Moyes rues the ones that got away
It says as much for Liverpool’s campaign that despite Moyes’ men struggling against relegation after their derby defeat in November, they finished just two points adrift of their neighbours.
In the final weeks of the campaign, they dropped a winning position against West Ham, as well as drawing at Wolves and Stoke.
They are believed to have a deal lined up for Leeds forward Jermaine Beckford but Moyes feels that a proven striker is required to take Everton to the next level.
Louis Saha is fitful and Yakubu would be moved on for the right offer, leaving Moyes with a clear idea of where he needs to spend this summer.
He is likely to have to raise money himself and will only have the funds for a couple of free transfers before he starts looking at turning his own squad over.
“I think we need to make sure that good football continues. We are going to need something at the top end to get us regular goals,” Moyes said.
“But I thought we tried to do the right thing and tried to improve. We finish eighth but it shows how far we have come that we are disappointed with finishing eighth which is a good sign. The players feel like they have not achieved as they should have.”
Moyes now accepts that year on year the clubs he is expected to compete with will out-spend him significantly and he has Everton where they are with a net spend of £5 million a year.
It used to be a source of anger for the Scot but he now gives the impression of relishing the task and where he was prickly about Joleon Lescott last summer, he appears comfortable with Steven Pienaar only having a year left on his contract and pricking the interest of Manchester United and Tottenham.
If Moyes wanted to make his point about strikers, his players did the job for him yesterday because despite all their fine interplay, there never looked likely to be a clinical finish when it was desperately needed.
Saha glanced over from a fine cross from Leighton Baines to set the tone and apart from Mikel Arteta and Victor Anichebe, Everton only had hopeful efforts on goal.
After the restart, Portsmouth continued to display their characteristic belligerence and could have stolen an unlikely victory. Frederic Piquionne went around goalkeeper Tim Howard but ran too wide to shoot.
He pulled back for Jamie O’Hara, whose sliced effort was turned in by Anthony Vanden Borre only for the effort to be ruled out for offside, despite Sylvain Distin and Phil Jagielka standing on the goalline.
As Avram Grant said, it was Portsmouth’s season in a nutshell. Even Moyes admitted that his team had run out of ideas in added time, when John Heitinga squared and Diniyar Bilyaletdinov whacked into the top corner from 25 yards. Last week the Russian was awarded goal of the season for his strike in the 3-1 win over Manchester United in February but this was better.
Moyes added: “It would be arguably the goal of the season, it was a stunning goal, it was out of the blue and in the top corner and it was just a fantastic finish.”
With a week to go to the cup final, it was rough on Pompey, who saw Piquionne, Marc Wilson and Aaron Mokoena pick up knocks, while David James and Aruna Dindane were rested.
Although they did not manage it with a positive result, Grant was keen to go out with an air of defiance.
“We scored a perfectly good goal,” Grant said. “It was one of the worst decisions if I’ve ever seen, maybe the linesman was asleep. I thought we defended well and were a threat going forward, but what happened at the end reflected our season.
“It’s the last game after seven years in the Premier League for Ports-mouth and its goodbye to the Premier League but only goodbye for the moment.”
MATCH RATING: * – Terrible. No lack of effort but this never got going. Both teams played positively enough but there were about three decent chances in the whole game.
REFEREE: Peter Walton (Northants) 7 – Had to go with his linesman for the disallowed goal but did well to keep his concentration with little to do.
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