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Moyes wants early summer business

...but will it be loans and sell-to-buy once more?

David Moyes has sent a message to Everton's Board of Directors that he wants to hit the ground running when the summer transfer window opens.

The manager lost Mikel Arteta to Arsenal once the current season was already underway and wasn't able to spend any money on incoming players, relying instead on the loan market. Royston Drenthe and Denis Stracqualursi were picked up on August's transfer deadline day but it wasn't until Moyes added Darron Gibson, Steven Pienaar and Nikica Jelavic in January that the Blues' season finally took off.

The Scot, who celebrated 10 years in charge at Goodison last month, is keen to add players to his squad but wants to avoid a repeat of that undesirable scenario next season.

?If you can add a couple of players every year it enhances your squad," he says, "it keeps you moving in the right direction and the idea would be to do something similar.

?And that would be the way to keep going forward.

?Ideally you do two or three players in the summer if you can and move a few people out. It's always better if you can do it in the summer.

?If you can do your recruitment early it makes a big difference to your group and gives them a chance to bed in and you get better results sooner.?

It's not clear, though, whether Moyes will have any transfer funds made available to him this summer or whether he will have to either sell in order to buy or scour the loan and Bosman market once more.

With so few senior players compared to most Premier League clubs, it's hard to see how he can add strength in depth in his squad if he has to offload his more saleable assets first.

Certainly his fringe or aging players will not provide a source of funds for significant squad improvement and with Drenthe almost certainly heading out the door when his loan period ends, the team will be short on flair and pace on the flanks from the outset.

Moyes has hinted that he is keen to bring Steven Pienaar back on a permanent basis but with Marouane Fellaini having already stated his desire to see the squad strengthened significantly this summer, there is pressure on the Board to find money from somewhere to make that happen, something they have been unable or unwilling to do over the past two or three years.

Moyes's January business was executed within the confines of a very tight budget, with Gibson secured for an initial outlay of just £250,000 and Jelavic's fee offset by the sale of Diniyar Bilyaletdinov to Lokomotiv Moscow.

Quotes or other material sourced from Liverpool Daily Post

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