How David Moyes brought back 'Everton DNA' to lead their European charge: His transformation since first spell, scouting missions to find hidden gems, his demand to club chiefs and the five signings he wants this summer to join the elite

When David Moyes returned to Everton last January, he walked into a building full of gloomy faces after a turbulent period that threatened to plunge the club into the abyss.

After a lengthy spell of gross mismanagement, they had been hit with two points deductions and one embarrassing episode after another. Despite the Friedkin Group’s arrival to end the Farhad Moshiri era, the threat of relegation was clawing away at them.

They sat a point above the bottom three having won just one of their last 11 league games under Sean Dyche and failing to score in eight of those, sleepwalking towards a dreaded fate: the goodbye to Goodison Park ending with the club’s first relegation for 74 years.

Across Stanley Park, Liverpool were 29 points ahead of them and poised to run away with the Premier League title. Fans feared scenarios where they would be best served shutting the curtains and not leaving the house.

Fast forward a year, Evertonians walk around this city with a spring in their step. That 29-point gap is now just five. And ahead of the first Merseyside Derby at Hill Dickinson Stadium, there is a genuine belief that European football is around the corner for the first time in nine seasons.

Moyes has been at the heart of it all and deserves to be in the conversation for manager of the season. This is the inside story of how the Scot has turned the Toffees from a laughing stock to a rising force again – and what he and the Friedkin Group must do to take the next step.

David Moyes has been at the heart of Everton's revival and deserves to be in the conversation for manager of the season

Fast forward a year since Moyes' return and Evertonians walk around this city with a spring in their step

Moyes talks a lot about ‘Everton DNA’. Seamus Coleman, for example, has been at the club for 17 years and despite the club captain managing just eight league appearances across the last two campaigns due to injuries, he remains as vital as anyone for Moyes.

At 37, Coleman is constantly raising standards by digging out others on the training pitch and filtering his experience down to the younger lads. The Ireland international will remain at Everton beyond retirement if he wants to, whether as a coach or, as Moyes has joked in the last week, as a DIY man around Finch Farm to do some plumbing.

Coleman is the bridge between Moyes’s first spell here and his Everton 2.0, as is assistant coach Leighton Baines. The pair drove to the manager’s house in Lancashire to persuade him to return, saying that ‘small wins’ could help change the tide.

All players are very complimentary about Moyes’s impact and work ethic, they all say they feel energised by him. There is a feel-good spirit and the training ground is now a happy place, perhaps helped by the more laidback persona of latter-career Moyes. Those who have worked with him across both his Everton stints, 12 years apart, describe a more mellowed, less intimidating figure.

A mini-party was thrown for Iliman Ndiaye and Idrissa Gana Gueye after the duo won the Africa Cup of Nations, and Moyes led the banter towards the pair when Senegal were stripped of the title. Celebrations were also put on for Jordan Pickford reaching 100 Everton clean sheets.

Moyes is a football obsessive and was a regular at Deepdale, home to his former club Preston, in the first half of the season to scout Harrison Armstrong, Everton’s teenage loanee who was recalled in January. He also went on a scouting mission to watch Scotland’s friendly against Ivory Coast last month, a game where right back Guela Doue – and brother of Paris Saint-Germain winger Desire – could have been one he was spying on.

Tactically, the 62-year-old has been as sharp as ever. Before games, detailed sessions can stretch to two and a half hours. He has made Everton more expansive while maintaining their defensive steel and imbuing a never-say-die attitude that has seen his side score important late goals on several occasions this season, including Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall's equaliser at Brentford last weekend.

Biding his time after being let go by West Ham eight months before he returned to Goodison, Moyes had offers from three Premier League clubs but the Toffees was the only one that truly enticed him. A return had been on the table before but it did not quite work out. He told the club he was returning to drive them up the league again, not just to fight relegation.

Leighton Baines (left) and Seamus Coleman were crucial in convincing Moyes to return to the club - and also set the standards for the playing squad

It is a message he drilled into his squad again before this season, with the Scot going as far as showing the number of points his players would have to pick up in each five-game stretch throughout the campaign to reach the European spots.

It is also a message he has made public. Rather than be scared of talking about Europe in fear of perhaps putting a jinx on things, Moyes wants to discuss it. Why not aim for the stars?

Moyes worries that missing out on European football from this position would leave many fans disappointed but he also believes this is just the start. He has joked that the ‘Tiddlywinks European Cup’ would be an achievement and does not care which of the three competitions they qualify for.

Despite financial experts forecasting that Conference League football can leave clubs making a loss, it will be beneficial in the long run, as well as offering a route into the Europa League for the winners. Moyes saw at West Ham how big European nights transformed that club and gave the fanbase belief.

Regardless of final position, Everton will arrive at a defining junction this summer. Do the ownership group, led by American billionaire Dan Friedkin, who made his money in cars and Hollywood stunts, want to back Moyes and Co? Or are they happy with mid-table security?

Though the squad is full of talented stars like Ndiaye, Dewsbury-Hall, James Garner, Jordan Pickford and Jarrad Branthwaite, will they show ambition in the transfer market and try to take the next step? Moyes has brought this club almost full circle to the point when he left for Manchester United in 2013. His frustration in the intervening years was how years of frugality was followed up by ill-advised spending left, right and centre under his successors, which ultimately led to their demise.

The recruitment team and structure upstairs is much more solid now but the Friedkins must back Moyes, who needs a goalscorer, better full backs, a new midfielder and another wide player. The first XI is talented but the squad depth has been stretched at times.

Moyes believes that to make the next step to become a bigger club, they must hold firm when other sides come knocking with big bids for their players. They did this by turning down offers for Branthwaite in 2024 and might have to again this summer, with Ndiaye in particular on the radar of preying rivals. This could be a decisive factor in Moyes’s own contract. He would love to stay on past his current deal, which expires at the end of next season.

Moyes would love to stay on past his current deal, which expires at the end of next season

In beating Chelsea 3-0 last month, it felt like the Goodison Park atmosphere had finally travelled across town to Hill Dickinson Stadium

Sunday’s Merseyside Derby comes at a critical time. Everton have struggled at their new ground – they have more away points than every top-flight side except Arsenal and Manchester City since Moyes’s return but have not replicated that at home – but the last outing was perhaps its best day yet.

In beating Chelsea 3-0, it felt like the Goodison Park atmosphere had finally travelled across town to Hill Dickinson Stadium, a futuristic and stunning ground that is more than ready for European football.

After clinging on for dear life in a previously quiet area of town, the new stadium has injected life into the area and places like the nearby Bramley Moore Hotel pub will be heaving on Sunday afternoon.

It is an apt metaphor also for the team. They were staring down the barrel of relegation until Moyes returned but, a year later, they are thriving again and fans have a club to be proud of. Now the Friedkins must get their chequebook out and back the man responsible.