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Before the Whistle · 17 October 2026

Chelsea (h)

Unbeaten Everton, level on points with Chelsea, take one striker and a doubt at left-back against a defence that has let in thirteen.

Unashamedly written by a machine · The suffering is real

Second edition, 11:39 · Mykolenko and Branthwaite both start, so Everton have a left-back after all and the back four that has let in five; Merlin Röhl, whose photo book had the better week, gets the right ahead of Johnson, George and Dibling, and Michael Keane is not in the squad at all. Chelsea bring the Bournemouth side with Hato for Chavarría and Henderson in the pocket Dewsbury-Hall wants, so Palmer now runs at a fit Mykolenko rather than a borrowed centre-half. Prediction: Everton 2–1 Chelsea.

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Everton and Chelsea meet at Hill Dickinson this lunchtime level on ten points, and the likeness ends there: Everton are unbeaten with the joint-meanest defence in the division, Chelsea have scored fifteen and let in thirteen. The game will be settled in the pocket in front of each defence, where Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, against his old club, arrives late into the space Jordan Henderson is there to fill. Thierno Barry, the only striker David Moyes has, will get two or three chances, and Moyes said on Friday that Everton must take the ones they get.

Where We Left It

At Hull, with a point that felt like two dropped. Everton went to the MKM Stadium without a left-back, played Branthwaite there, and conceded twice in the second half to a side that had not scored at home all season. Joe Gelhardt chipped Jordan Pickford after Ainsley Maitland-Niles flicked a diagonal to the wrong man. Then Mohamed Belloumi, on from the bench, finished a cutback from Stroud, who had got past Maitland-Niles too easily, and the shot went in off Pickford's wrist. In between, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall headed in Maitland-Niles's cross and Thierno Barry scored his sixth of the season from a free kick Hull underhit. Barry also missed two headers from inside the six-yard box and a ball that went through his legs a yard out. Brennan Johnson had a goal taken away at the monitor for an offside the referee's trade calls subjective, and Moyes said afterwards he did not know what that meant and did not think anyone else did either. His verdict on his own team was shorter: he could hardly pick out a player he would give a pass mark.

The record is kinder than the manager. Six league games, none lost, the first time Everton have started a season that way since 2013–14, and fifth in the table this morning on ten points: two wins, four draws, eight scored, five conceded. Chelsea are sixth, also on ten, with three wins, a draw and two defeats, fifteen scored and thirteen conceded, so the two clubs meet separated by a single goal of goal difference and nothing else. Above them, Brentford have the same ten with a better difference, Brighton thirteen, Arsenal fifteen and Manchester City eighteen. Below, Leeds, Hull, Liverpool and Ipswich sit on nine. Everton have the joint-meanest defence in the division and a goalscoring record that their own supporters describe with a sigh, which is the shape of the season so far and the shape of this afternoon.

The Week in Brief

The week's news was medical and mostly good. Mykolenko, who missed Hull with what the Echo calls a minor knock from international duty, is "doing much better" and "has got a chance for the game", Moyes said at Finch Farm on Friday lunchtime. Branthwaite, who played the whole afternoon at left-back on Sunday, did so carrying something: "Jarrad had a problem. He got it really early. We've been looking at that in the week." He faces a late fitness check. Christian Nørgaard, signed from Arsenal in August and still without a competitive minute, is back on the bench but not yet a starter: "Christian's still got a bit to go. A wee bit to go. I think we could use him at certain times if required, but I don't know if he's ready to start the game yet." The problem, Moyes said elsewhere, has been his Achilles, and the midfielder is "really only in his version of pre-season at the moment". The Echo's count of the squad has not changed since August: eighteen senior outfield players, among them one left-back, one right-back and one striker.

