Some players return to Finch Farm for 'testing'

(Photo by Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

Some Everton players are returning to Finch Farm as their summer break comes to an end, and they face 'testing' to see how ready they are for the new season.

The summer holidays are officially over and a select group of Everton players have begun trickling back through the gates of Finch Farm today, their reward for a few weeks of sun loungers being a swift introduction to the medical staff's baseline testing. The long, gruelling countdown to the 2026-27 campaign is officially underway.

Given the utterly dismal, whimpering end to last season — which saw David Moyes’s side colossally bottle European qualification by failing to win any of their final seven matches — the rest was apparently much needed. The excuse given for utterly flacid performances was that the squad was running on empty by April, blighted by a creeping fatigue that paralysed the final 2 months of what transformed into a deeply frustrating campaign. While a few weeks of rest and recuperation should have done them the world of good, you have to wonder how long that freshness will last. 

What awaits them over the next seven weeks is a frantic, heavy pre-season schedule featuring no fewer than seven friendlies. Starting with Dundee on 18 July and winding through trips to Germany and a final home clash against Lille, the coaches are leaving no stone unturned. But by the time the season starts in earnest against Crystal Palace at the Hill Dickinson Stadium on 22 August, there is a very real risk that this historically thin squad will be right back to the point of physical exhaustion.

Long gone is the ghost of "Gaffer's Day" so beloved by former manager Sean Dyche, but David Moyes’s methods are hardly a walk in the park. It feels like a cast-iron certainty that pushing the players to their physical limits this early will throw up the usual, frustrating batch of pre-season hamstring tweaks and groin strains. It’s that delicate, annual Everton balance between honing match fitness and shattering the squad before a competitive ball is even kicked.

If there is any solace, it's that the vast majority of the squad will be entirely familiar with Moyes’s demands. Why? Because the incoming transfer market has been a slow-moving trickle rather than the promised flood. Despite a daily cascade of rumours and promised signings, the squad currently boasts just one truly new face: Championship Player of the Season Hayden Hackney, snatched from Middlesbrough for an initial £16.5M.

Admittedly, the club did execute some essential administrative housekeeping by securing permanent deals for loanees Merlin Röhl and Tyrique George. But with a staggering 14 players having departed the club this close-season, Moyes is essentially working with a skeleton crew. Hackney looks a stellar addition to the midfield, but unless the board accelerates incoming business sharply over the next month, Moyes will be asking the same tired legs to go to the well all over again.

Get the ice baths ready. We're going to need them.

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