Everton

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Wayne Rooney has been discussing iconic games in his career on the latest episode of The Wayne Rooney Show.

On Everton's win over Arsenal in 2002 he said: "Just coming up against Arsenal and players I've watched over the last three, four years, and Henry, and Sol Campbell, Seaman, Vieira.

"So coming into that game, being on the bench, I always remember the two teams lining up in the tunnel and the subs would walk out and the tunnel's really narrow. Just remember walking out and I couldn't believe how big the Arsenal players were. They were huge. Even Henry's big.

"They were massive. So I remember going out and then I think they were 33, 32 games unbeaten. So I was on the bench and then I come on. It was 1-1. I come on with 15 minutes to go or something like that.

"And I got an opportunity. Thomas Gravesen just helped it on. It went high and… I remember Sol Campbell backed off. I took a touch and Sol Campbell backed off and knew straight away, I turned. I don't know if he knew too much about me, to be honest. I'm sure he'd seen clips of me and probably knew I was quite quick.

"But I was still a good distance out. So he backed off. As soon as he backed off, I knew I was going to shoot. I hit it with the right amount of shape on it. It's hit the crossbar and went in. So it was still one of the best feelings I've ever had.

"I wanted to score whilst I was 16, and that was my last game, October the 19th.

"I always remember after the game, we were in the dressing room and at Goodison when everyone stood up, it was all wooden seats in the stadium. You could hear everything in the stands. I remember being in dressing room and all the crowd stayed and singing and all my family were there. It was such a proud moment."

You can listen to The Wayne Rooney Show on BBC Sounds

Watch The Wayne Rooney Show on BBC iPlayer or listen on BBC Sounds

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Jack Grealish's foot injury could benefit Everton during their "transition season", according to Toffee TV's Peter McPartland.

Everton confirmed that Grealish, who is on a season-long loan from Manchester City, is being assessed, with a return date to be confirmed.

The 30-year-old winger has played a big part in the Blues' season, making eight goal contributions in 20 Premier League appearances.

McPartland says that the team will miss Grealish during his spell on the sidelines.

"It's really disappointing," McPartland told BBC Radio Merseyside.

"Jack's one of our best players.

"Even when he doesn't have a massive influence on a game, he does attract the opposition to him, and he can hold the ball really well, allow the team to get up the pitch - which I think is one of the major reasons that David Moyes wanted him in the team."

Against Leeds on Monday, Everton will be boosted by the return of Afcon champion Iliman Ndiaye.

This - combined with the opportunities for development which arise elsewhere - mean that Grealish's absence has come at a good time, McPartland argues.

"The one thing I would say - and this is why I'm a little bit more positive - if it had happened in October, I'd have been really worried," McPartland said.

"I think now we're in a much better position to cope with it - even though he is such a good player.

"This season, you want to take the benefits.

"I think one of the major benefits of this season could be Harrison Armstrong, Merlin Rohl, Tim Iroegbunam, Tyler Dibbling coming through, Thierno Barry's starting to score goals - they're the positives.

"It's a transition season. And I think this is now where some of these players will step up."

You can listen to the full discussion of Jack Grealish's injury on BBC Sounds

Matthew Hobbs
BBC Sport journalist

From the Premier League's elite to the soggy pitches of Sunday league, injuries are part and parcel of football - but which top-flight teams have been worst affected so far this season?

With help from injury expert Ben Dinnery, of premierinjuries.com,, external BBC Sport has examined which sides have been hit the hardest, the impact injuries can have on under-fire managers - and whether things are always as bad as they seem.

• Read more detail on how clubs have been affected by injuries here

Dale Johnson
Football issues correspondent

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The Premier League's Key Match Incidents (KMI) Panel has unanimously voted it was correct that Hwang Hee-Chan was not sent off in the 1-1 draw with Everton earlier this month.

The Wolves forward was booked by referee Tom Kirk in the 76th minute after catching Harrison Armstrong on the calf with a high challenge.

Everton boss David Moyes was also angered that Michael Keane was dismissed for pulling the hair of Tolu Arokodare in the 80th minute. The KMI Panel voted 5-0 in favour of the red card.

Moyes said after the game: "What Michael Keane did was a three-game ban and a sending off, but [the challenge on Armstrong] was a nothing in the game and not recognised either by the VAR or the referee. It sounds like they've got all their things in the wrong places at the moment."

The KMI Panel said that while "the point of contact was high, there was a lack of force and intensity" and that it "supported the referee's call of a yellow card".

It added that Keane's actions were violent conduct and "not a legitimate part of a challenge for the ball".

Jack Grealish was later sent off for a second bookable offence after sarcastically clapping the referee. This was supported 4-1 by the panel.

Pat Nevin
Former footballer and presenter

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Leeds United and Everton have taken advantage of others' weariness.

