History appears to be repeating itself for Beto.

It was the second half of last season, under new manager David Moyes, when the Guinea-Bissau international finally found his feet after six months of struggle at Everton.

Beto had attracted interest from Italy and Portugal in the January 2025 window, with some at Everton unconvinced and pushing for a new option up front. Yet the injury to first-choice striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin in mid-January changed everything.

Two days before the window closed, Beto scored twice in the key 4-0 win against fellow Premier League strugglers Leicester City, as part of a run of seven goals in his last 16 games. At that stage, he had won Moyes over.

Fast forward to this January, and the 28-year-old again found himself at a crossroads. He had disappointed in the first half of the campaign, forcing senior Everton figures to reconsider their plan to use him to ease the burden on summer signing Thierno Barry during his first season on Merseyside.

The club pursued West Ham United’s Callum Wilson and Fenerbahce’s Youssef En-Nesyri, the latter a long-time Moyes target, and were open to letting Beto leave if a replacement was sourced. At one stage, they had been confident of doing so. But those moves never materialised and Everton ended the window rejecting enquiries from Juventus and Fenerbahce for the striker.

It therefore comes as some surprise that he now heads into Sunday’s match against rivals Liverpool — the first at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium — as one of the Premier League’s form players and a potential derby talisman.

Beto has scored six times in 2026, on average once every 83 minutes, and has five goal involvements in his past five games. Those include a double in the recent 3-0 home win against Chelsea and an equaliser in Saturday’s 2-2 draw at fellow European hopefuls Brentford. Going slightly further back, he struck in the 97th minute to earn a 1-1 draw against another team fighting for European football, Brighton & Hove Albion, in January.

The turnaround has been dramatic and has delighted both Moyes and his team-mates, who see a player straining every inch to make an impact. Beto is a hard worker who stays behind after every training session to work with Moyes’ coaching staff on his finishing and ball control. Staff and team-mates alike have praised his ability to take on board criticism and work on shortcomings in his game.

“He’s a great boy to work with,” Moyes said in his press conference after the Chelsea win. “He’s incredibly humble. He tries to improve himself every day. I’m not saying it was good luck, but we certainly got what he deserved from the work he put in.”

Speaking to reporters after the same game, midfielder James Garner said Beto “deserved” his recent success. After Beto’s equaliser against Brighton, defender James Tarkowski said he “works his hardest to improve and get better, so it’s great for him to get a moment like that”.

“He is open for feedback, open for a bit of criticism,” Tarkowski added.

There has always been a sense, dating back to his arrival in 2023, that Beto was an imperfect solution for Everton.

He was signed during a time of financial struggle, with the club keen to add to their striking options but unable to make a down payment in the first year of any deal. The pool of potential options was shallow, and Udinese were one of the few clubs for whom such terms were acceptable.

Beto has significant flaws in his game. He had no real academy background and spent time working at KFC as he rebuilt his career in Portugal’s amateur and lower leagues. He can look ungainly and clumsy in his technical play, while Moyes and his predecessor, Sean Dyche, also worked with him on positional and tactical elements. It is hard for team-mates or his manager to know exactly what he will do and when.

But Beto also has strengths that are perhaps not celebrated enough. He is tall at 6ft 4in (194cm), quick and strong, and brings an element of unpredictability that makes him tough for opposition defenders to read. He often finds himself in advantageous positions in front of goal and boasts the fifth-highest expected goals per 90 total (0.54) in the league this season, up on last season’s 0.46. He is fourth among starting strikers in the Premier League for xG per shot.

In layman’s terms, he is among the best in the division at getting into dangerous positions and getting high-quality chances.

The frustration for Moyes at the start of the season, as he repeatedly outlined, was that his strikers were not scoring enough. Until his recent goal glut, Beto was lagging two and three goals behind his xG, suggesting significant finishing underperformance and/or bad luck in the opening half of the campaign.

Brentford owner Matthew Benham raised some eyebrows earlier this year when he cited Beto as a positive, relatively unheralded example during the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

“When we played Everton at our place last year, Beto missed three one-on-ones,” Benham, who has a background in gambling, said. “Any decent data model worth its salt would give him an upgrade.

“Typically for a one-on-one, the odds are 50-50 that you will score. You might say he’s less efficient, but the fact that he is getting the positions for the shot is more important to us.”

Now, he is approaching parity with his xG (seven goals from an expected figure of 7.4). His hard work is paying off.

Beto returned to the side against Newcastle United in late February with a point to prove. When asked in his post-match press conference why he had made the change, Moyes pointed to Barry’s lack of impact in previous matches following his summer move from Spain’s Villarreal. But Beto has seized his chance.

Beto has had to vie for playing time with Thierno Barry this season (Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images)

His goals have been varied — opportunistic finishes on the rebound against Newcastle and Brighton, two strikes from through-balls against Chelsea, and a recent header into the far corner at Brentford.

Beto is often at his best racing onto passes in the inside left channel, opening up his body and finishing into the far corner. But he called his poacher’s effort at St James’ Park “the best finish ever” due to his work defending from the front, explaining to reporters how goalkeeper Jordan Pickford had praised his determination in getting to the rebound after Nick Pope spilled Dwight McNeil’s shot from distance.

There is also a sense, as Moyes himself has hinted in recent press conferences, that Everton are once again playing to Beto’s strengths, just as they did during his purple patch last season. The striker thrives on balls in behind, but Everton often attacked through Manchester City loanee Jack Grealish in the first half of the campaign.

A more direct style suits Beto, who is, in turn, more confident, and he has been eager to show his worth.

“I need to prove to myself that I belong here,” he said after the Newcastle match. “It (the season) has been disappointing, but this is football. I can’t put in my mind, like, ‘Oh, I’m sad, I’m not playing’. I just need to keep working in the training ground, wait for my opportunity, trying to improve every day.”

In response to questions about January interest in him, Beto added that he had wanted to stay and show that he “belongs here”.

He has another chance to do just that in Sunday’s derby, with eighth-placed Everton still firmly in European contention and just five points behind their city rivals and last year’s champions in fifth.

Based on past encounters, Beto has what it takes to cause problems for Liverpool’s defence. He scored in the 2-2 draw between the sides last season, was unfortunate not to see Ibrahima Konate sent off in the reverse fixture for a pull on the striker while he was already on a yellow, and struck the post in front of the Kop at Anfield in the previous match between the sides, having put Virgil van Dijk in a spin.

Beto may not be the long-term solution to Everton’s striking issues. Under the previous regime, led by ex-director of football Kevin Thelwell, he had initially been primed for a summer 2025 departure. With a year left on his deal at the end of this season, a decision will soon need to be made on his future.

But Sunday’s derby affords him another opportunity to make his mark on the big stage and make history in the process. Should he do so, nobody at Everton would begrudge their popular No 9 that.