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What are we asking for?

I think I would have appreciated a little more honesty; if Moyes had said in May that he was looking to sign two mid-range players with a couple of loan deals thrown in, I would have adjusted my expectations and wasted less work time hopelessly trawling the net for multi-million pound swoops.

But aside from this obvious frustration, can we really feel too hard done by our manager?s decision to adopt a cautious attitude towards the transfer market?

?Yes?, cry the ?Dour Davey and ?Dithering Davey? brigades, and yes, when I?m trooping away from Goodison off the back of a bore draw with Fulham some cold November afternoon, I will probably snap in frustration that I wish Moyes had gone all Keegan on us and splashed our entire budget on a flamboyant South American or indeed a flamboyant, twenty seven year old ex Tranmere player from over the water. But those sorts of gripes simply can?t be directed at Moyes.

Those sorts of gripes can only be remedied by investment, takeovers, and dare I say it, new stadiums; in short, our financial problems, both short term and long term are not Moyes? department.

We should count our blessings that our manager refuses to exacerbate our monetary problems. On the contrary, the painstaking and sometimes frustratingly slow way he has assembled the current squad, proves that he genuinely cares about Everton Football Club. He must be absolutely one hundred per cent certain that a player will improve our team before he even considers parting with the pennies — that means progress will be slow, but it WILL be steady and it HAS been tangible.

Nobody ever denies that Moyes? team is light years away from Smith?s has-beens. I know we are Everton, I know we are massive, I know only the best is good enough but this must be put into context — the context of the dire situation we were in during the ten years prior to Moyes. Christ, if you?d told me then we would qualify for the Champions League, UEFA Cup?

I know, I know, it?s the same old crap that ToffeeWeb tends to dismiss but come on. I know there have been oscillations within the five years, but if we were to improve every five years at the same rate as the previous five — would you take that? I bloody would! Certainly, that sounds better to me than splashing out nearly twenty million on Richardson, Koumas and Nugent for the sake of it, to appease people who only want short term fixes, to appease people who don?t consider whether Nugent is better than Johnson, Richardson better than Arteta, Koumas better than Cahill?

Moyes is team manager and he has created a team who, by all accounts, have a fantastic team spirit. He has created a team that can, albeit not as often as we?d like, produce inventive and entertaining football. He has created a young team full of potential and no shortage of talent. A consequence of Moyes? ultra-professional approach to team building is that there is now such a thing as a ?Moyes player? — this is a player full of energy and hunger, a player who can fit in well as a personality within the squad, a player who is below the age of 28, a player who, in short, is Phil Jagielka.

This does not necessarily mean that skill and flair are not valued commodities — Mikel Arteta, Manuel Fernandes, Rodrigo! However, as skill and flair are most often associated with sky high prices (something Moyes can?t do) and rarely allied to attributes like hunger and desire (something Moyes doesn?t want), it is less likely that these type of players will be flocking in numbers to Goodison Park.

So, if you are peeved by the fact that Wigan and Portsmouth are spending more money than us, you have a right to be, but this is not David Moyes? fault. If you are peeved by the fact that Moyes is not gambling on X, Y and Z to make some headlines and a few cheap scarf holding publicity shots, then that is your prerogative.

But as of yet, I have not been overly disappointed with the players we have supposedly ?missed out on?. With the exception of Juan Roman Riquelme (!), I have not seen a player pass us by who would guarantee to improve our starting eleven. Moyes will never take any chances and progress will be slow. But progress we WILL.

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