We've known since the start of the season that Iliman Ndiaye and Idrissa Gana Gueye were going to be gone for an extended period of time due to the Africa Cup of Nations.
Now that time has come, and the duo is in Morocco with their Senegalese teammates, preparing for their first match on December 23 against Botswana. The major concern, outside of missing those two key players, was whether the remaining squad could stay healthy, given the impact that the loss of Ndiaye and Gana has on the overall squad.
So it was all the more crushing that both Jack Grealish and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall left Everton's last match at Stamford Bridge with injuries. The Manchester City loanee has since been cleared and will be in Everton's lineup on Saturday against Arsenal, barring any last-minute setbacks.
Dewsbury-Hall will not be so lucky, as it appears that he's set to miss a few weeks, although David Moyes wasn't as direct about the timeline in his pre-match press conference earlier today.
This leaves another hole in the middle of the park for the Toffees, with Gana already gone and Merlin Röhl only just ready to return from hernia surgery completed over the last international break. The squad has always been short of a direct replacement for Gana either way, so his absence is exacerbated by the inability to add depth there.
There's never a good time for an injury to happen for a player, but given all of those circumstances, losing Dewsbury-Hall, who has arguably been Everton's player of the season so far, is an even bigger blow.
Moyes does have a player in his squad who can replicate some of what KDH offers in Charly Alcaraz, but recent fixtures suggest the two can actually play together under the right circumstances, and moving the Argentine into the starting lineup to replace Dewsbury-Hall further damages Everton's bench options.
The squad is already quite thin as it is due to other injuries to players like Jarrad Branthwaite alongside the club not paying attention to adding a true right back option over the summer, something they'll hopefully take care of in January.
But Moyes will need to be clever in the coming weeks to make up for the players he's missing. The hope is that Dewsbury-Hall will be ready to return to action soon, so that Everton can do the best to stay in the mid-table mix while AFCON continues on.