Everton's squad cost ratio: a cost base close to the line, and one loan that costs £16m a year

Correction, 23 September 2026. The ratio is 72.4% and 83.2% before player trading, from 72.6% and 83.2%, after the current-year disposal figure was corrected to £79.4m in the series-wide fee sweep. The population has since been reconciled against the Premier League’s own squad returns, so the figures are no longer marked pending. Two earlier corrections, on 15 and 18 September, added a missing transfer raised by a reader, rebuilt three windows, and gave the model a path for players on loan in; those moved the ratio from 66.3% to 72.6% and that work stands.

Correction, 24 September 2026. The ratio is 73.5%, from 72.4%, and 84.4% before player trading, from 83.2%. Thierno Barry and Tyler Dibling were carried on five-year terms; Everton’s own announcements put both at four years, corroborated by PA and the Premier League. A four-year term is below the rule’s five-year cap, so each is amortised over four: £3.1m more a year between them. Without the £7.5m the rule supplies, the same cost base now produces 87.0% rather than 85.8%, two points outside the green line rather than 0.8, so the article no longer describes that position as almost inside the line. Headroom is £32.7m, the range 70.6% to 76.6% and the stress case 82.7%. The club remains inside the threshold.

Correction, 25 September 2026. The ratio is 73.3%, from 73.5%, after Everton’s transfer record was rebuilt from the club’s own announcements. Iliman Ndiaye, Beto, Tim Iroegbunam and Nathan Patterson all completed on deadline day, 1 September, and Dwight McNeil on 11 August, where placeholder dates had been used. Ndiaye’s fee is corrected to the £60m base, from £58.8m, Beto’s to £15.4m and Patterson’s to about £0.85m, which lifts 2026/27’s profit on player sales from £79.4m to £82.0m and the three-year average from £36.8m to £37.7m. Idrissa Gueye, Tyler Onyango and Séamus Coleman left when their contracts expired rather than by transfer, and three academy sales are added at undisclosed fees. Headroom is £33.5m, the range 70.3% to 76.3% and the stress case 82.5%. The comparison with Crystal Palace now uses Palace’s current figures, and the book values quoted for McNeil and Beto are corrected.

Update, 27 September 2026. Everton’s squad cost ratio is unchanged at 73.3%. Without the revenue the rule adds, the same cost base produces 87.1% rather than 87.0%: the engine’s figure is 87.05%, which rounds to 87.1, and the article, images and series table now agree with it.

Corrections, 1 and 2 October 2026. The ratio is 71.7%, from 73.3%, and 82.7% before player trading, from 84.4%. Agents’ fees now use the FA’s published figure for Everton, £10.0m rather than an assumed £14m. Four transfers were checked against the other club’s record of the same deal: Dewsbury-Hall’s fee is the £25m base, George’s £18.0m, Nørgaard’s £7.0m and Iroegbunam’s sale £13.0m. The costs and terms of Chermiti (€12.5m, £10.8m, from Sporting’s filing), Ndiaye (£20m), Beto (£25.75m over four years) and Patterson follow the clubs and reported fees; Chermiti’s sale to Rangers is now a small profit, so 2025/26 is a £2.1m profit rather than a loss. The squad cost is £205.2m and the three-year average of sale profit £38.0m. Green headroom is £38.1m, the range 68.8% to 74.7% and the stress case 80.6%. Without the £7.5m the rule supplies, the cost base produces 85.3%, about a quarter of a point above the threshold rather than two points, and the title now says only that it is just outside. No fee was published for Dwight McNeil, who left in the exchange for Brennan Johnson; at the £20m Crystal Palace’s side implies, the ratio would be 71.8%. The conclusion does not change: Everton sit comfortably inside the green line, and the cost base before supplied revenue sits just outside it.

Correction, 3 October 2026. The ratio is 70.7%, from 71.7%, and 81.4% before player trading, from 82.7%. Counted, from archived match reports. The rule counts the average number of home FA Cup and League Cup matches over the last three seasons, rounded up. Everton played ten (four, four and two), so the rule counts four, where we had assumed two. Matchday revenue under the rule is £46.0m, from £42.0m. This changes how this article describes Everton’s starting position: without the revenue the rule supplies, the cost base is 83.9%, not 85.3%, which is on the line and not just outside it. The title and the passages that carried the old description are rewritten. Also moved: the range is 67.8 to 73.6%, from 68.8 to 74.7%; green headroom is £41.5m, from £38.1m; and the stress case is 79.5%, from 80.6%. A separate review of agents’ fees on signings since the last accounts is under way and may raise this figure; we will report its result.

