Adam Aznou will spend the rest of the 2026-27 season on loan at Malaga.
When Everton splashed out nearly €9M to snag La Masia graduate Adam Aznou from Bayern Munich last summer, fans thought we were finally addressing our perpetual left-back headache with dynamic, youth-driven quality.
Fast-forward 12 months, and the 20-year-old Moroccan international is packing his trunks for Malaga having effectively wasted a full year of his development sitting on the bench at Hill Dickinson Stadium and other illustrious Premier League locales.
The move back to Spain on a season-long loan deal caps off a thoroughly bizarre spell on Merseyside. Brought in to add flair and overlap functionality, Aznou found himself completely frozen out by David Moyes, a manager whose trust in raw, attack-minded full-backs remains famously hard to earn.
The kid was doomed from the moment David Moyes said Adam Aznou is “not quite ready” to play first-team football yet.
Outside of brief substitute outings in domestic cup ties — including winning a penalty against Sunderland on his debut back in January — Aznou never got a look-in when it came to meaningful Premier League minutes. Moyes opted time and again for pragmatic experience, leaving the highly-rated youngster to watch week after week from the dugout while his career stalled. Minutes Played: Negligible senior league action
You have to feel for the lad. Coming from La Masia and Bayern to barely get a sniff under Moyes is a brutal way to spend your 19th and 20th years. He needed games, not a front-row seat to pragmatism.
What makes the departure even harder to swallow for Blues supporters is our paper-thin depth. By letting Aznou head to Andalusia, Everton walk into the rest of the campaign with just one senior, recognized left-back in the first-team squad.
No surprises for guessing who that is… although to give him his due, Mykolenko has actually been playing quite well so far this season, albeit with his plethora of known weaknesses.
While a loan spell back in Spain should give Aznou the minutes he desperately needs to kickstart his career, it leaves Everton fans scratching their heads at the recruitment strategy — spending real money on young talent only to have Moyes and his perennial preference for plodding experience rather than youthful exuberance doing his best to ruin yet another young talent who needs playing time on the field.
Best of luck in Malaga, Adam. You’ll certainly get more turf under your boots than you ever did at the Hill Dickinson Stadium!