fell to Maitland-Niles, a 29-year-old with fifteen career goals who had signed for £4.2m on Tuesday. He hit it first time from the best part of thirty yards, virtually the final kick of the match by the Guardian's reckoning, and it curled into the top corner. Lammens, in Moyes's account, "couldn't even move" and, in the Guardian's, stood "rooted to the spot," as it went in. The clock read 95:11, the latest goal ever scored at Hill Dickinson. Maitland-Niles was the first player to score on his Everton debut since Richarlison against Wolves in August 2018, and the first Englishman since Andrew Johnson in 2006. It was his second Premier League goal in 110 appearances, and his first since December 2018, for Arsenal, against Liverpool. When the whistle went, the Echo reported, thousands stayed in their seats to sing.

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Post-Match

Moyes did not smile on his way to the officials and did not pretend to have wanted a draw. "For periods we played well. I thought Man Utd played better than they have done in their other games," he told Sky. "The first goal we concede is shabby. But I thought if anyone was going to go on and win the game after we equalise it would be us. I set out to win." And: "For us, to give the crowd moments, it was a big moment. But I wanted to win and I thought we were capable of winning. I need to win my home games." To Match of the Day, on whether he had settled for a point: "It looked as if it wasn't going to be the case. We opened up a bit at the end as well, and Manchester United were countering. We had a couple of good defensive moments to stop them from making it three, but overall, we deserved to get that second goal, and it was an unbelievable goal as well." On Maitland-Niles: "He's only been in a couple days really. Haven't had much training time with him, but now we do know what he can do from outside the box." To the Echo, on George: "I don't know who was made man of the match, but he was very close. He did an awful lot of good things … Dalot should have been booked, I found it quite difficult that wasn't the case. But he is a young winger, just beginning to make his way in the Premier League, and we've had lots of them, and he'll need a bit of time to develop. There'll be weeks when it doesn't go well, there will be weeks like today." On Grealish: "Jack has had no minutes … He's not played for six and a half months. So we're starting to get Jack into a level where we think that he's ready to play and play longer … I think he'll be someone who the crowd here loves." On the squad, a variation on Friday's theme: "Sometimes when you've got less players, it means everyone has to be ready. Players on the fringes are going to have to show why they deserve to be involved. When you've got a small squad you have to find a way to make it work." Would the result calm the supporters? "I don't think they will be calm by that because they still know the size of the squad we got. Sometimes it gives players an opportunity to show what they can do. Sometimes, having too many players in the camp gives you problems behind the scenes, squads are too big, and players moan because they aren't in it."

Maitland-Niles, to Sky, had been at the club for five days and already knew the script: "It felt like a win. We dug deep and managed to get a point in the end. The crowd were with us and we were fighting to the end and that's why you get those results." On the goal: "It's amazing, everyone wants to start off like that and thankfully I did. The ball fell to me on the edge of the box, I put my foot through it and it ended up in the top corner which I'm happy about." And a promise: "I came in to work hard. It's a team full of hard workers so I fit right in. I'm going to show I can fit right in and pull my weight and give as much as everyone else, if not more." Carrick, to the Manchester Evening News, sounded like a man who had lost: "We're disappointed, bitterly disappointed to be in the position we were in the game twice, so close to the end … it feels like a defeat." On six goals conceded in three games, two of them to shots from distance: "Sometimes they fly in the top corner, and more often than not, they probably don't. So there's a little bit of that. But we obviously can't ignore it." Asked whether four points from Hull, Ipswich and a depleted Everton was a poor start: "We haven't started the season that bad, to be honest … We were that close to coming away with three points today. That's football, little moments that we can deal with a bit better, but we'll be fine." Jamie Carragher, on Sky's coverage, had called Everton's window "disastrous," and by the end of the afternoon nobody was arguing with him.

The Fans' Verdict

The People's Forum went into the week somewhere between exhausted and furious, and the week's institutional protests did not move it much. Most of the board had been going to the match since before the 1878s were born. It met a statement about flags with the amused impatience of people who remember when the protest was a man with a banner on Goodison Road. There was no satisfaction poll this week, so the barometer, 4.92 out of ten in pre-season, has to be read from the tone. The tone about Moyes was forgiving for a third consecutive week. The presser was received as the straight bat everyone had predicted. Half the board was frustrated that he would not say what it was thinking. The other half pointed out that a manager who says what he thinks about his owners tends not to be a manager for long. Kinnear remained the target. A parody account posting in his voice that he had been "unhappily satisfied" by the window suggests the anger has begun to curdle into comedy, and on this board that is usually the stage before acceptance. Expectations for the match were low. "Trust the process," wrote someone, in a tone that needs no explaining. "We're like the little fat kid at the school disco," wrote someone else, of a club chasing late loans. Grealish's return should have been the week's one clean pleasure. A cynical minority greeted it with the theory that he had come back so as not to have to move house.

