Everton’s interest in Jacob Murphy may be related to a piece of news that broke at the weekend.
Football Insider reported that the club’s ceiling for a permanent Jack Grealish deal is £5m-£10m, which is some distance short of Man City’s original £50m valuation. Add that to the Murphy news that broke yesterday, and it makes you wonder. Or at least it did me.
Murphy is a capable Premier League player. Nine goals and 14 assists in 2024-25 were his best return and represented a very solid season. Nine years of service at Newcastle under three different managers point to a reliable player. But he is also 31, has a year left on his contract, and saw his output drop off last season.
That is not, on its own, the profile of a marquee signing for anyone. It screams ‘squad cover.’
It feels a little out of kilter with the approach Everton have tried to move away from under David Moyes 2.0. In previous years, the club had a tendency to address positional need with the nearest available experienced player rather than the best available option, often on modest terms and often late in a process rather than as a first choice.
This summer’s business — and the pursuit of younger targets like Hayden Hackney and Christian Kofane — has generally looked more considered than that. Murphy would be a departure from that pattern, if not necessarily a huge surprise.
Maybe there is a straightforward explanation. Moyes has been open about financial constraints shaping the club’s business this summer, and any manager operating under those conditions needs contingency plans. If the gap between Everton and City’s valuations of Grealish does not close, somebody has to provide competition on the left side of Everton’s attack next season.
Murphy, available for a fee well within Everton’s stated budget, is a reasonable answer to that specific problem. he c an play on either flank.
The distinction worth noting is between a contingency plan and a default position.
A 30-something on both wings?
Everton’s finances are stretched enough (cheers, Burnley) that there is a risk of settling for the affordable option rather than continuing to pursue the preferred one. That was the pattern in previous windows, and it is fair to ask whether the club’s recent progress in recruitment planning holds if money gets tight enough.
It’s frustrating the heck out of Evertonians. I get that.
What happens with Grealish over the coming weeks will do more than the Murphy reports to answer that question. What fans won’t necessarily want to see is 30-year-old Grealish as first choice on the left, and 31-year-old Murphy on the right.
If the Toffees can complete a permanent deal, Murphy becomes what his profile suggests he should be: sensible depth, signed alongside the club’s first-choice option.
If Grealish moves elsewhere and Murphy becomes the club’s primary attacking signing of the summer, that will be a more useful test of whether Everton’s approach to the transfer market has genuinely changed at all.
