Moyes Explores Free-Agent Market After Everton's Transfer Deadline Chaos

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

The club lost Iliman Ndiaye, Beto, Tim Iroegbunam, Adam Aznou and Nathan Patterson late in the window, stripping depth from a group already walking a tightrope with injuries and form. Both full-back positions are exposed. Centre-forward is even worse: just one senior option is available.

So Everton now look where they can. Outside the window.

Speaking before Sunday’s trip to Manchester United, Moyes made it clear the club are already working the phones.

“We are looking at the free agents market,” he said. “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 Premier League window may have slammed shut, but there is still a small crack of opportunity. Players without a club can sign at any time, though they must be registered by a separate deadline understood to fall roughly a week after the window closes. It’s a narrow corridor, but it’s all Everton have left.

The need is obvious. With only one senior full-back on each side and a lone recognised centre-forward, any injury or suspension could force square pegs into round holes. Moyes knows that kind of improvisation might survive a week. It will not survive a season.

The manager did not hide his frustration at how the window finished, especially with the collapse of Folarin Balogun’s proposed deadline-day move. Everton had lined up the striker as a headline signing. The deal never made it over the line.

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

The Balogun saga could easily have turned into a blame game. Moyes refused to let it.

“It wasn’t anybody’s fault,” he said of the failed deal. “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.”

No conspiracy. No late hijack. Just a medical issue and a deal that died on the table.

So Everton pivot. The recruitment team now sifts through the list of unattached players, looking for experience, fitness and, above all, reliability in positions where the squad is dangerously thin.

Moyes, for his part, is trying to sell a different message inside Finch Farm. He wants his players to believe they are still building towards something, not patching over cracks with short-term fixes. The reality is harsher: he needs bodies, and he needs them quickly.

Manchester United away is hardly the ideal fixture to walk into with a stripped-back squad and a manager talking openly about gaps. But this is where Everton are: caught between ambition and improvisation, hoping that one or two smart free-agent signings can steady a season that has barely started.

The window is shut. The work, for Moyes, is only just beginning.