Their unheralded wins against Fulham and Aston Villa respectively were huge.

Everton's win just about guarantees them safety from the drop now and I reckon they will pick up a few more wins with Iliman Ndiaye and Idrissa Gueye heading back from Afcon. ‌

Leeds are edging ever closer to safety too, Daniel Farke knows this was one of the most important wins of the season, even if it wasn't a headline grabber. ‌

His side is now a well-structured Premier League outfit who look like they belong back in the big time instead of just being fleeting visitors.

Sign up to read more from Pat Nevin in his Football Extra newsletter

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Everton face a nervous wait on the fitness of Jack Grealish after confirming the midfielder has sustained a foot injury.

Grealish is being assessed by the club's medical team and will also be reviewed by a specialist in the coming days.

The 30-year-old, who is on a season-long loan from Manchester City, played 90 minutes in Sunday's 1-0 win at former club Aston Villa.

He has made 22 appearances for David Moyes' side, scoring twice and assisting six times.

Sometimes, in this age of playing through the lines and technical proficiency, there remains a time when you just have to put your foot (or head) through it.

There are those defenders fans (and players) rely on to do just that.

Step forward Joachim Andersen and Virgil van Dijk, who stand in the way of attacks and take no nonsense, sending it away with head, foot or body in the name of getting the job done.

The two top the charts for successful clearances this season, with shoutouts going to a supporting cast of proper defenders.

Everton have enquired about the availability of Sunderland's 25-year-old French striker Wilson Isidor. (Mirror), external

Want more transfer stories? Read Wednesday's full gossip column

Follow the gossip column on BBC Sport

Briony Bragg
Fan writer

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Post-match David Moyes bemused there's something about Everton, about resilience, about the club and the supporters, which can make magic moments happen.

Indeed, football is a fickle game. No sooner had the midweek commentary concentrated on a poor run of results and the pressing need to do business in the January transfer window, than Everton go and stop an 11-game winning streak at Villa Park.

With a heavily depleted squad, there are many who would have taken a draw before a ball was kicked. But, to a man, the squad had other ideas.

To the squad and the manager's credit, it is a struggle to find any player who arguably didn't have their best game this season. So, what is it about playing away from home that Everton have nailed? That's 10 away wins since Moyes' return to the club in January 2025, equalled only by league leaders Arsenal.

There's some sort of dogged resilience that seems to take over away from home. Backs against the wall, keeping it tight, holding shape, with a physical threat particularly in the midfield, Everton's away performances epitomise everything a team led by Moyes is meant to be.

Tremendous credit must go to James Garner, who was the obvious player of the match.

And apologies to Preston, but with these performances it doesn't look like Harrison Armstrong will be returning. At the age of 19, his confidence and assuredness is magnificent.

Maybe the weight of expectancy doesn't hit so heavily on the road. Tactically, they are prioritising a solid defensive shape over aggressive, and high-pitch pressing.

They haven't seemed to yet find that natural balance at home between keeping that defensive compactness and the expectation to press on home turf.

The important part really is to learn those lessons from these performances and do it all again at home this time. With Leeds next, it's certainly a game many will look forward to.

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For 52 years, a document sat untouched in a filing cabinet inside a Wirral bungalow - a lucrative offer from Everton to Don Revie that was never signed. Had it been, Leeds United, Everton, and the wider game might have looked very different.

Unsigned: When Don Revie Turned Down Everton tells the story of a true sliding-doors moment. Of power, money and control. Of a gold Mercedes, Greeks bearing gifts, and a "beast from Bolsover" at the height of his influence.

As BBC Radio Leeds' Adam Pope reveals, Everton's offer was extraordinary for its time: a seven-year deal starting in June 1973, a salary of £15,500 per year - worth about £240,000 today - with the potential to double that through bonuses. League titles, FA Cups and European glory all came with substantial financial rewards, alongside first-class travel, a club board house near Goodison Park and full control over team selection, coaching, scouting and medical staff.

Everton statistician and historian Gavin Buckland believes the Goodison Park board were ready to spend big.

"That would have been the top manager's salary," he said. "Revie's name and reputation were absolutely at the peak of the English game. Quite obviously, the best manager in English football at that time."

Yet the deal was never completed.

Why? And what did it mean for Leeds United, Everton, and the balance of power in English football?

This documentary explores the ifs, buts and maybes and the contract that was never signed.

Listen to Unsigned: When Don Revie turned down Everton

Adam Pope
BBC Radio Leeds reporter

My mother would often say, before she died last year, that there was something valuable in the home in which she had lived with her husband George.

Was it an heirloom or an antique, I wondered.

George Watts, my stepfather, was chairman and director at Everton while also working for the club's owner John Moores at the Littlewoods Organisation.

He was an astute businessman and dealt with club finances. As a youngster, I can recall legendary forward Bob Latchford coming to the house to discuss contracts.

