Moyes Explores Free Market Solutions for Everton's Late Squad Exits
David Moyes cut a realistic figure on Friday, a manager who knows the window has closed on his plans but not yet on his options.
Everton’s summer ended with the kind of late turbulence that leaves a squad looking thin and a manager looking for solutions. Iliman Ndiaye, Beto, Tim Iroegbunam, Adam Aznou and Nathan Patterson all departed late in the window, stripping depth from a group that was already short in key areas.
Now Moyes is staring at a familiar Premier League puzzle: patch up the gaps without the safety net of a transfer market.
“We are looking at the free agents market,” he said, ahead of Sunday’s meeting with Manchester United. “I am trying to get a team that is going to be at the top end and challenge. I want the players to believe that we are moving forward – for me, that is really important.”
The needs are obvious. Both full-back positions are exposed, with just one senior option on each flank. Centre-forward is just as fragile, a role where one injury or suspension could leave Everton alarmingly short. For a club trying to climb away from survival scraps and into something more ambitious, that is a dangerous way to go into the autumn.
The calendar offers a small lifeline. Players without a club at the close of the transfer window can still be signed, and Everton intend to use that loophole. Any new arrivals, though, must be registered before a secondary cut-off date, believed to be roughly a week after the window shut. The clock is still ticking, just more quietly.
Moyes did not hide his frustration at how the window ended, but he refused to turn it into a blame game.
“Disappointed we didn’t do more business and disappointed things didn’t go our way in the end,” he admitted. “Sometimes in football you have to live with disappointment and we will move on.”
The most glaring frustration came on deadline day, when a move for Folarin Balogun collapsed at the final hurdle. For a side crying out for another centre-forward, it was a brutal twist. Moyes, though, was adamant there was no drama behind the scenes.
“It wasn’t anybody’s fault,” he said of the failed Balogun deal. “It happens in football a lot. The player had a problem in his medical and that was simply it. There’s no other story behind it.”
No conspiracy, no late hijack, just a medical issue and a door slammed shut.
So Everton pivot. The recruitment team scour the free-agent list, weighing up fitness, experience and risk against the urgency of the situation. This is not the ideal way to build a squad that “is going to be at the top end and challenge”, as Moyes put it, but it is the only route left.
The manager’s task now is to convince his players that the club is still moving forward while he waits for reinforcements that cost no fee but carry plenty of jeopardy. With Manchester United looming and the season’s demands already tightening, Everton cannot afford to get these late calls wrong.
