Everton are off to a more than reasonable start to the season, and while there are long-term concerns about the squad, the general mood on the Blue half of Merseyside is good.
That doesn't mean the entire squad is running on all cylinders, however, as David Moyes, despite having a rather thin squad, clearly has a few players he doesn't rate as much as others. Sure, there are obvious players, such as Jordan Pickford, Jack Grealish, Iliman Ndiaye, and others who the club's best, but that doesn't mean there aren't question marks elsewhere.
And yet Moyes persists with the guys he's comfortable with, leaving several players on the fringes of the squad, even if a few of them might occasionally sniff the bench as an unused substitute.
3 players in David Moyes' doghouse
Dwight McNeil
Many Evertonians probably forget that McNeil was Everton's third top scorer last year after Ndiaye and Beto, all despite missing a decent chunk of the season due to injury. He was the team leader in goal contributions with 10.
Now, some may argue that this is an indication of how dire the goal scoring was for Everton last year, and that argument would not be wrong. When your third leading goal scorer managers just 4 goals while only playing 21 matches, that's an issue.
But McNeil has consistently been a 9-10 goal contributions player in the Premier League since he joined Everton in 2022, and while he does have his faults, he's been a useful player during that time.
The arrival of Jack Grealish, Tyler Dibling, and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, however, has made McNeil a bit expendable, so he's seen just 160 minutes on the pitch so far this year, mostly in the Carabao Cup, with just 25 Premier League minutes to his name.
Adam Aznou
The 19-year-old left back has yet to see the pitch for the senior team, although he has been on the bench over the last few weeks.
Aznou has seen some time with the U21 squad in the PL2, mostly recently in a 5-1 defeat to Bradford City over the international break.
He didn't get off to a great start this year when he came over from Bayern Munich, seeing a little time on the pitch near the end of Everton's trip to the United States this summer, but then an injury slowed him down. And so, even as Vitalii Mykolenko suffered with his own fitness early on, Aznou was left out.
Since then, he appears fully healthy, but Mykolenko's return to health and Moyes' inclination to play more experienced players that he trusts has left the teenager on the bench.
That said, his age and contract should allow him to grow into the Premier League, especially since Mykolenko is out of contract, as of now, at season's end. But for now, he remains, for whatever reason, firmly on the outside looking in.
Tyler Dibling
Another young player who Moyes just doesn't seem to rate very high, although the trend would indicate that the manager is again leaning on top-flight experience in this case and leaning on his stars.
On some levels, this isn't the worst thing, since, like Aznou, Dibling is young and under contract for several more years. But unlike Aznou, the young Englishman played all of last season in the Premier League with Southampton, making his omission, especially in a situation like last weekend, where Grealish was unavailable, all the more bizarre.
Hopefully, this is just an instance of trying to get a young player acclimated to his new club, and that as the season goes on, Moyes will find more ways to get Dibling involved, because the talent is clearly there.
But 161 minutes on the young season, which includes an eight-minute cameo with the Saints before he arrived on Merseyside, doesn't seem to suggest that those opportunities are coming any time soon.