When Neal Maupay said, “Whenever I’m having a bad day I just check the Everton score and smile 🙂” on Twitter/X back in late 2024, any goodwill he had left with Everton supporters was gone in an instant. The tweet went viral, and considering the context surrounding the team, that wasn’t surprising.
Maupay was in the midst of a successful loan spell, and the Toffees were looking at yet another relegation battle. From an outside perspective, it reinforced the stereotype that Everton was a dumpster fire of an organization, which wasn’t an outlandish assessment to make at the time.
Fast forward to 2025, and things couldn’t be more different.
While Everton aren’t exactly firing on all cylinders, it looks like they’ll comfortably finish in the middle of the Premier League table. Maupay, on the other hand, hasn’t featured for Marseille in Ligue 1 so far this season. Maupay featured in Everton’s preseason last year, but didn’t do enough to warrant a stay.
The Maupay situation was a microcosm of Everton’s struggles in terms of signing and developing good strikers in the Premier League, something the team has struggled to do for a long time. Beto is a bipolar figure in Evertonian conversations, and Thierno Barry hasn’t settled into the pace of the Premier League just yet.
Considering the way things ended up going with Maupay, I’m sure no fan of the Toffees would prefer him over any of their current options, even though the current state of the striker position at Everton is subpar.