Alan Shearer believes Dominic Calvert-Lewin has the potential to rekindle his previous goalscoring form at Everton but is increasingly concerned about whether he will
Alan Shearer has labelled Everton as “one of the worst teams” in the Premier League. But the title winner-turned pundit believes Dominic Calvert-Lewin could still fire them up the table.
Shearer has serious questions about the Blues and Calvert-Lewin, who has not scored since September. He also described the return of David Moyes to the Goodison Park dugout as a “gamble.”
But, of Everton’s struggling centre-forward, he concluded: “If you’ve done it once, you can do it again.”
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Shearer, the Premier League’s all-time leading goalscorer, focused on the Blues’ problems in front of goal as he considered the club’s current plight.
The Newcastle United legend said: “I’d be surprised if David Moyes has taken the chance of going into Everton without the owners saying to him, ‘We can back you in this transfer window’, and they can bring two or three players in because it’s a huge gamble.
“It was a huge gamble getting rid of Sean Dyche but it’s a gamble also for David Moyes, Everton are the one of the worst teams down there this season. There’s only Southampton who have scored less goals than they have, so they’re in the hunt for a striker too. Just like so many other teams, it’s the most important position on the pitch.”
Moyes has suggested that incomings could be possible this January should the right opportunities materialise. New owners The Friedkin Group are understood to have the desire and the finances to rebuild the squad, but are constrained by financial regulations – at least until the summer.
Moyes, like his predecessor Dyche, has spoken of the difficulty of buying goalscorers, so may well focus on creativity, which has also been a major issue. He has been further hampered by the injuries to Armando Broja and Youssef Chermiti, which have ruled them out of contention for the foreseeable future.
That means relying on Calvert-Lewin or turning to Beto. Of the situation, Shearer, who won the Premier League with Blackburn Rovers in 1995, told Betfair: “David will be looking at the strikers he has, and Everton just haven’t got the bodies in there, they’ve got Beto and Calvert-Lewin. Both of them look as if it’s just not going for them in front of the goal.
“I don’t know Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s lifestyle, I don’t know what’s going on with him, but if you’ve done it once, you can do it again.
“Whether he’s got the hunger, whether he’s got the thirst, the energy and all of those things that you have to have to keep going again and to keep getting into the area and scoring those goals and being the best that you can be, I don’t know.
“I mean, we haven’t seen anything anywhere near that and he’s been miles off it, both in performances and goals.
“I know they don’t get a lot of chances, and it’s probably a team that, as a striker, you wouldn’t want to play in that that often because of the lack of chances they create, but he did miss a big chance the other night.”
That big chance came in the final minutes of the narrow defeat to Aston Villa, when Calvert-Lewin fired over from Jesper Lindstrom’s cross.
For Moyes, the focus remains on goals and, speaking ahead of the visit of Tottenham Hotspur to Goodison on Sunday, he said he was taking the positives from that game – namely that chances were created and Calvert-Lewin was in a position to meet them, both a step forward for a club that did not have a single shot on target against Bournemouth in the first game of 2025.