Update, 3 October 2026 (second of the day). Everton’s own figures are unchanged. In the comparison with Crystal Palace, Palace’s ratio is now 75.2%, from 74.9%, and 97.1% before player trading, from 96.6%; the effect of its player-sale profits is now 21.9 points, from 21.7, and its combined support 37.7 points, from 37.5; the two clubs are now 4.5 points apart, from 4.2, and 15.7 points apart before trading, from 15.2, after a copying error in Palace’s filed gate receipts was corrected. A separate review of agents’ fees on signings since the last accounts is under way and may raise this figure; we will report its result.

Correction, 4 October 2026. The ratio is 72.8%, from 70.7%, and 83.6% before player trading, from 81.4%. The squad cost rule defines three things in its own terms, and in each we had used the figure from a club’s accounts (Three definitions in the squad cost rule, and what they change). What a registration costs. The rule counts everything a club pays in connection with a transfer: the fee, the League’s 4% transfer levy and agents’ fees. For players signed since Everton’s last accounts we now count the reported fee plus 12%. Squad cost is £208.9m, from £205.2m, and the three-year average of sale profit is £36.8m, from £38.0m, because a player sold now leaves at a higher book value. This is the result of the review of agents’ fees that our earlier notes promised. Merchandise. The rule counts merchandise at gross profit, sales less the cost of the goods, where we had counted sales in full. Everton’s shops are run by a partner, so its accounts already hold merchandise net and nothing is taken off. Cup prize money. The rule counts a three-year average of what a club received from the FA Cup and the EFL Cup. We had entered £2.5m for Everton, a figure with no calculation behind it. Rebuilt from Everton’s cup ties in the last three seasons and the FA’s published prize fund and broadcast fees, it is £0.2m, in a range of £0.1m to £1.0m. The figure is provisional: the EFL publishes no prize money, some broadcast fees are not published, and the top of the range allows for a share of the gate at away ties, which the rule may or may not count. The revenue the rule counts is £249.9m, from £252.2m. Also moved: the range is 69.9 to 75.9%, from 67.8 to 73.6%; green headroom is £34.8m, from £41.5m; the stress case is 81.6%, from 79.5%. This changes how this article describes Everton’s starting position: without the revenue the rule supplies, the cost base is 86.2%, from 83.9%, which is above the line and no longer on it. The title and the passages that carried the old description are reworded.

Correction, 5 October 2026. The ratio is 73.3%, from 72.8%, and 84.2% before player trading, from 83.6%. We now measure each contract from the day the player was registered to the day it ends. A player who signs in August on a five-year deal has a contract of four years and ten months, because contracts end on 30 June; we had spread his cost over five full years. 16 of Everton’s contract lengths change, 13 of them against an end date we have derived as the 30 June the announced length points to, where no source states the date. The yearly charge for registrations is £66.5m, from £64.9m. The range is 70.4% to 76.3%, from 69.9% to 75.9%. No threshold is crossed. Most clubs move because contract costs are now measured to their actual or derived expiry dates; six also move for club-specific reasons. See the engine changelog. From 2025/26 the women’s team sits outside the accounts we read, after its sale to the club’s parent in June 2025. The rule still counts its revenue, which is not published separately; counting it would lower this ratio slightly.

Update, 7 October 2026. Everton’s own figures are unchanged; two signing dates now follow the club’s own records (Thierno Barry, 9 July 2025; Tyler Dibling, 25 August 2025). In the comparison with Crystal Palace, Palace’s ratio is now 78.9%, from 78.5%, and 101.8% before player trading, from 101.2%; the revenue the rule adds is now worth 17.1 points there, from 17.0, the effect of its player-sale profits 22.9 points, from 22.7, and its combined support 39.9 points, from 39.7; the two clubs are now 5.6 points apart, from 5.2, and 17.6 points apart before trading, from 17.0, after Palace’s signing fees, dates and one contract length were checked against the club’s own announcements (the engine changelog).

Correction, 9 October 2026. The ratio is 73.4%, from 73.3%, and 84.4% before player trading, from 84.2%. Last season’s commercial revenue is now estimated by one published method, the same for every club. Everton’s 2025/26 accounts are not filed, so the figure is an estimate. We had £55.0m, a judgement of ours. It is now £54.5m: the £47.2m filed for 2024/25, grown by 15.5%, the rate the method gives a commercial income of that size (how we estimate last season’s commercial revenue). It is drawn between £36.2m and £79.0m, where we had drawn 7% either way: the new span comes from how far forecasts of this kind have missed in past seasons. The range is 68.9% to 77.1%, from 70.4% to 76.3%. The published ratio crosses no threshold. This article said the range on Everton’s ratio was about three points either side, almost all of it from the share of the wage bill attributed to the squad; it now says the range runs from about four and a half points below the central figure to about three and a half above, about half of it from last season’s commercial and gate revenue, which are not yet filed, and most of the rest from the wage share. This article said commercial revenue was £55m after the stadium naming-rights deal, which it put at about £6.5m a season rising to £7.5m against a widely reported £10m. It cited no source for those figures. They are removed: no sponsorship is an input to the estimate, and they are no part of the argument. The stress case is now described as what it is: the worst case on costs alone, with revenue held at the central estimate. See the engine changelog.