The striker was the week's story, and he told half of it himself. Barry gave an interview to BBC Newsbeat about the video he posted last month in which he was visibly upset at his own misses. "I was really scared about posting that," he said. "And I said: 'No, I just need to show myself.'" On the subject of the misses: "People can say I miss a lot of chances, but I also create a lot of chances." And on what it is to be the only striker at a club of this size: "Every fan counts on you to score goals, so imagine you didn't score, you know, for three months like me, it's difficult." His manager, asked about him on Friday, found the compliment inside the criticism. "We're so pleased about the goals he's scoring but somebody told me the other day he's missed the most big chances in the Premier League. Some centre-forwards might see that as, maybe not a compliment, but that they're still getting in the right place at the right time." Then the sentence every manager with one striker ends up saying: "As a manager you just want them to score. I don't think we'll necessarily be a team that gets loads and loads of opportunities, so we have to be clinical when we get them." Six goals in eight games is the record. The misses are the mood.

The rest of Friday was selection. Tyrique George, Moyes said, is "knocking at the door", and the door in question is Jack Grealish's: "I think he started a wee bit slow and then picked up. So, there's huge competition in that position. Jack's aware that Tyrique is there." Jake O'Brien, who has not started a league game, was told what he is up against: "At the moment he would need to put out probably an England international and the club captain in Tarky, who I think have played really well in the games. When the opportunity comes, you have to be ready to take it. We like Jake a lot." Tyler Dibling, four minutes at Hull and the board's loudest cause, is "starting to grow a pair, and he's starting to have a bit more devilment in his game, which we need". Of Harrison Armstrong, nearly sold to Nottingham Forest in August, Moyes said: "rather than a first-team squad player, he's now a first-team player". And Pickford, with James Trafford in the England conversation, "is not moving aside at the moment".

On Chelsea Moyes said he was not an expert, by the Echo's account of the press conference, but that they had a good set of players and a good manager, and that he could not remember facing them when that was not the case. He reached for March, when Everton beat them 3–0 at Hill Dickinson with two from Beto and one from Iliman Ndiaye, both since sold. "Chelsea have a great reputation over 20 years in the Premier League so we did really well to beat them like that. Now we have to try and do it again. We have to have the same attitude and same mentality as we had on the night." That night is also the cover of Merlin Röhl's new photo book, which the club is selling for fifteen pounds: a black and white picture taken from inside the team bus on Regent Road, the smoke outside it blue, the supporters setting the tone, in Röhl's phrase. He was an unused substitute at Hull, and his book is doing more for the club this week than his position is.

On the matter of who owns the club, the week was quiet in the way the owners promised. The Friedkin Group said on 9 October they would not be commenting further while they explore a sale, and they have kept to it. Moyes, asked at the time whether he had been mis-sold, said "No. Because I love this club so much and they could have sold me anything and I'd have still taken it", and on Friday he was asked about his own contract, which runs out in the summer: "There's been plenty of talks happening through the summer, but maybe with the way things have gone at the moment, there's maybe been a bit of a lull, trying to get things in order. But like I've said many times, it's not the most important thing for me." Dewsbury-Hall, speaking to the club's own channel, put the squad's view of the season in a sentence: "It's hard to go unbeaten for any team in the Premier League. The fact we've done it so far is pleasing, but we want to turn those draws into wins." He called today "a big test". It is also his old club, which he did not mention and nobody at Chelsea has forgotten.

And the day itself. This was a three o'clock on the fixture list until 17 August, when both clubs announced it had been moved to 12.30 for TNT Sports, Chelsea's notice calling it "our second visit to the Hill Dickinson Stadium". The club has spent the week asking people to leave early: emergency roadworks have closed Great Howard Street northbound, Merseyrail is running replacement buses between Hunts Cross and Moorfields for engineering work, and the Echo's live blog summed up the combination as "expected to place additional pressure on routes to the stadium before the game". The turnstiles open at half past ten. A lunchtime kick-off, a bus instead of a train and a closed road: the people who go have been thought of in the customary order, but they have at least been promised a pint for £4.50 afterwards, Guinness excepted. The clocks go back a week on Sunday. This is the last lunchtime kick-off of British Summer Time, and the forecast is for sun.

