Dewsbury-Hall reveals the "dark times" at Chelsea, detailing his frustration with limited minutes and a manager's honest, yet tough, assessment.
In the summer of 2024, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall joined Chelsea from newly promoted side Leicester City for a fee of around £30m pounds.
At the time, it felt like the move made some sense. The midfielder had shown promise in the Premier League before Leicester had been relegated. It was the best player in the Championship under Enzo Maresca, who had just been appointed Chelsea boss.
So, it felt like he would get his fair share of game time. However, that proved not to be the case. Indeed, as Dewsbury-Hall only accumulated 1702 minutes all season, across all competitions. For context, he has already played more minutes than in that season.
Furthermore, 1205 of those minutes came in the Conference League. He only totalled up 292 Premier League minutes all year. So, with Chelsea now in the Champions League, game time in the 25/26 season would have been incredibly hard to come by.
Therefore, Dewsbury-Hall joined Everton last summer on a permanent transfer, with the Blues basically breaking even on what they paid for him. Things have gone well on Merseyside, with the midfielder already playing 1789 minutes this season despite a hamstring injury. In the league, he has scored five goals and provided three assists.
Earlier this week, in an interview with Mail Sport, the 27-year-old opened up on his time at Chelsea: "There were times when it felt very dark. If I am not playing, I can feel useless. I am very emotional.
I had a lot of options but signed for Chelsea genuinely thinking I was gonna play. 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. It was a strange dynamic at times. It was quite fortunate for the club that the manager could field two very strong teams.
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, then you get the chance to play. 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?'"
From there, Dewsbury-Hall explained his conversations with Maresca: "He was as honest as he maybe could be. 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."
He added: "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."
Towards the end of 2025, the former Leicester man pledged his international allegiance to England, amidst rumours of his eligibility for the Republic of Ireland. "I've spoken to him (Thomas Tuchel) once or twice. He was at Old Trafford 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."
Some very honest words. He seems like a good guy, and he definitely has a chance of making the World Cup squad. Since this interview in midweek, he picked up a game-winning assist for Everton in their win over Newcastle United on Saturday, so he continues to do well.