‘Everton felt perfect. If you win a trophy here you’ll go down in history – this fanbase deserves good times’: KIERNAN DEWSBURY-HALL on being ‘ready’ for England, the ‘mental block’ his team have at new stadium and his guilty pleasure

Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall always thought he would play for David Moyes, ever since the Everton manager tried to sign him for West Ham.

‘It felt like I needed to work with him at some point,’ he says. But then close relationships with managers don’t always take you where you think they will.

Two summers ago, Dewsbury-Hall followed Enzo Maresca from Leicester to Chelsea only to find himself on the fringes. Two Premier League starts in a season was not what he thought Chelsea had paid £30million for.

‘There were times when it felt very dark,’ Dewsbury-Hall admits. ‘If I am not playing, I can feel useless. I am very emotional.’

Now, three-quarters of the way through a debut season at Everton, Dewsbury-Hall can talk about a career revived and some ambitions of winning a first cap for his country that have not been discouraged by England manager Thomas Tuchel.

‘I’ve spoken to him once or twice,’ he tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘He was at Old Trafford when I scored. He was at Fulham when I scored. So I wouldn’t mind him coming to more games! He’s been complimentary and told me to stick at it. I feel like I am ready now. I feel like I am moving forwards again.’

‘I feel like I am ready (to play for England) now. I feel like I am moving forwards again.’

During a season of change – most of it positive – at Everton, Dewsbury-Hall stands out. Jack Grealish was the big-name signing but injury has ended his season. Young Tyler Dibling has struggled. Dewsbury-Hall, now 27, has assumed the role of senior player quite naturally.

‘When I broke through at Leicester I just went on to the pitch trying to do the right thing,’ he says. ‘Now I’ve got a different mentality. I want to stand out.

‘The manager and myself have history. He’s known me for a while. He was interested when he was at West Ham. So it felt like the right time now to come to him. I just genuinely thought it would click here and it has. I know if I had the opportunity at Chelsea, it would have been the same.’

Dewsbury-Hall was a late developer and a thinker. It’s not always a great combination. As a teenager he interpreted his slow physical progress as a weakness. But now that he’s through all that, a clear intellect radiates and it’s to his benefit.

Few footballers are as engaging or as curious. Two years into a degree in sports management, he has concerns about the direction football is taking on and off the field. He is also obsessed with West End musicals – ‘my guilty pleasure’ – and is convinced he will stand on a different kind of stage one day. Meanwhile he is an accomplished snooker and pool player.

‘I do like to learn,’ the Nottingham-born midfielder says in his broad East Midlands accent. ‘I don’t just like sitting on my backside doing nothing.’

In three weeks, fatherhood beckons. A little girl. That learning process is about to be accelerated and maybe it’s fitting, then, that Everton chose him to visit Much Woolton Primary School, 10 miles from Hill Dickinson Stadium, to read to a class of 25 children ahead of World Book Day next week.

The kids are blindfolded and have to guess the identity of their ‘secret reader’ as Dewsbury-Hall makes his way slowly through a page of a Harry Potter book he has chosen. When his identity is revealed, there is classroom bedlam. An enthusiastic signing session follows, as Dewsbury-Hall makes his way from table to table talking about books, reading and a fair bit of football.

The kids at Much Woolton Primary School are blindfolded and have to guess the identity of their ‘secret reader’ as Dewsbury-Hall reads a page of a Harry Potter book he has chosen

When his identity is revealed, there is classroom bedlam. Dewsbury-Hall makes his way from table to table talking about books, reading and a fair bit of football

‘You know, I was really nervous before going in there,’ he smiles as he sits down to talk in the headteacher’s office. ‘I haven’t read out loud for a while. Football’s not easy but I’m used to that, aren’t I? I thought, “God, if I start making mistakes here, I’ll make myself look like a right sausage”. But no, it was good in the end.’

Children can be blunt. At one stage, Dewsbury-Hall is asked by an eight-year-old why Everton can’t win at home. It’s a theme we return to. Ahead of today’s visit to Newcastle, Everton sit ninth despite having won only twice at their new Hill Dickinson Stadium in the Premier League since the start of November, and none of the last six.

‘I do think there’s maybe a little mental block there at the moment,’ he admits. ‘That does happen in football. I truly believe it. Something will happen in a game and it will just knock us for six or it will change the way we play. Whereas away, we know what we’re doing.

‘We do talk about it. I’m not gonna lie to you. We’re humans. We ask ourselves why it goes wrong. We have tried training on the pitch and stuff and will probably do it again.’

Reflection is common in football and Dewsbury-Hall is prone to it. His home library comprises largely of autobiographies and motivational business books but not much of it prepared him for what happened at Chelsea.

Following Maresca to Stamford Bridge in 2024 felt like the next step. Instead, Dewsbury-Hall found himself buried beneath a mountain of midfield bodies. He was the only player to feature in all 15 games of the club’s Conference League triumph and had some minutes at the Club World Cup. But every weekend brought Premier League disappointment.

‘I had a lot of options but signed for Chelsea genuinely thinking I was gonna play,’ he says. ‘I believed I could. I know I could. And then football is football. Things happen.

