David Moyes has admitted Everton are “not ready” to start the season due to a lack of signings after suffering another defeat in the Premier League Summer Series.
Everton were beaten 2-1 by West Ham on Wednesday evening, having lost 3-0 to Bournemouth last weekend, which followed a defeat to Blackburn and a draw with Accrington Stanley before they flew to the US.
The club has spent £54m this summer on four signings, adding forward Charly Alcaraz from Flamengo, Villarreal striker Theirno Barry, Bournemouth goalkeeper Mark Travers and Bayern Munich youngster Adam Aznou, who Moyes says is “maybe not quite ready yet”.
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Highlights from the Premier League Summer Series match between West Ham and Everton
At an event in New York last Friday, Moyes said he needed “nine or 10” new signings. When asked to clarify his comments following their defeat to Bournemouth, he said they still need “maybe five or six players” in light of the additions they have made.
“I’ve never had one of these times,” he added. “In the past, I have had to sign a lot of players, but I’ve never had to do so many in one window.”
Everton released five senior players, including striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin and midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure, after their contracts expired this summer.
Moyes, speaking before their defeat to West Ham, admitted the club is struggling to get signings over the line.
“We’ve got huge priorities as far as where we would like to try and buy the players if we could do,” said Moyes. “But also, we’ve got a numbers situation as well, we’re short in numbers, so there’s a bit of both. We’re trying to get the pieces we really want first, and that’s what we’ve been fighting to do. So hopefully we can, hopefully things will fall into place.
“But we’re just beginning to think, my goodness, we’re just not getting enough over the line. Because we are actively working to try [and] it’s not as if we’re a club who are saying [that] we’re waiting to sell a player before we can bring one in. But it’s not really the situation. We’ve got money to spend, and we’ll have to try and spend it wisely.
“We’re desperate to get things moving on. We know that time’s running out. We’ve probably had since the last game of the season, and I don’t know what, five weeks, six weeks, certainly, probably more than that. So we’ve got to start getting moving on, because it won’t be long until [it] starts to become a bit close to the end of the window.”
The defeat to West Ham on Wednesday only reinforced Everton’s need to bring in more players.
“We’re not ready to perform well enough in this tournament. We’re not ready to start the Premier League season,” said Moyes, whose side face Manchester United on Sunday, live on Sky Sports.
“I’m not overly concerned [by the results] because I don’t have the players which I need and what I want. And obviously, we’re up against it right from the start. We knew before we came [to the US] we were going to be really up against it. So, it was never going to be us coming here and winning [games].
“I think our attacking play at the moment has been really poor. I think we haven’t created enough chances.
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Highlights from the Premier League Summer Series fixture between Everton and Bournemouth
“I think the way we’re playing in that area of the pitch at the moment has been really below par. But we’ve made individual mistakes which has shown us up for that as well.
“It stood out tonight, some goalkeeping mistakes. At the weekend, we made a couple of mistakes against Bournemouth.”
Travers, who was bought from Bournemouth for £4m, made a significant error for West Ham’s equaliser.
“He didn’t perform well tonight. He knows that. We know that,” said Moyes.
Injuries haven’t helped either, with starting centre-backs Jarrod Branthwaite and James Tarkowski both unavailable against Bournemouth, but the latter did return against West Ham.
“It’s why you always attempt to get your players in early if you can because you’d rather have that,” said Moyes. “There’s a bigger turnover of players now at clubs. They used to say, ‘Hey, let’s sign maybe three or maybe four players tops every season.’
“But because of the way the bigger squads and maybe boys who are not getting a game, they want to go, you find that there’s a bigger revolving door of players. So a lot of clubs will be signing quite big numbers, which they are now, more than what was done in the past, if you look at it.
“We wanted to have the players in a lot sooner, especially coming here [to the US], I knew we were going to be incredibly short.”
Everton visit Leeds in their first game of the new season in the Monday Night Football game live on Sky Sports on Monday August 18 before playing their first game at their new ground against Brighton six days later.
In
Charly Alcaraz – Flamengo, £12.6m
Thierno Barry – Villarreal, £27m
Mark Travers – Bournemouth, £4m
Adam Aznou – Bayern Munich, £10.4m
Out
Abdoulaye Doucoure – released
Ashley Young – Ipswich, free
Asmir Begovic – Leicester, free
Joao Virginia – released
Neal Maupay – released
Mason Holgate – released
Sky Sports to show 215 live PL games from next season
From next season, Sky Sports’ Premier League coverage will increase from 128 matches to at least 215 games exclusively live.
And 80 per cent of all televised Premier League games next season are on Sky Sports.