Then the match, and the board lived every minute of it in one-line posts and reversed its position every ten. The first-half thread was about Röhl, and it was not kind. The thread predicting the experiment would not last until half-time was, in the end, only half an hour out. The Mbeumo goal was "awful defending" and "stand off and pay the price." The Garner substitution produced bewilderment in real time. The George goal produced the word "Radzinski-esque," the highest register this board has for a shot hit early and hard. Šeško's header was Pickford's fault and then, on reflection, everyone's. Maitland-Niles's goal produced disbelief, and plenty of it. Someone who knows the weight of the comparison wrote "the new Seamus Coleman," and a recurring joke about the club's several dozen preferred right-backs was retired on the spot. The man-of-the-match vote split between George, for the goal and for making Dalot's afternoon a misery, and Hackney, who "is the creative player we need in midfield". The board agreed, slightly astonished, that "substitutes all worked well for us, well done DM," a sentence it has not typed about a Moyes bench in living memory. Armstrong got a measured reception: a thread wondering whether he is yet a creator or a destroyer, and a long run of shellfish puns about his being "unshellfish" and "out-musseled." On this board that is affection. By the evening a thread had appeared titled Calm down, another poster had written "Can everyone stop enjoying the moment please," and a third summed the afternoon up in the board's own dialect: "Neat and tidy. Competitive. Can't shoot for shit." Nobody was talking about relegation any more. One poster who had been doing so called the talk "OTT." That is as close to optimism as the People's Forum gets in September.

Themes Carried Forward

The Moyes barometer rose for a third week running, and this week it rose on the football. Three substitutions made three contributions. His side twice fell behind and took a point. He said "I need to win my home games" rather than reaching for the excuses he promised on Friday not to make. The Guardian's line, that "weaker in number need not translate to weaker in spirit", is the one the club will want printed.

The ownership story has grown. The Financial Times has reported a stake-sale process. Moyes has never spoken to Dan Friedkin. Kinnear was on camera looking glum as Maitland-Niles came on. Beesley has concluded that Friedkin "lacks appetite".

Armstrong stays. He played the 90 minutes, was booked, and now has a Steven Gerrard comparison to live with. The Echo gave him a 7. The contract offer has not yet appeared. George made the right wing his own in one afternoon, after a summer of speculation about wingers had settled nothing. Beesley gave him a 9. Moyes's warning that "there'll be weeks when it doesn't go well" is Moyes protecting a player he intends to keep picking. Hackney's two cameos are now a selection argument. Grealish's fitness is still the story: half an hour, an audible lift when he touched the ball, and Moyes counting his minutes out loud. Maitland-Niles has answered the right-back question with a goal rather than a performance. Shaw's cross for Šeško went past him. A right-back arrived and Röhl still started at right-back on Sunday. His fifth game out of position was his worst.

The one-striker autumn bit for the first time. Barry got a 5 from the Echo. He missed the first half's only real chance from six yards, went down looking for a penalty, and finished with the highest expected goals on the pitch and nothing on target. Both Everton goals came from wide players. Sky's report said the squad "does not lack scorers," which is a kind way of saying it lacks a scorer. Garner's cramp is a fitness note and a squad-depth warning in one. Nørgaard, signed on 5 August, was not in the matchday squad and has still not played a minute, a month on. Dibling, the £35m signing of last summer, was an unused substitute again, and Alcaraz with him. Mykolenko has no understudy at all. That stops being a footnote the first time he limps. Keane, kept over West Ham's objection, watched from the bench. The striker enquiries in the free-agent market are still being reported, and only a signing ends them. The "first meeting at the new ground" promised last week had already happened, in February, and Everton lost it 1–0 to the same substitute. The pre-season prediction had Everton eleventh and Hull City relegated. Everton are eighth and unbeaten, Hull are third, and Hull's £22m midfielder played no part in either.

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