When George died in 1988, fellow club director and solicitor Keith Tamlin handled his estate. The filing cabinet rammed with club paraphernalia was emptied - except for one key document.

It would remain undisturbed for a further 37 years until last summer, when I went through an experience familiar to many people who have lost a parent - one of painstakingly sifting through decades of paperwork.

• Listen to Unsigned: When Don Revie turned down Everton

There were long-out-of-date policies, receipts, family photographs, work mementos and then, undetected at the back of one of the steel grey drawers, was a brown envelope marked 'Everton: Season Ticket Sales'.

It seemed innocuous enough, with a running total of revenues from a couple of seasons in the 1970s.

But what caught my eye was a schedule of undated flights to Athens from Manchester, accompanied by several copies of a typed contract, one of which was annotated in my stepfather's distinctive, if somewhat indecipherable, handwriting.

Closer inspection revealed an agreement between Everton Football Club and the man who in 12 years had taken Leeds United from Second Division also-rans to winners of every major domestic honour and two Fairs Cups - one Donald Revie of Three Chimneys, Sandmoor Drive, Leeds.

More than half a century after the contract was drawn up I had, quite unwittingly, stumbled upon an exclusive in my childhood family home - one that saw my two worlds collide as a boyhood Everton fan who has covered the Whites on BBC Radio Leeds for 20 years.

Read how Adam discovered the Everton contract Don Revie never signed

Listen to West Yorkshire Sport Daily, weeknights at 18:00, and subscribe to BBC Radio Leeds' Don't Go To Bed Just Yet podcast on BBC Sounds

Dale Johnson
Football issues correspondent

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Everton manager David Moyes has learned the full written reasons for the failed appeal against Michael Keane's dismissal at home to Wolves.

Keane was sent off following a VAR review after pulling the hair of Tolu Arokodare in the 1-1 draw on 7 January.

Moyes said he was "angry with the panel" after his attempt to get the red card overturned was rejected. A secondary appeal to get the punishment reduced from the statutory three games was also turned down.

The Football Association's regulatory commission was made up of three former players: Stuart Ripley (played for Middlesbrough, Blackburn, Southampton), Udo Onwere (Fulham, Lincoln, Barnet) and Andy Walker (Motherwell, Celtic, Bolton).

In his criticism, Moyes added: "Hugely disappointed. Hugely surprised. I know who the three are and I'm amazed they in some way didn't overturn it."

It was a close run thing, however. The panel voted 2:1 that the red card was not incorrect and three games was not excessive. How each panel member voted is not revealed.

The Premier League's Key Match Incidents Panel unanimously voted that the red card was correct.

Moyes argued that it could not be violent conduct because Keane was challenging for a header.

The majority view was that "the forceful pulling of a person's hair can be said to fall outside the normal constituent elements of a challenge in football".

The panel member who believed the appeal should be upheld said it was "an action born out of instinct and of such minimal force that it ought not to have been categorised as violent conduct".

The appeal against the length of the ban was rejected because it was felt a red card for pulling an opponent's hair could not be seen as "truly exceptional".

The panel added that "in the wider interests of football 'hair pulling' ought not to be tolerated and should be discouraged".

We asked for your thoughts after Sunday's Premier League game between Aston Villa and Everton.

Here are some of your comments:

Villa fans

Alan: The writing was on the wall as soon as John McGinn left the pitch. All the drive went out of the midfield and Villa's squad is now stretched to the limit with a difficult few weeks coming. The season will be defined in that period and we need reinforcements badly.

Rob: A rare bad day at the office. Our passing was messy, our wide players were slow and Emi Martinez had a nightmare. If we hadn't let go of Donyel Malen he would have had a field day with Everton. I really hope we bring in someone that can replace his qualities soon so performances like this don't become a regular occurrence.

David: The loss of McGinn on top of injuries to Boubacar Kamara, Amadou Onana and Ross Barkley, plus Jadon Sancho being ill, was too much for our stretched midfield and squad. It's a shame because after our usual slow start we were dominating through McGinn. Subsequent defensive errors and lack of firepower up front sealed our fate.

Trevor: Lacklustre performance, chances missed and Ollie Watkins not given any real service. We made Everton look good. We must show some energy for future matches.

Everton fans

Paul: Fantastic performance. Harrison Armstrong, merlin Rohl and James Garner looked immense. Nathan Patterson is playing well and Jake O'Brien is so solid at the back with James Tarkowski. Hopefully, with players coming back, our home performances can improve. We are inconsistent, which is to be expected with a small squad and lower quality in some positions. Hopefully we can finish some transfer business in the next couple of weeks.

Greg: A really good all-round performance, which we seem to reserve for away games. If we could turn the home form around we could yet sneak into Europe, especially with three or four key players on their way back. O'Brien has to be kept in his natural position because he's a much better player there.

