Toffees still on target for Champions League: Weir

DAVID WEIR believes talk of Everton’s demise will only spur them on to maintain a Champions League challenge.

The 2-0 defeat at Charlton on Tuesday was their first since losing to Chelsea on November 6. It did, though, result in Everton being overtaken by Manchester United on goal difference, and allowed Middlesbrough to close the gap to five points.

Boss David Moyes preferred to concentrate on the positives last night, with the club going into 2005 in much better shape than anyone outside Goodison Park would have predicted.

And it was a sentiment echoed by one of his central defenders as they prepare for the New Year’s Day clash with Tottenham.

“I’m sure people are starting to write us off now and saying ‘the bubble’s burst - but we have to prove them wrong,” he said.

“We’ve felt that we’ve put in a lot of effort and we thought we deserved something at The Valley. It was a disappointing end to a tight game. There didn’t look as if there would be a lot in it. They sneaked a goal at a bad time for us, when it looked as though it was going to be a goalless draw. But Tottenham is the next game and that will be a really difficult game,” he said.

Moyes heads to White Hart Lane without the services of first-choice goalkeeper Nigel Martyn, who will miss around a month with a calf strain picked up at The Valley.

Richard Wright came on just before half-time and the former Arsenal stopper looks set for a warm welcome from the Spurs faithful.

Martyn will undergo a scan to determine the full extent of the problem, and Everton’s head physio, Mick Rathbone, said: “Nigel has strained his calf muscle and it looks relatively serious. It may mean him missing maybe several weeks.”

Steve Watson (stomach muscle) and Leon Osman (knee) also face fitness tests, but Duncan Ferguson will definitely miss the next three matches after he was sent off for elbowing Charlton’s Hermann Hreidarsson.

With the transfer window fast approaching, Moyes said he would be in the market for a couple of new faces to freshen up his squad for the challenges ahead.

“We will try and bring people in to add to who we have got. If we do, then hopefully they will be good characters - that is what everybody hopes,” he said.

The Everton manager, though, maintains he has every faith in the players who have served him so well this season.

“We have now played 20 games and the squad that we have got at the moment have done all right,” he said.

“We should maybe be praising them for doing so well.”