£40m is not the kind of fee you pay for patience. It is the kind of fee that comes with expectation, pressure and a fairly simple question: when is this player actually going to matter? For Tyler Dibling, Everton are still waiting for the answer. He has yet to start a Premier League game this season, and three brief substitute appearances have added up to no more than 24 minutes.
That is a slow start by any reasonable measure. Dibling arrived in August 2025 after weeks of wrangling at the end of the summer transfer window, so there is an explanation of sorts. He did not have a full pre-season when he first joined Everton, and that matters when a young winger is trying to settle into a new club, a new manager and a much sharper spotlight. But explanation is not the same as excuse, especially when the fee is this large and the anticipation around the signing was this high.
David Moyes still has a decision to make
The bigger issue is not that Tyler Dibling lacks talent. It is that Everton still do not appear to fully trust him. That is the real story here. He is clearly a player with high attacking ability, but he is also still trying to earn David Moyes’s confidence, and that process has not moved especially quickly. If anything, his usage in the league suggests he remains on the edge rather than in the plan.
Peter McPartland’s view is blunt enough to cut through the noise: Dibling deserves more chances. He has seen enough to believe the winger has improved, gained confidence and started to show more of what Everton expected from him. McPartland described a player who became more convincing in pre-season, who rarely wastes the ball and who can make the difficult look simple when he gets it right. He also made the more uncomfortable point: Moyes may not trust him, and that can only be draining for a 20-year-old trying to establish himself.
That last part matters. A young player can only keep hearing that he is promising for so long before the label starts to sound like an excuse for not using him. Everton invested heavily in Dibling because they clearly believe there is real upside there. But a £40m winger cannot live forever on upside alone. At some point, he has to be trusted from the start, not just waved on from the bench when the game needs a spark.
There have been signs, at least. In September, Dibling created the winner for Carlos Alcaraz against Wolves in the Carabao Cup, which at least showed he can influence a match when given the chance. That is the useful bit for Everton: proof that the talent is real. The problem is that the Premier League record so far is still thin, and thin is not what supporters were sold when the deal finally went through.
Last season, Everton fans barely saw him after his move. This season was supposed to be different, with a full training camp behind him and a clearer platform to settle in. Instead, we are still talking about a player who has made three brief cameos and not started a league game. That does not mean the signing has failed. It does mean Everton are still nowhere near getting full value from it.
For now, Tyler Dibling remains exactly what the early evidence suggests: a highly intriguing attacker, a work in progress, and a £40m player who still has a lot of convincing to do. Everton wanted a difference-maker. Right now, they have a question mark.
