Good signs on the pitch must not be used by Everton chiefs to paper over cracks

The team has started the season well. There were positives to take from Sunday’s game - and yes, some of those highlights vindicate elements of the transfer strategy from the early stages of the summer - Tyrique George and Hayden Hackney were both excellent.

But what happened at the end, even with the welcome arrivals of Jack Grealish and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, threatens to undermine the work of David Moyes and everything it was hoped this club was building towards before 10 days of chaos.

That danger still exists and will do until, at the very earliest, January. Moyes currently has 17 senior outfield players available to him and it is only Christian Norgaard who is missing.

Remaining competitive with such a small squad is a mammoth task. It is not impossible, but it will require a lot of luck. Moyes, and supporters, have every right to feel they should no longer need hopes and prayers just to have a chance of Everton being fine.

There is a decent core to the Blues side and the nucleus of a really exciting team that could develop together to become a force in the next 12-18 months. What this summer has done is deprived them of the experience and depth required to reduce the pressure on them to perform immediately.

George, Hackney, Harrison Armstrong, Thierno Barry and Tyler Dibling showed promise through the summer and some have continued that into the campaign. But Everton will NEED several of them to have breakout seasons if they are to have a chance of being anything other than mediocre. On top of that, the pressure is greater on the likes of Grealish, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, James Garner and Jordan Pickford to replicate the high standards they set last year. There is little, if any, room for drop-off.

The squad is so thin that it becomes compromised if any one of eight players is injured or suspended. If Vitalii Mykolenko is unavailable, for instance, Jarrad Branthwaite would likely get pulled out to the left. If Maitland-Niles is absent then it is back to a makeshift right-back and while senior club figures believe Merlin Rohl has genuine potential to develop into a good right-back, his rawness in that slot has been exposed by Eddie Nketiah and Marcus Rashford already this season. Branthwaite was a colussus against Man Utd but if he were to go down this season - and he has in the last two - then that would be a catastrophe.

As for the frontline, in George, Barry and Brennan Johnson, Everton had all of their striker options on the pitch from the start on Sunday. Most clubs have a finishing cast for the final 30 minutes, Everton will have to compromise their starting line-up if they want to avoid flogging at least one of those options for the full 90 minutes.

Every time a player went to ground on Sunday it became a cause for real concern. The big question is what position Everton will find themselves in when they do have a selection crisis - because it would take some extraordinary fortune to not have one at all. It could be that the group stays healthy until December and can maintain form and pick up enough points for there to be no real fear when trouble bites. But if it was to happen early, Everton could quickly get left behind.

When David Moyes asked me ahead of the Carabao Cup tie with Preston whether survival or a cup run was more important, my answer - correctly - was survival. I have spent a lot of time since then believing I should have responded by asking him why this club could not pursue both. But, a fortnight later, Moyes has been left with a squad that may force him to prioritise one of the league and Carabao Cup in the coming months.

That is, at least, until January and the potential ability to spend some of the near-£100m raised on deadline day to increase Moyes’ options. Whether he will have that money to spend is an open question after the launch of the search by owners the Fredkin Group to find outside investment and, potentially, a sale of the club.

Clarity on what commitment, interest and ambition TFG have for a club their owner, Dan Friedkin, has not visited, and whose manager he has not spoken with, would be welcome.

While that wait continues, the recruitment team at Everton need to have already started their planning for January. That may mean frank discussions over targets but a repeat of the right-back fiasco, when wildly different profiles were targeted at different stages of the window, cannot be allowed to happen. If there is disagreement between the team and Moyes then they need to thrash it out now so they can hopefully compromise and move on to drawing up agreed targets for January so the club can aim to move quickly. There are still some at the club who believe a push for Europe is possible and if they are genuine in pursuing that ambition, they will need fortune over injuries, Moyes to work some magic, and then to be proactive in January.

Until then, everything Moyes and his players achieve - and hopefully that will be a lot - will be in spite of the people above them, not because of them.

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