Moyes Searches Free Agents as Everton Faces Transfer Setbacks

David Moyes has admitted Everton are scouring the free-agent market after a bruising end to the transfer window left his squad short in key areas.

Speaking before Sunday’s trip to Manchester United, the Everton manager cut a frustrated but defiant figure as he assessed a deadline period that saw Iliman Ndiaye, Beto, Tim Iroegbunam, Adam Aznou and Nathan Patterson all depart late in the window.

Those exits have stripped the squad back to the bone. Both full-back positions are down to a single senior option. Centre-forward is in the same precarious state. For a side Moyes insists must “be at the top end and challenge”, the margin for injury or suspension is now alarmingly thin.

So Everton will gamble on the only market still open to them.

“We are looking at the free agents market,” Moyes confirmed. “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.”

Free agents can still be signed despite the window closing, but any new arrival must be registered by a secondary cut-off, believed to be roughly a week after deadline day. That gives Everton precious little time to find experience, fitness and value in a pool of players who have gone all summer without a club.

The urgency is clear. The mood, understandably, is mixed.

Moyes did not hide his irritation at how the window ended, even if he refused to point fingers inside Finch Farm or beyond it.

“Disappointed we didn’t do more business and disappointed things didn’t go our way in the end,” he said. “Sometimes in football you have to live with disappointment and we will move on.”

Nothing summed up that frustration quite like the collapse of Folarin Balogun’s proposed deadline-day move. The striker had been lined up as a significant attacking addition, only for the deal to fall apart at the final stage.

Moyes, though, was adamant there was no drama behind the scenes, no late wrangle over money or terms.

“It wasn’t anybody’s fault,” he insisted. “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.”

So Everton move on, bruised but not beaten, into a season that will now be shaped partly by who is still out there, unattached, waiting for a call.