Clarification, 15 October 2026. Wording only; no figure changed. The ranges in this article are assumption ranges, the spread of the model’s inputs between assumed bounds, not calibrated or confidence intervals, and the shares of modelled outcomes above or below a threshold quoted in the notes above are withdrawn.

Correction, 15 October 2026, second correction of the day. The ratio is unchanged at 73.4%; before player trading it is 84.9%, from 84.4%. Two things changed, and their effects on the ratio nearly cancel. Iliman Ndiaye’s fee. Everton paid Marseille a guaranteed €18.5m for Ndiaye in July 2024, £15.7m at the exchange rate of the day, with €1.5m to €2.5m in add-ons reported but not known to have been paid. We had recorded £20m, which was the fee Marseille paid Sheffield United for him in 2023. The add-ons are noted and not counted. Everton publish no schedule of future amortisation, so we charge the players still at the club from the filed book value less the book value of those who have left. At the lower fee Ndiaye took less book value with him, so the rest of the squad carries £1.3m a year more: amortisation is £67.8m, from £66.5m, and the squad cost £211.7m, from £210.4m. His book value when he was sold to Manchester City in September was lower too, so the profit on that sale is higher. A sell-on Marseille are reported to hold on that sale is not counted: it rests on one report and its terms are not known. The Gordon sell-on. Everton are owed a share of the profit on Anthony Gordon’s sale from Newcastle to Barcelona in May 2026: reports put it at 15%, about £3.1m, though they disagree on how it is worked out. We now count it as income at Everton and as a cost at Newcastle, as a reported figure rather than a confirmed one. Sale profit is £4.6m in 2025/26, from £1.5m, and £81.6m so far in 2026/27, from £79.0m; the three-year average is £39.2m, from £37.3m. Also moved: without the revenue the rule adds the figure is 87.5%, from 87.0%; the assumption range is 68.9% to 77.0%, from 68.9% to 77.1%; green headroom is £33.5m, from £33.2m; the stress case is 82.1%, from 82.2%. See the engine changelog.

Updated 16 October 2026: loans out now recorded; wage relief shown in ranges. The central figure is unchanged at 73.4%. Everton’s players out on loan are now recorded. Nobody has said how much of their wages the borrowing clubs pay, so the possible saving widens the assumption range rather than moving the central figure: the range is 68.7% to 76.9%, from 68.9% to 77.0%, still wholly below 85%. The stress case, the worst case on costs alone, is 82.6%, from 82.1%. See the engine changelog.

Correction, 21 October 2026. The ratio is 73.3%, from 73.4%, and 84.8% before player trading, from 84.9%; the assumption range is 68.6% to 76.8%, from 68.7% to 76.9%. Two signing dates now follow Everton’s own records: Merlin Röhl’s permanent transfer on 1 July 2026, not 1 August, and Hayden Hackney on 2 July, not 15 July, so each contract is measured from its true start. Without the revenue the rule adds the cost base is 87.4%, 2.4 percentage points above the line, from 87.5% and 2.5. The comparison with Crystal Palace uses Palace’s corrected figures (77.8% and 100.0% before player trading). See the engine changelog.

Correction, 23 October 2026. This article estimated Everton’s ratio at 73.3%; the corrected figure is 72.3%, and 84.8% before player trading is unchanged. We had missed £11.9m of profit on player sales. The rule averages the profit or loss on sales in the six most recent transfer windows (Rules A.1.13 and A.1.53), and for the March 2027 test that period starts on 2 February 2024. We had averaged three financial years starting on 1 July 2024, so Lewis Dobbin’s sale to Aston Villa and Ben Godfrey’s to Atalanta, both completed in June 2024, were left out. Nothing in Everton’s own figures changed; the error was in how we read the rule.

• Moved: the three-year average of sale profit is £43.1m, from £39.2m, worth 12.5 percentage points, from 11.5. Green headroom is £37.2m, from £33.8m. The range is 67.8% to 75.8%, from 68.6% to 76.8%. The stress case is 81.4%, from 82.5%. Everton and Crystal Palace are 5.5 percentage points apart, from 4.5.
• The conclusion holds: Everton are inside the line, and the cost base on its own, before the revenue the rule supplies, is still 2.4 percentage points above it. The twenty clubs together come to 74.9%, from 75.6%. The lead chart and the cover are redrawn with these figures. See the engine changelog.

