Can Everton be one of the Premier League’s surprise packages this season?

We enter the international break after eight Premier League rounds with the table starting to take a fairly familiar order. 

Four of the traditional 'top six' occupy the Champions League spots, Brighton sit in sixth, Chelsea are in mid-table and Everton are hovering just above the relegation zone. 

It's a place the Toffees have become accustomed to in recent years, with two successive to-the-wire relegation battles across the two previous campaigns making them one of the pre-season favourites to finally succumb to the drop this year. 

Their plight hasn't been helped by issues off the field. A new expensive stadium build on Liverpool’s waterfront combined with an owner in Farhead Moshiri who no longer seems willing to invest has meant the club were wheeling and dealing with pretty much an empty transfer kitty in the summer. 

Moshiri has since signed a deal with the Miami-based 777 Partners to sell his 94.1 per cent stake in the club, yet the American firm - who also own a stable of clubs such as Genoa, Sevilla, Vasco da Gama, Hertha Berlin, Standard Liege - have been embroiled in numerous controversies since being founded by Josh Wander and Steven Pasko in 2015. It, therefore, remains to be seen how that one will play out. 

Despite this turbulence in the background, manager Sean Dyche and Director of Football Kevin Thelwell worked hard to deliver a relatively successful summer. 

Everton sold Alex Iwobi to Fulham and Demarai Gray to Al-Ettifaq for a combined sum of over £30m. They added winger Arnaut Danjuma on loan from Villarreal, free agent Ashley Young, plus forwards Youssef Chermiti from Sporting CP and Beto from Udinese. 

The latter cost £25million but remarkably Thelwell was able to strike up a deal so that cash-strapped Toffees wouldn't need to make any payment to Udinese until the next financial year. 

Highly-rated central defender Jarrad Branthwaite also returned to the squad after his successful loan at PSV last season. 

Their season started with just one point from an opening five rounds against some favourable opponents (Fulham, Aston Villa, Wolves, Sheffield United and Arsenal), making those pre-season relegation predictions look to be justified. 

However, that form didn't accurately illustrate Everton's performances during that period. They outshot and won the xG in three of the five games. While in the two 1-0 home defeats to Fulham and Wolves, Dyche's side faced just two shots on target (the first of which in both coming beyond the 70th minute) while generating 15+ attempts of their own in each. 

Everton's misfortunes were perhaps best captured by the fact they'd underperformed against their xG by a remarkable 6.23 (understat) after the first five gameweeks. 

A mixture of bad luck and poor finishing looked to have been halting Everton's progression, yet, with performances clearly on an upward trajectory, it felt inevitable that we'd seen a change in fortunes for Dyche's men and in the last few weeks that's proven to be the case. 

Helped by the return of talisman Dominic Calvert-Lewin, in round six they secured an impressive 3-1 win at Brentford, simultaneously becoming the first side to put three past the Bees on their own turf in the Premier League since Arsenal 12 months earlier. 

They then went to Aston Villa four days later in the Carabao Cup and ended a run of ten successive home wins for Unai Emery’s side with a 2-1 success. 

A smash-and-grab 2-1 home defeat to Luton Town followed, which knocked the wind out of Everton's sails, but an objective look at the stats highlights how much the Hatters rode their luck in that contest.

Everton bounced back emphatically this past weekend against Bournemouth, scoring three unanswered goals which contributed to 25 attempts in total, a league-high for the team so far.

They also registered an xG of over two for the fourth time this season, having achieved that feat just twice across the entirety of the last campaign. The display even resulted in five Everton players making Flashscore's Team Of The Week in the UK! 

We now enter the international break with Everton boasting the second-highest xG in the Premier League. They've also generated the second-highest number of goal attempts in the division, too. 

Defensively, they rank a respectable sixth in terms of xG-against and shots faced. 

Up next for Everton is a tough trip to rivals Liverpool. Followed by West Ham away and Brighton at home. These are games that will truly test the progression of Dyche's team. 

No points from them matches would make the league table rather grim viewing for Toffees' fans come mid-November, and enthusiasm could well begin to drain. 

However, purely based on what we've seen so far, there are positive signs to suggest this Everton team can avoid the relegation scraps of previous years and they might even go on to surprise a few people this year.