The Visitors

Chelsea come north under Xabi Alonso, appointed in May on a four-year contract, after a summer in which the club spent £348.8m on players, took £402.76m for others and so finished the window in profit while buying Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa for £117m. That is the sort of arithmetic Everton have had explained to them by a commission, and it is not the diary's business to be bitter about it, only to notice. Out went Enzo Fernández to Manchester City, Marc Cucurella to Real Madrid, Nicolas Jackson to Villa, Liam Delap to Forest and George to Everton, for £18m and £6m more if things go well. In came Rogers, Maxence Lacroix from Crystal Palace, Marco Palestra, Geovany Quenda, Emmanuel Emegha, and, on a free from Brentford on 3 August, Jordan Henderson, who is thirty-six and about whom more below. Alonso's own English football was learned across the park, where he arrived in 2004 and scored in a European Cup final in his first season; Henderson spent twelve years there and captained them. Hill Dickinson will have noted both facts and will rise above them, mostly.

The table says what the season has been: a side that scores early and often and cannot be relied upon to stop. Chelsea have scored inside the first ten minutes in five of their six league games and have conceded thirteen, more than any other side in the top ten. They have kept one clean sheet, against Luton in the cup. Hull, who could not score at home against Everton until the second half, scored twice at Stamford Bridge in six minutes; Brentford scored three without reply and Alonso said on Friday that "the experience for Brentford is not forgotten". Then came Bournemouth, 5–1, with two goals in the first three minutes and two for Henderson, and their supporters' board decided football was fun again. Fifteen goals is the third-highest total in the division, behind only Brighton and Manchester City, and nobody at Chelsea is quite sure which of the two Chelseas travels.

Alonso's shape against Bournemouth was a back three, Levi Colwill, Lacroix and Josh Acheampong, with Pep Chavarría and Pedro Neto wide, Henderson and Moisés Caicedo in the middle, Rogers and Cole Palmer behind João Pedro, who has five league goals. Reece James, the captain, had knee surgery this week and is out, in Alonso's words, for "a few weeks" and in the BBC's for three months; Emegha "felt something yesterday, a little thing" and is not ready; Jamie Gittens is "still a few weeks". Asked whether there was anything new, Alonso said "No". He talked about Everton the way a visiting coach talks about a side he respects and expects to out-pass: "tomorrow is going to be tough in Everton. We are looking forward to this game, intensity, high-demand game, high-tempo. I haven't been in the stadium, but they've told me it's a nice one with good atmosphere, so we are looking forward." He thinks Everton will defend in one of two ways, "it can be in a 4-4-2, it can be in a 5-2-3", and that the distances between the lines matter more than the numbers. And he gave the week its one unguarded line, about the team talk: "so we will see once I get to the stadium how I smell it in Goodison, not in Goodison, now it's Hill Dickinson, I'm old-fashioned!" Everyone in L4 knows the feeling. The difference is that they have been to the new one.

From their side, football.london frames the afternoon as a chance for Chelsea "to climb into the top four of the Premier League" with "only goal difference separating the two clubs", and credits the opposition in a sentence Moyes will have cut out: "Moyes has built a brick wall at the back." The same paper expects the Bournemouth eleven again with Palestra for James's slot a possibility, and notes that Chelsea have not won at Everton in the league since August 2022.

The Particulars

The Team Sheet

Everton's substitutes: Travers, O'Brien, Nørgaard, Hackney, Alcaraz, Dibling, George, Johnson, Graham.

Chelsea's substitutes: Penders, Fofana, Palestra, Lavia, Barco, Estêvão, Geovany Quenda, Nicoll-Jazuli, Welbeck.

Mykolenko is on it, and so is Branthwaite, in the middle, next to Tarkowski, where the fortnight's argument always wanted him. The chance Moyes gave the left-back on Friday has been taken, the late check on the centre-half has been passed, and the back four is the one that has conceded five goals in six games, which means the board's thread on the reckless folly of Branthwaite at left-back ran for twenty-four hours about an arrangement that is not happening. Michael Keane, who played there on Sunday, is not in the squad at all, and no page this piece could read before the whistle says why. Maitland-Niles keeps the right after his afternoon at Hull, as the board said he would and the Echo's writers said he should not, and O'Brien is where Moyes described him on Friday: on the bench, behind an England international and the club captain. Garner and Armstrong are together again, Dewsbury-Hall starts his seventh league game out of seven, and Barry, having no understudy, starts because he is the understudy.