Correction, 23 October 2026 (second of the day). The comparison with Crystal Palace gave the effect of Palace’s player-sale profits as 22.3 points; it is 22.2 points, as Palace’s own article gives it: the comparison had been left at an earlier value. Everton’s figures are unchanged. See the engine changelog.

Correction, 25 October 2026. The ratio, 72.3%, is unchanged. Jack Grealish’s loan is worth about 5.5 points of the ratio, from 5.6: the correction of 23 October raised the three-year average of sale profit, which enlarges what the ratio divides by, and missed the three sentences that give his share. The note of 21 October also left out two figures that moved with it: the stress case went to 82.5%, from 82.6%, and green headroom to £33.8m, from £33.5m. Those are the starting points the note of 23 October gives, so the record now runs without a gap.

Correction, 26 October 2026. Everton’s ratio is unchanged at 72.3%. Elsewhere in the article, the twenty clubs together come to 75.0%, from 74.9%. Fees paid and received for head coaches now count, at Manchester City, Chelsea, Brentford, Ipswich, Newcastle and Crystal Palace (Rules A.1.22(d) and A.1.29(g)). Crystal Palace’s figures, quoted for comparison, follow Palace’s correction of today: the two clubs are 5.8 percentage points apart, from 5.5, and 15.6 before player trading, from 15.2; Palace’s combined support is 38.8 points, from 38.7.

Correction, 28 October 2026. Everton’s ratio is unchanged at 72.3%. Elsewhere in the article, the twenty clubs together come to 75.1%, from 75.0%. We checked every transfer in our records against published sources and corrected sixteen entries at eleven clubs where the club’s announcement or a reputable report, read on the page, gives a different fee, contract length or date. The corrections move Arsenal, Chelsea, Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Tottenham up, and Coventry, Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth down. Crystal Palace’s figures, quoted for comparison, follow Palace’s correction of today: 78.2%, from 78.1%, so the two clubs are 5.9 percentage points apart, from 5.8; Palace’s combined support is 38.7 points, from 38.8.

Correction, 31 October 2026. The ratio is 72.5%, from 72.3%, and 85.0% before player trading, from 84.8%. We checked every transfer in our records against published sources and corrected the entries where a reputable report, read on the page, gives a different figure. Adam Aznou’s contract runs to June 2029, not 2030, so his fee is charged over four years, and Mason Holgate’s loan ended in May 2025, not June. Lewis Dobbin’s fee is unchanged and its sources are replaced. The cost base without the rule’s own revenue is 87.6%, 2.6 percentage points above the line, from 2.4. Figures that follow from these are restated with them in the text, and the twenty clubs together come to 75.3%, from 75.1%. The correction does not reverse the article’s conclusion: Everton are inside the 85% line. It was not a change in the rules: our contract date was a year too long.

Correction, 1 November 2026. Everton’s ratio is unchanged at 72.5%. The heading said Everton and Palace are 5.9 points apart; it is 5.8, as the text said. Everton’s combined support is 15.2 points, from 15.1, and one sentence kept 2.5 points where the figure is 2.6. Grealish’s £16.1m is a full-year rate. He joined on 1 September 2026, so the loan runs ten months; the article now says so and gives the ten-month figures, about £13.4m and about 71.5%. The label “revenue added by the rule” and the wording of revenue the rule supplies are replaced, because Everton earned the merit by finishing thirteenth. Note 21’s £114.3m was described as the figure for the summer 2025 window; it covers the transfers agreed after the year end together with contingent milestones on existing deals. The article said Everton have no filed disposal figure; 2024/25’s £31.3m is filed, and it now says that nothing filed yet checks the ledger after June 2025. The security comparison named Bournemouth, whose article describes no such borrowing. The sentence on the related-party sale now gives the £49.2m profit and the rule that leaves it out, Rule A.1.19(e), which is subject to the Board’s judgement. Gate receipts of £42m are marked as our estimate. The sentence that no club discloses its players’ wage bill now speaks only of Everton, and the player-share range is no longer described as under review. The sources now list Rules A.1.19(e), A.1.29(g) and A.1.53. Two repeating sections, on the squad lists and on what the article says, are removed; the squad-list check stays in the sources.

Correction, 2 November 2026. The note on Thierno Barry’s and Tyler Dibling’s contract lengths named outlets that corroborated Everton’s announcements; it now names only PA and the Premier League. The others are not sources this publication cites. No figure changes.