Everton chaos could unleash seven-goal star as battle begins to avoid new nightmare

Many happy returns to Dwight McNeil on his 24^th birthday - but the winger could be forgiven if he’s not in the mood for partying because there won’t be many people around Everton who feel like celebrating right now.

It’s still just five days since the Blues were rocked by the independent commission’s decision to hand the club an immediate 10-point deduction – the largest such punishment in the 135-year history of English top flight football – after they were found to have breached the Premier League’s financial rules. After being just a couple of points off big-spending Chelsea and a place in the top half of the table, Sean Dyche’s men have now plunged to joint bottom, above his and McNeil’s former side Burnley on goal difference.

The hope among Evertonians is that an already-improving team, who will return to action at home to Manchester United – for whom McNeil used to turn out for as a youth team from the age of five until he was released as a teenager – having shown their increasing resoluteness to clinch a dramatic 3-2 win at Crystal Palace last time out, will be galvanised further by the sense of injustice such a sporting sanction for an accountancy matter has had on them.

It would certainly be an opportune moment for McNeil to round off his birthday week with a first strike this term. As a primarily attack-minded player, much was made of the wide man’s personal statistics when he joined Everton for £20million in July 2022 having failed to score and provided just a single assist in his final season with the Clarets.

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The Rochdale-born star soon exorcised such