The answer to the winger question is none of the candidates. The right belongs to Merlin Röhl, whose photo book came out this week and who was an unused substitute at Hull while the board debated Dibling, George and Johnson. All three are on the bench this lunchtime, Johnson dropped with his two offsides for company, George still knocking at the door his manager pointed him to, and Dibling with his devilment kept for later. Röhl is a central midfielder playing wide, which is a selection that says something about who has the ball: Moyes expects Chelsea to have it, and wants a fourth midfielder tucked in beside Garner when they do. Grealish, warned about Tyrique George on Friday, keeps the left regardless, and Tarkowski has the armband.

Chelsea's sheet is the Bournemouth one with a single change. Reece James's knee has given the armband to Caicedo and the right wing-back spot to Pedro Neto, as last week; Pep Chavarría, who had the left, is not in the squad, and Jorrel Hato comes in there, which makes him the man in front of Maitland-Niles and the man Röhl is there to shadow. Palestra, the £43m right-back football.london had pencilled in, waits on the bench with Estêvão, Lavia and Welbeck. The three centre-halves Barry will be running at are Acheampong, Lacroix and Colwill, the three who let in one to Bournemouth last week; Henderson and Caicedo sit in front of them, so the second line on their sheet reads as the morning said it would, and the game is about how much of it Henderson is allowed to see. Palmer and Rogers are behind João Pedro, who has five league goals, and Emegha's little thing has kept him at home. Alonso has done what his board begged him to and picked the same team twice, or as near as a missing wing-back allows. It has taken him until October.

Two to Watch

Everton: Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall

The man who signed for Chelsea in the summer of 2024 and left for Everton the following summer, by the record's dry account, and whose season has already been two seasons. Against Ipswich on 19 September he was the board's villain: a blind back-pass that nearly cost a goal, a free header wide, a thread demanding his removal before the hour. At Hull three weeks later he was the Echo's 8, the BBC readers' player of the match, Sky's man of the match and the board's "atonement", with the header that put Everton level and the interception that set Barry free for the second. He has two league goals, the first against Palace on the opening day and the second on Sunday, and he has started every game Everton have played this season. Moyes on Friday: "He's become hugely important. His form last year was so good. I think he was probably close to the England set-up. His goals, his assists. I think he had a little bit of a dip, but he's beginning to find his way back now."

Why this game is his, and not Barry's or Grealish's, is in the shape of the two sides. Chelsea play a back three with two wing-backs who attack, Henderson and Caicedo in front of the defence, and Rogers and Palmer floating behind João Pedro. The space in that system is the pocket in front of the centre-halves when the wing-backs have gone, and Dewsbury-Hall is the one Everton player who plays there by trade. He grew up at Leicester and plays the Leicester way of that era, arriving late in the box rather than standing in it, which is how the header at Hull came about. Henderson's job, at thirty-six, is to be standing where Dewsbury-Hall wants to arrive. The Chelsea board has worked this out for itself: one of its members, writing on Friday morning, could not see beyond a Dewsbury-Hall winner, and meant it as a complaint. The player himself said this week that Everton want "to turn those draws into wins" and called today a big test. He did not say against whom. He has a proper footballer's manners as well as a proper footballer's technique, and the second of those is why Everton play football at all on the days they do.

Chelsea: Jordan Henderson

Jordan Henderson is thirty-six, was born in Sunderland, spent twelve years across the park as a player and much of it as captain, and has since been to Saudi Arabia, to Ajax and to Brentford, who let him go at the end of July. Chelsea signed him on a free on 3 August on a two-year contract, which their supporters' board received with the enthusiasm of a man being handed his own coat. He made his debut on 18 September at Brentford, against his old club, and lost 3–0. Then last Saturday he scored in the second minute and the seventieth against Bournemouth, Chelsea won 5–1, and the same board announced that he was the first name on the team sheet, followed by the words "Whowouldathunkit?", which is as close as a Chelsea supporter comes to an apology.

