Picture the scene; I am sure most of us can. It is Christmas Eve. Christmas parties are already beginning to take their toll on revellers, a Tuesday feels like a Friday, routine is as relevant as Strictly Come Dancing and a few pints in, one half of the couple-usually the husband- realise that they have got nothing for the other half. This despite the fact that Christmas never changes; December 25th it has always been and December the 25th it will always be.
The man makes a feeble attempt to half-heartedly window shop, try to recall in a brain clouded by alcohol and uncertainty some brief conversations about new table mats he heard over a glass of wine, remember something about a new fragrance that ‘is subtle and not too strong’ but ultimately pay the piper for a total lack of planning and forethought. This despite knowing that Christmas day was on the 25th. It ends in what has become the answer to all of life’s significant problems; the voucher.
For Everton and Moyes in particular, this same scenario is upon us. Replace Christmas with AFCON, replace the half tanked reluctant shopper with Moyes and the alignment is complete; we have simply failed to prepare for what we knew was ahead and now it seems we are looking for functional answers in all the wrong places (see the ‘mock excited’ face of your partner when they open the ‘surprise’ if you don’t believe me).
Iliman Ndiaye, for all those old and lucky enough to remember, is our modern day Andrei Kanchelskis. Different in profile and in ability, nonetheless both possessed a rare quality; that rare quality is to make grown men and women swoon over what they were and are lucky enough to witness. Kanchelskis was already a double winner at United before he made the move down the East Lancs Road.
📅 | #onthisday in 1995, Andrei Kanchelskis scored twice as #EFC beat Liverpool 2-1 at Anfield. pic.twitter.com/YWOREuKGvj
— Everton (@Everton) November 18, 2016
It felt for many a brief but potential return to the club’s ability to attract star names, pay big fees and feel like- only eight short years after clinching the championship at Norwich- that we were back where we belonged. In truth, Kanchelskis was probably too good for us. Yes, we won the cup the summer before we signed him; yes we went and won at Anfield with him scoring at the Kop end in his first season and yes we had a team playing in Europe in an all too brief hiatus under Joe Royle. Ultimately, he was too good for us.
At times Ndiaye seems to be that same profile; too quick in thought, too direct in his dribbling, too powerful in his protection of the ball and just too skilful for many in this squad to keep on the same wavelength. Kevin Thelwell will be remembered at Everton as a man who tried his best and was reasonably effective in a dire financial situation for the club. The club’s finances were not the fault of Thelwell.
Iliman Ndiaye is a serious baller. 😮💨#EVETOT highlights just dropped! ⬇️
— Everton (@Everton) January 19, 2025
He actually oversaw the signings of some very good players, still on the books. Tarkowski, Alcaraz on loan, Garner, re-signing Gana and Jake O'Brien all can be attributed to Thelwell’s tenure. Of course he forced the most dislikeable player in the club’s history on us in the form of Neil Maupay. He also spent huge money to sign the best cheerleader in the league but the most inconsistent, frustrating player in the league in Onana. However, he did sign Ndiaye and, from memory, to little fanfare.
The hipsters would have seen him struggle at Marseille, a legendary club with a demanding fanbase. Closer to home, he had lined out for Sheffield United but again, he was not one that made you sit up and take notice. Now, he is simply a superstar. He is, like Andrei the Russian, unplayable on his day. He is, like Andrei, at times inconsistent. More often than not though, he is the attacking threat in the side, albeit this season the load has been lighted with the form of Jack Grealish. Last season he hit double figures but ‘curiously’ no league assist. I say curiously in as sarcastic a tone as possible as we relied on Beto, Calvert-Lewin and Chermitti to fire the bullets. You can’t create if players can’t finish. You can’t create if movement is slow. You can’t create if you are consistently double and treble marked as the side has almost no other attacking threat.
I often remarked last season how we were the easiest side in the league to set up against from open play. Stop the Senegalese winger and you stopped Everton, set-pieces aside. This season saw the curious decision to move Ndiaye wide right to accommodate the Jack Grealish signing. Whilst Grealish started the season very well on the right with four early assists and the late winner against Palace, Ndiaye just did what he does best, except this time from the other side; impact the match, create and score. Moving him on the right simply allows him to be as or even more creative as he now can go outside easier or cut in on his wonderful ‘weaker’ foot to do what he did against Sunderland.
Iliman Ndiaye is responsible for over a third of Everton’s completed take-ons this season.
— Squawka (@Squawka) November 22, 2025
Here’s why losing him to AFCON could change everything. 👇
And now to Moyes and AFCON. I wrote last week of the need to be patience with the Moyes project or whatever a project is supposed to be. We know it is not a project in Moyes’ eyes. He is here short-term. His selections seem based very much on this. Older, experienced pros trump the young, naïve whippersnappers every day of the week and twice on a Sunday. However, Moyes has done what the aforementioned Christmas Eve shopper has done; he has ignored the obvious, procrastinated, delayed and downright neglected to look at how we will fill the rather large Iliman Ndiaye shape hole on the right side of our attack. Now, with only a matter of weeks to go until Ndiaye and Gana head off to Morocco installed as one of the favourites, what we will do to plug this gap is as clear now as it was in August.