‘Obviously the competition was high. Rival midfielders were £100m players (Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez). It was a strange dynamic at times. It was quite fortunate for the club that the manager could field two very strong teams.

He was the only player to feature in all 15 games of the club’s Conference League triumph and had some minutes at the Club World Cup

His home library comprises largely of autobiographies and motivational business books but not much of it prepared him for being overlooked by Enzo Maresca at Chelsea

‘But it was weird – it almost felt like no matter how well I played in midweek, I would not play at the weekend and that was the only thing that didn’t sit well with me. In football it’s important, if you’re playing well, that you get the chance to play. I’m a very emotional guy. If I’m not playing, I feel useless, basically. I feel like I haven’t got a purpose because that’s my life.

‘So yeah, there were dark times where I thought, “I don’t care about money or anything else. I just wanna play football, so why aren’t I?”.’

Dewsbury-Hall’s relationship with Maresca meant there were regular conversations but not reassurances. ‘He was as honest as maybe he could be,’ the player adds. ‘He said some things that I wanted to hear and maybe some things that I didn’t want to hear. He told me I had to be patient and said I wasn’t as big a fish in a pond as I was at Leicester.

‘I am not gonna cry over it. I know if I did play more I would have been able to show people what I could do. In my head, that’s a fact. But the strategy worked for the club, didn’t it? They won trophies and they got in the top four.

‘I could easily have stayed at Chelsea for much longer but I wanted to go to a club with a project and be a main player. Everton felt perfect. Seamus Coleman has been here 17 years and tells me to imagine what winning a trophy would be like.

‘If you can do that here, you’ll go down in history books. This fanbase deserves good times and it gave me that extra motivation to come. Now I’m in such a better place. People look at me in a different light I hope.’

Relationships with coaches and managers are always key to a player’s development. Dewsbury-Hall has had his bumps in the road and sometimes they have been impossible to see coming.

At Leicester, the club he joined aged eight, Brendan Rodgers gave him his senior debut at the age of 21 but he soon learned that managers have egos too.

At Leicester, the club he joined aged eight, Brendan Rodgers (right) gave him his senior debut at the age of 21 but he soon learned that managers have egos too

Scoring the winning goal at Old Trafford in November as David Moyes’ side pulled off a famous win with 10 men

‘He organised a pool tournament and everyone had to join in,’ recalls Dewsbury-Hall, a friend of four-time world snooker champion Mark Selby, the ‘Jester from Leicester’. ‘I was playing for a pub team when I was 10 years old. I mean, I can play.

‘I was young at the time – wasn’t a first-team player – but was drawn to play him (Rodgers) in the first round. I said to the lads: “Do I try my hardest?” Because he was having himself. He was going, “I’m really good at pool” and all the lads thought he fancied himself to win the whole thing.

‘Quite a few people were watching and I beat him 3-0 and you could tell he was raging. I’ve just gone, “Yeah, sorry gaffer” and a week later got sent out on loan to Blackpool. So yeah, I mean, that was a fun week of my life.’

Dewsbury-Hall’s talents as a snooker player are not in doubt. As an actor, there is not yet any proof but he does yearn to find out. His love of the West End runs deep. He has watched endless shows in London and on New York’s Broadway, and has contacts and friends in the business. A few years ago he was due to have a brief role through a BBC project in The Lion King but an injury got in the way.

He has tried and failed to encourage interest in various team-mates. ‘They just look at me like I am alien,’ he says. ‘But one day I genuinely believe I’ll do something in the West End.

‘I resonate with what they do every night, giving their best to a completely new set of eyes. That’s hard to do, so I respect them so much.’

In terms of the football, Dewsbury-Hall looks at where the game is going and, along with many others inside and outside of dressing rooms, has concerns about the influence of money, endless VAR checks, 100-minute matches and social media.

Asked if the game is losing a bit of its innocence, he says: ‘Yeah, a little bit. And look, I’m old school. I’m an old head. That’s why I hang around with people like Seamus.

Dewsbury-Hall looks at where football is going and has concerns about the influence of money, endless VAR checks, 100-minute matches and social media

England manager Thomas Tuchel was at Craven Cottage earlier this month to see Dewsbury-Hall score in the win over Fulham 

‘It’s going away from that sort of old-school football isn’t it? It’s the way the world’s going. Football’s more business now than it was. It will only increase. I just don’t want it to lose its identity and lose why we fell in love with the game. I grew up watching Match of the Day and all I cared about was seeing people score goals. I don’t want kids in 10 years watching it and going: “What is this?”

‘It should be about the love. But look at the last week. The north London derby is taking 15 minutes to get restarted. Lloyd Kelly gets sent off for Juventus in the Champions League for the most ridiculous thing in the world. Rules are rules in football but sometimes you just need to smell a situation.

‘The players, we’re humans just like you. We grew up watching the sport. It’s obviously just because we’re inside it now, it’s a bit more close to home. But we see the same things you see. We have the same concerns.’

For now, Dewsbury-Hall is probably too busy to save football. But Everton have a fine player and the rest of us have a genuine thinker in our midst. He is in Tuchel’s thoughts for a reason.