Photograph · Getty Images

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What he does is not mysterious and is the reason he matters here. Alonso's Chelsea has two men in front of the back three and asks one of them to organise the other ten, to set the distances the manager kept talking about on Friday, and to be the player who is simply in the way when the opposition's number ten arrives. That is Henderson's whole career described in a sentence, and it puts him directly against Dewsbury-Hall and against Armstrong's running, which Hull's paper reckoned covered more ground than anyone in the division. He has not come to Hill Dickinson before, though he has been to the city rather a lot, and he will know the noise a crowd here makes for a former neighbour better than anyone else in a Chelsea shirt. The diary has no view on how he will be received, beyond the observation that Hill Dickinson has so far been generous to visitors and that generosity has limits. If Chelsea win the middle of the pitch, he is why. If Everton do, the number ten will have got past him, and the diary will have spent four hundred words on the man who was not standing where he should have been.

Where the Game Is Won

The line-ups

Everton 4-2-3-1Chelsea 3-4-2-1

1. 1The pocket in front of Chelsea's back three is where Dewsbury-Hall arrives late and where Henderson is paid to be standing.
2. 2Everton will not get many chances; Barry, with the most big chances missed in the division, must take one against a back three that has let in thirteen.
3. 3Palmer drifts in off Chelsea's right on to whoever is at left-back, a position that was a question until the team sheet.
4. 4Whoever makes the other side's wing-back defend wins the flank; Grealish's game is to make him do something first.

In front of Chelsea's back three, and in the first ten minutes. Chelsea have scored inside ten minutes in five league games out of six, and Everton have not scored before the eleventh minute at home this season. Alonso has picked the side that did it to Bournemouth, bar one wing-back, and it will press the first pass; Pickford's kicking, which has been a subject all season, will be tested by a front line that scored two in three minutes last week. Survive that, and the game turns into the one Moyes wants: Chelsea with the ball, Everton with the distances, and the afternoon decided by whether Dewsbury-Hall can find the pocket between Henderson and Caicedo faster than they can close it, and whether Rogers and Palmer, who drift in from Chelsea's wide positions into the same pocket at the other end, are picked up by Garner and Armstrong or by nobody. Everton's defence has let in five goals in six games because those two sit; Chelsea have let in thirteen because theirs do not, and Henderson, at thirty-six, is in the side to make them.

Then the flanks, and Moyes has chosen his with care. Palmer scored four against Everton on one night in April 2024 and once more in December, and he will come in off Chelsea's right, which means on to Mykolenko, fit after all and the ball-carrying left-back of the first five games rather than a centre-half on loan to the position. That is the morning's worry removed at a stroke, and the one that replaces it is on the other side. The right is Röhl's, a midfielder by trade with a photo book out this week and an unused substitute at Hull, ahead of Johnson, George and Dibling; the reading is that Moyes wants a man who tucks in beside Garner when Chelsea have the ball, so that Everton defend in the 4-4-2 Alonso said he expected, which leaves Hato, Chelsea's left wing-back, with nobody to mark. Grealish keeps the left, where Pedro Neto goes forward and leaves the space behind him, and whoever makes the other side's wing-back defend wins the flank: a Grealish given the ball early and often is worth more against this Chelsea than he was against Hull's back five. Maitland-Niles, kept in after his Sunday, has Hato coming at him and Rogers inside him, and the board will watch him the way it watches a right-back after a bad week, which is through its fingers.

Then there are the chances, and Everton will not get many: Moyes said on Friday that they must take the ones they get. Chelsea's back three is Acheampong, Lacroix and Colwill, and the three of them have let in thirteen; Barry, who has the most big chances missed in the division and six goals, will get two or three at most, and Lacroix is the one who will be standing nearest when they come. The rest of the afternoon's argument is a set piece: Garner's delivery, Tarkowski's head and Branthwaite's, both fit and both in the middle where they belong, and the question of who stands on Emiliano Martínez and whether Tierney, who has refereed two cup finals and no controversies, lets him stay there. One is enough. It usually is.