Moyes knew AFCON was on the horizon. He knew that the competition starts on December 21st. He knows that Senegal are in a very strong position to progress beyond the group stages thus will be potentially- and very likely- playing into the first two weeks of 2026. If successful, Senegal will play in the final on January 18th, a day after we go to Villa Park. If he knows all this, why does he not seem to have planned ahead?
Granted, planning ahead is difficult. Once Ndiaye is here and fit he starts. Every game. No questions. You are not going to let your best player out in September to see how you may cope in December without him. However, Ndiaye often runs out of gas. Whether he puts so much in offensively and defensively to support his full back thus leaves him out of energy 15/20 minutes before the end of a lot of games, only the Sports Science team know. In these cases, the pretenders to his throne simply needed to be given more minutes, given more trust and given more experience of playing for Everton in what tends to be tight, close games. We don’t do handsome wins. If these pretenders are not good enough or not ‘Premier League’ ready- a favourite narrative of Moyes- then there must be a plan B in his head. Whatever that is has been untried, untested, unproven and leaves Everton fans staring at 25-man squad lists trying to decode, decipher and decide what this Plan B may be.
It does not look like the answer will come in the form of our big transfer of the Summer in Tyler Dibling. It is clear that Moyes does not trust him either physically or mentally to play regular minutes for Everton’s first team. Dibling has played in four of our games, one from the start and in that he was whipped off. In total, he has played a mere 62 minutes of football in the league and has one touch in an opposition’s box. Dibling has recently been starting on the bench for the England u-21 side. It does not bode well. It is therefore almost impossible to believe that he will fill in the Ndiaye position. Dwight McNeil was bizarrely tried in that role. That ‘experiment’ must stop. That performance is a performance no player should come back from. However, and it is difficult to take McNeil’s side here, it was McNeil’s first meaningful minutes of the season. He has played just 51 minutes all season, the majority in that game, spread across three substitute appearances.
It may be Charly Alcaraz who is shunted out to the right to solve this problem in waiting. Again, he is undercooked. He has played just over four hours’ football with only two starts. He is not a wide player as he simply has not the pace to trouble full backs nor has he the engine and capacity to get back in transition, something Moyes values as highly as the ability to beat a full back. It may be Rohl, although he is more of a central player yet Moyes has tasked him this season to play in a few roles, one of them a substitute appearance from out wide right. It definitely will not be Aznou; Terry Phelan, bless him, has more chance of donning the blue shirt again at left back than the young Moroccan who must be wondering what second hand car salesman dream he was pitched to make him join the club.
It might instead mean a change of system. Getting more central players in the side in the midfield and potentially playing Grealish off a striker. Of course this won’t happen. If it does, it is a risk as we have not seen significant system changes yet this season, more ‘like for like’ substitutions. Add in the fact that neither of our full backs- although Garner is more likely to do this if he remains there for the foreseeable- really get beyond the midfield as it is, means having a flat three with some form of two narrow behind a striker will leave us even more blunt in attack as it will be too narrow. The thing is, whatever it will be, is untried and untested.
Iliman Ndiaye Florian Wirtz 0010
— Lea (@Lea_EFC) November 3, 2025
£15.6m £116.5m
10 x PL Games 10 x PL Games
✅ Goals: 4 ❌ Goals: ZERO
✅ Assists: 1 ❌ Assists: ZERO
✅ Nutmegged: 0 ❌ Nutmegged: 1 pic.twitter.com/5Tp3eLzr71
Yes, they may be working on plans at Finch Farm over the long international break but it means that when we come to take on Arsenal on December 20th, we will be going into it clouded in uncertainty and doubt. Ndiaye may be granted permission to play at Stamford Bridge. He will certainly miss Arsenal at home (table toppers), the bleak trip to Burnley and the inevitable defeat to Sean Dyche’s Forest with his smug grin, gravelled voice and perspiring forehead on a wet Tuesday night by the Trent in tow. Unless Senegal have a meltdown of Holland 1996 levels, he will also miss the home matches to the league’s second smuggest manager in Keith Andrews’ Brentford side and the more winnable match at home to Wolves. If Senegal get to a final, it will also rule him out of Villa away and perhaps see a tired, worn out Ndiaye return on the 24th at home to Leeds.
Sunderland are worst hit numerically from AFCON; seven of their squad are Morocco bound. However, our two, Ndiaye in particular, are so central to our success, that they are as big a loss, if not bigger, in the overall scheme of things. It brings me back to Moyes. He has not shown the fans that he has AFCON at the forefront in his mind. He may be doing some work behind the scenes with his sidekick Billy McKinlay and Leighton Baines, but if he has, we are yet to see it. That is the worry, a perfectly understandable worry. In an ideal world, Dibling would have racked up 500 minutes, been involved in goal creations or got amongst the goals himself, be flying with England u-21s and naturally be seen as the answer to the AFCON problem. Moyes is sceptical about the boy from the South Coast. His comments post Sunderland suggest Dibling must grow up, wise up and train harder if he is to find even a back-up spot in this Moyes’ side. Hopefully Moyes has been grafting in the background, carrying out his due diligence in the long grass. Like the man ticking off his thoughtful shopping list for his other half, all Amazon deliveries have already been dispatched discreetly; hell, some may even be wrapped. Somehow I envisage Moyes is more of a voucher man and this is a concern. Vouchers tell a story; so does his team selection and squad rotation since the first kick of a ball in August.
