David Moyes Eyes Free-Agent Market After Everton's Deadline Day Setbacks
David Moyes cut a realistic figure on Friday. Not defeated, not panicked, but very aware that Everton’s squad is light and the clock, in its own way, is still ticking.
The transfer window has shut. Everton’s work hasn’t.
With Iliman Ndiaye, Beto, Tim Iroegbunam, Adam Aznou and Nathan Patterson all leaving late in the window, gaps have opened up all over Moyes’ team. Both full-back positions are exposed, centre-forward is thin, and in each of those roles he now has just one senior option to lean on.
That is nowhere near enough for a manager who keeps talking about pushing towards the “top end” of the table.
So Everton have turned to the only market still open to them.
“We are looking at the free agents market,” Moyes said in his press conference 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 pressure finally told on deadline day, but not in the way Everton wanted. Plans that had been drawn up over weeks unravelled in a matter of hours. The most painful twist came with Folarin Balogun, whose proposed move collapsed right at the finish line.
Moyes didn’t dress it up. He didn’t point fingers either.
“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.”
Balogun’s failed switch could easily have become a saga. Moyes shut that down with a couple of blunt sentences.
“It wasn’t anybody’s fault,” he said. “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.”
The story now is what comes next.
Free agents can be signed outside the main window, and Everton intend to exploit that. There is still a registration cut-off – believed to be around a week after the window closed – so this isn’t an endless trawl. Decisions have to be sharp. Mistakes, given the lack of depth, would be costly.
The profile is obvious: a full-back for each side if possible, a centre-forward to ease the burden on the lone senior striker, and experience that can plug straight into a Premier League season already in motion.
Moyes knows he is walking a tightrope. He wants to chase the top end of the table, but he also needs a dressing room that believes in that ambition. Threadbare benches and makeshift solutions rarely inspire confidence.
So Everton go hunting in the last-chance aisle of the market, trying to turn disappointment into opportunity while preparing to face Manchester United with what they have.
If the right free agents arrive in time, this week’s frustration might be remembered as a turning point rather than a warning. If they don’t, the squad’s limits will be exposed quickly – and ruthlessly – as the season gathers pace.