The Mood on the Board

TPF has not been talking about Chelsea. In six days and some two hundred and forty posts the opponent came up in one sentence, on Monday morning, which held that Chelsea are poor at the back but rampant going forward and that the back four would need to be solid and Pickford would need a good game. That is the board's entire pre-match analysis and it is not wrong. There is no prediction thread, no team thread, no poll and no mention of the 12.30 kick-off, the buses or the roadworks. The busiest thread of the week, forty-five replies, was about comedians, and Everton were not mentioned in it. A board that has seen every kind of October knows that the one before Chelsea at home is for keeping your head down.

What it did talk about was Hull, and then Branthwaite. The Hull thread settled on "the ultimate 'not quite' team" as the week's verdict, and divided on the manager in the usual proportions: one member thought Moyes got it wrong and said he still had his full support, and another observed that it is always easy to blame the manager when you do not get three points. Barry was treated with a tenderness the board does not often extend to centre-forwards. "Infuriating but gets goals" was the line, with the follow-up question of who exactly the superstars up front have been since Lukaku, and the only real anger in the thread was for the idea that he might be dropped. Maitland-Niles, the week's villain by any newspaper's reckoning, was defended on the grounds that Hibbert, Neville and even Coleman had games as bad and that banishing every player who made a mistake would leave the club with no options at all, which, with eighteen outfield players, is a point of fact. On Friday afternoon the news of Branthwaite's knock arrived and the board did what it does: a thread was opened on the reckless folly of playing him at left-back, one member pointed out that nobody yet knew whether he was out, and another replied that the board would spend twenty-four hours in fury anyhow. "Moyes is Moyes," said a third, which on TPF is a complete sentence. The settled view on the manager was put by a member who had wanted him gone all summer: until the next spin of the ownership wheel is complete, there is nobody they would rather have.

The sale was discussed sideways, through January. The board does not expect a striker: "don't let the hope kill you" was the advice, with the thought that owners who are trying to sell will not pretend to be buying, and that any money spent would simply transfer to the next owner's books. The other thread of substance was the BBC's calculation of what Manchester City's rule-breaking cost Everton, which drew the week's best exchange: a proposal for a derby flag bearing a crude drawing of the League Cup and the words "Man City 2016", and the reply that since City beat Everton in that semi-final it might be a bit self-defeating. The People's Forum's own Key Match Incident panel, meanwhile, considered the Johnson offside at Hull and found two votes to nil that the decision was correct, which is two more than the real panel has managed to tell anyone.

The stories this week were about tickets and about time. Two Upper West seats together were offered on Thursday morning at sixty pounds each, to be emailed, so that no membership was needed, which is the going rate on TPF for a Chelsea game and a stranger beside you. An adult and an under-eleven ticket for the Newcastle cup tie found a taker within a day. And a member marked the anniversary of his first visit to Goodison, Everton 2–1 Sheffield Wednesday, aged eight, which brought two others out with the same fixture, the same score and their own uncles: one who spent the match calling the Wednesday scorer "Peter Useless" until he scored. Sixty years on they are still on the forum. Nobody chooses, as the advice to a child goes, and nobody leaves.

The Mood on Their Board

Chelsea's supporters, read on The Shed End, opened their match thread for this game at four minutes past five last Saturday, minutes after beating Bournemouth 5–1, and its first reply was about Henderson: "First name on the team sheet. Whowouldathunkit?" It has run to twenty posts in a week, which tells you how much of a Chelsea supporter's attention Everton away commands, and the general boards have given more of the week to Alex Scott, whom they would like to buy, to Palmer's contract and to Reece James's knee than to the game. The coach is "Xabi" to them and draws no criticism; after Bournemouth one member wrote that football was fun again and another that there was at last a manager "who largely sees what we see and calls it". The plea is for a settled side: "One game a week, let's start to see a settled XI."

