Moyes confident financially-fit Toffees ready to show on-field improvement

DAVID MOYES wants the playing performance of his Everton side to match the financial turnaround of the once ailing club.

The Goodison Park boss believes he is at last witnessing a change in the side's playing fortunes this season at the same time as a club who were in a dire cash crisis a year ago amid fears of administration look to have seen their problems bottom out.

The sales of Wayne Rooney and Thomas Gravesen have certainly helped but the dramatic change in the commercial side of the club is obvious in soon-to-be-announced financial figures for the past 12 months.

They show that the club is finally trading in the black, and their long-standing managed overdraft is cut from £47million to £28m (€70m to €41m). Shareholders will be told at their November 24 annual general meeting that last year's £17m overall deficit is now a £100,000 profit.

Prize money, TV cash and a massive rise in off-field sales has seen the club report a substantial rise in turnover of 34%, up from £44.7m last year to a record high of £60m.

The club feel they have finally turned the corner and Moyes who will have his own position re-endorsed at the AGM said: "The financial results have been good, there's a general upturn all around the place. But that's nothing different to what I have been saying about Everton for some while.

"For two or three years, Everton have been making progress and if you look at the big picture, at what has been happening here for a few years now, it is definitely a club going in the right direction.

"If you look at the small picture, which many do, in the last month or so things haven't been as good on the field. But you have to be a lot more broadminded to see what is actually happening here on lots of fronts."

Last season's fourth-place finish and the spin-offs from that have helped Everton turn the financial corner but their start to the current campaign, out of both European competitions and in the relegation battle, has tarnished that upward trend.

However, Moyes is looking to maintain recent respectable form, which has seen them draw with Chelsea and beat Birmingham to climb off the foot of the table, at home to Middlesbrough tomorrow.