David Moyes said he had seen positive signs from his Everton players but remains of the belief that the group needs strengthening
Everton’s players have made a positive first impression on David Moyes but he is under no illusion the squad needs support. The Blues boss has now had a week at Finch Farm and the narrow defeat to Aston Villa to assess what he has to work with.
While he believes there is potential within the group to push up the table, he is not willing to leave anything to chance and is spending significant time focusing on what can be done in the final fortnight of the transfer window.
Asked what he had learned from the first week of his Everton return, Moyes said of his playing squad: “I think they are a fully committed group of lads. I think that they’ve got an awful lot of good, good traits to them, which is a good sign as well. I think what we need to do is to have some extra quality in areas, and that means having to find some extra quality out of them. That could just be confidence, we need to get that confidence back into them – that will play a good part in it.”
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That is most important going forward. The Blues are the second lowest goalscorers in the Premier League and have failed to score in nine of their past 11 league games.
One of the biggest issues in the final days of Sean Dyche’s reign was creativity, with Everton not managing a shot on target until the 81st minute against Nottingham Forest in the final game of 2024 and then not chalking up any at Bournemouth in the first game of 2025. The Blues lost both.
While Everton fell to defeat in Moyes’ first game back, against Villa on Wednesday night, there is a feeling the game represented progress from an attacking sense. Against a club in the Champions League this season, the Blues had three shots on target and Dominic Calvert-Lewin fired over a glorious chance for a late equaliser.
Moyes is keen to be patient with his lead centre-forward, who has not scored since September. Acknowledging chances have been at a premium for a player who has been isolated for much of the campaign, he was pleased the 27-year-old was at least in the right position to meet that opportunity.
With Armando Broja and Youssef Chermiti both injured, Calvert-Lewin’s only challenge comes from Beto, who has just one league goal this season. Moyes believes his struggling strikers deserve support from elsewhere in the team, but in the transfer market too.
He said ahead of the visit of Tottenham Hotspur to Goodison Park on Sunday: ”What I am also alluding to is that we could probably do with getting a couple of players with different qualities to help them.”
One current target is Lyon winger Ernest Nuamah, with talks between the clubs ongoing over a possible transfer. Everton did business with the French club in the summer, signing centre-back Jake O’Brien on a permanent deal and midfielder Orel Mangala on loan – both moves at a time when Lyon owner John Textor was leading a public pursuit of the Blues that ultimately failed.
Work to assess other options is ongoing, with Moyes spending much of his available spare time considering his transfer strategy – something that fed into his suggestion after the Villa match that his first week back had been exhausting. He stressed this was meant in a positive fashion, though, and once again emphasised his delight at being given a second opportunity on Merseyside.
He said: “I was trying to give you my honest opinion. It’s been mad. Certainly, we’ve been in all the time. Trying to get the players ready, in and out the recruitment room, getting home late. It has been unbelievably busy.”
Adding that he was “buzzing” to be back in management, he said: “It is something I do, something I love. I might not have done this for any other club, this is the only one I think I would give the time up to do.”