About Everton they are respectful in the particular way of a club that keeps losing here. "Our usual bogey-away team" was the first description; another counted four years since they last won at Everton, and a third offered the theory that when Chelsea lose away to Everton in the league the season falls apart afterwards. The hope expressed most often was that George does not start, because he would probably score against them, and the fear expressed most plainly was of Dewsbury-Hall, from whom one member could not see beyond a winner. The board's comfort is a statistic it shared on Monday night, that Chelsea have won their last eight Saturday 12.30 kick-offs in the league, which this piece could not check and the board did not want to. Of the fourteen predictions posted on Friday and this morning eight were Chelsea wins, four of them by three goals, three were Everton wins and three were draws, and the last word before breakfast was the honest one: "We are such a mixed bag at the moment, this could be 2–0 Everton or 5–1 Chelsea." Not one post mentioned a train, Euston, the price of a ticket or the early start, which for a London club's board on the morning of a lunchtime kick-off in Liverpool is a finding in itself. Either they are all driving or they are all at home.

Their stories are the television kind. One member woke from a nap during last season's game here, turned it on in time to see Malo Gusto lose the ball and Everton score, and turned it off again, having watched about thirty seconds. Another saw the Brentford game from a beach bar in Greece with his wife, left at 2–0, and found it was 3–0 by the time he reached his room, a sequence every supporter of every club will recognise and none will admit to. There are worse ways to follow Chelsea, and the board seems to know most of them.

Elsewhere

The Manchester City case reached Everton's accounts this week, or an estimate of them. The BBC, on Tuesday, worked out what the nine seasons of City's breaches cost each club that finished behind them, and for Everton the figure is £66.4m, counting one Champions League place missed in 2013–14, four seasons in which Everton finished one place below the last Europa League spot, and £10.6m in prize money. "Add on the £10.6m from Premier League prize money, and the total financial effect is £66.4m - making Everton the third-most impacted club," the BBC wrote, behind Tottenham and Hull. The 2013–14 side is Roberto Martínez's, fifth with seventy-two points, the club's best points tally in twenty-seven years, and the reader may do with that what they like. Everton's own points, the ten that became six and the two that followed, were deducted under the same rules inside one season. The BBC's figure is an estimate and the diary prints it as one.

The case itself moved along two tracks. City's appeal against the independent commission's verdict is lodged; the BBC's football issues correspondent reported on Friday that the club face "substantial hurdles" if they are to have any chance of winning it, in the words of a leading lawyer. On Monday the Greater Manchester Combined Authority published the record of Andy Burnham's dealings with the club while he was its mayor: a formal meeting with Khaldoon al-Mubarak at an investment summit, a conversation in the stands at a testimonial, club staff on official overseas visits. And on Tuesday David Kogan, who chairs the new football regulator, said his independence was "absolute", that he would resign if politically pressured, and, as the Guardian put it, that he "could remove City's Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) should the damning verdict of an independent commission be upheld at the end of an ongoing appeal process". Nothing has been decided. It is a great deal of process for a question Evertonians were given the answer to in a single afternoon in November 2023.

What It Means

For the table, a win takes Everton to thirteen points, level with Brighton in third before the three o'clock games, and keeps them above Chelsea on a day when the two clubs cannot be separated by anything but goals. Defeat is the first of the season, drops Everton below Chelsea and probably below Leeds and Hull by the evening, and ends a sentence that has been in every report since August. A draw keeps the unbeaten run and the grumbling about it, which the board has already written.

For the football, it is the test of the only thing this team has: a defence that has let in five and a midfield that sits in front of it, against the division's third most productive attack and the top ten's most careless defence. Everton have scored eight in six and needed a chest to get one of them. Chelsea have conceded thirteen and could not stop Hull. The honest expectation is that the first goal decides the shape of everything after it, and that Everton, who have not led at Hill Dickinson before the eleventh minute this season, would rather it was theirs.

For the club, it is the first home game since the owners said they would like to sell, a lunchtime behind a closed road and a replacement bus, in front of Alonso, who has never been here and calls it Goodison. Moyes, the sensible choice a big club settled for, has an unbeaten side, one striker, his left-back back and a contract with eight months on it. He said on Friday that the players should focus on the job. The crowd will do the same, in cautious pride, and if the afternoon goes as the last one against Chelsea went, the smoke on Regent Road will be blue again.

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