Jack: Really good team effort. I thought Garner was superb and a quality finish from Thierno Barry, who is improving with more game time. Can we please have a similar performance at home next week?

Wayne: Great win on the road. We're missing Iliman Ndiaye Idrissa Gueye - can't wait to have them back. However, the lads battled a very good Villa side. I'm made up for Barry - he's growing in confidence with every game.

Match of the Day pundit Joe Hart says Everton players and fans are right to be "frustrated" by their disallowed goal against Aston Villa, but it was the correct decision.

Everton and Fulham are the leading contenders for Wolfsburg's Austria winger Patrick Wimmer, 24. (Rudy Galetti), external

Meanwhile, Sevilla have entered the race for Blues defender Nathan Patterson. (Football Insider), external

Want more transfer stories? Read Monday's full gossip column

Follow the gossip column on BBC Sport

Pundits Joe Hart and Ellen White join host Kelly Cates to bring you the action and talking points from Sunday's Premier League fixtures.

Watch on BBC iPlayer here

And listen back to full match commentaries on BBC Sounds:

• Wolves 0-0 Newcastle

• Aston Villa 0-1 Everton

Everton boss David Moyes, speaking to BBC Match of the Day about their 1-0 win over Aston Villa: "Incredibly satisfying. It's more to do with what we've not got at the moment and that's no discrediting the boys who played today. We've been working out all week on how we can get a result against them. It took a bit of luck in moments. We could have been in front after 10 seconds. We didn't shut up shop, we created opportunities when we could.

"I thought Jimmy Garner was immense. It was a big game for Harrison. He stepped up today and he's doing well for such a young player. Merlin too. The Everton players will have seen more from him today.

"I've got centre halves who do their best to defend the goal and I've got a great goalkeeper. We try to be solid. I don't know any good teams that aren't good defensively. We can't score loads and loads of goals so we have to make sure we're solid."

On Thierno Barry goal: "It was a great finish. Did I expect it? I wasn't sure. He was able to lift it over the goalkeeper and get us that important goal."

On transfer market: "We're trying but whether we get anything at the end of the line, I don't know. The club would like to add players but it's a difficult market right now."

Did you know?

• Only Arsenal (six) have won more away games in the Premier League this season than Everton (five).

• In fact, since David Moyes' first away league game back in charge of the club in January 2025, the Toffees' have 10 wins on the road in the Premier League which is the joint-most of any side, along with Arsenal.

Listen to Moyes on BBC Sounds

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Everton manager David Moyes beamed broadly in front of an elated travelling support after their finest win of the season, toppling an Aston Villa side tipped as Premier League title dark horses.

They were on top from the opening whistle, literally, as Merlin Rohl hit the woodwork in the opening seconds.

Everton were first to most things in the physical exchanges, while also posing a threat on the break throughout.

The game was a personal triumph for striker Thierno Barry, who has struggled this season but has now scored three goals in his past four games.

Emiliano Martinez's error gave him his chance, but Barry showed a real touch of class to lift the ball over the keeper and he tried to recover his mistake.

And 23-year-old German midfield Rohl had his best game since signing on loan from SC Freiburg, while 18-year-old Harrison Armstrong also showed why he is regarded so highly by Moyes.

On the rare occasions Villa did threaten, keeper Jordan Pickford was solid behind the central defensive partnership of James Tarkowski and Jake O'Brien.

If Everton can resolve indifferent home form, they may yet fulfil Moyes' ambition of pushing towards the European places.

Whether you were at the game or following from elsewhere, we want to know what you learned.

Have your say on Aston Villa's performance

What did you make of Everton's display?

Come back on Monday for a selection of your replies

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Ollie Watkins starts up front for Aston Villa after Donyell Malen's move to Roma, while Emi Martinez is back in goal for Marco Bizot, who played in the FA Cup win at Tottenham Hotspur.

Youri Tielemans also starts with Boubacar Kamara out after picking up an injury early on at Spurs.

Aston Villa XI: Martinez, Cash, Jonsa, McGinn, Tielemans, Buendia, Watkins, Pau, Maatsen, Bogarde, Rogers

Subs: Bizot, Wright, Lindelof, Mings, Digne, Garcia, Guessand, Hemmings

Jack Grealish returns for Everton at former club Aston Villa after serving a one-match suspension following his sending off for dissent against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

He comes in for Tyler Dibling, while Thierno Barry is preferred to Beto as striker in the only other change from the team that went out on penalties to Sunderland in the FA Cup third round.

Everton XI: Pickford, Patterson, Tarkowski, McNeil, Barry, O'Brien, Mykolenko, Grealish, Rohl, Garner, Armstrong

Subs: Travers, King, Beto, Dibling, Coleman, Aznou, Welch, Campbell

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