"The Chosen One" believes the lack of a top-class centre-forward cost him a chance of winning the Premier League title with Everton and now fears Sunderlandâs acute striker shortage could leave them struggling at the opposite end of the table.
With injury sidelining Fabio Borini until late December and the newly recruited free agent Victor Anichebe still some way from match fitness, Jermain Defoe is Moyesâ only fit forward for Mondayâs home game against Everton.
Although too diplomatic to criticise Ellis Short, Sunderlandâs owner, the manager is disappointed not to have a better stocked armoury to aid the task of turning his latest club into the ânew Evertonâ.
Moyes is wary about âbanging on too muchâ about the 11 years he spent at Goodison Park but comparisons between the two similarly sized clubs are irresistible and Everton remain the template for what the former Manchester United and Real Sociedad manager hopes to achieve at the Stadium of Light.
âWe had a great team at Goodison but we were missing a centre-forward. We couldnât get the finances to buy one in my last couple of years,â said Moyes, who has Sunderlandâs record ÂŁ13.5m signing Didier Ndong available for selection after the Gabon midfielder, signed from Lorient, solved visa problems. âI might be exaggerating but I think, with a top centre-forward, we would have been close to winning the league; we were that good.â
Not that he was minded to hurl any toys from prams. âI have to be fair,â he said. âBill Kenwright [Evertonâs chairman] was always trying to help me and every penny he had he gave me. I donât have any complaints. It was also a brilliant education. Itâs good to have a bit of money but itâs also sometimes good to realise youâve got to get out on to the training ground and teach players, build them into a team.â
With Sunderland accruing consistent financial losses and Short singed by several bewildering buys imported by a series of managers, the American financier hopes Moyes can perform a similar feat on Wearside.
âI see Everton as a very similar club to Sunderland,â Moyes said. âWhen I first joined it felt like avoiding relegation every season was good enough. So we started to change that. I had a budget of ÂŁ5m a year but we got there in the end. We consistently finished in the top eight.
âSunderland arenât going to be the biggest spenders, just like Everton werenât. Itâs going to be tough and take time â at least three or four transfer windows â but I want, in my own way, to do a Leicester here. It might not mean winning the Premier League but finishing in a high position.â
Most of Moyesâs predecessors â Moyes is Sunderlandâs seventh manager in five years â bought into the mantra that players do not want to live in the north-east but he disagrees, attributing the clubâs lack of pulling power to persistent instability and underachievement.
âI donât think itâs geography,â he said. âItâs that players want to play in good teams at good clubs. We had some players who I thought would sign this summer but they didnât want to come here. It wasnât just to do with money and I was a bit disappointed but we have to build a good team people want to join.
âAt the moment Sunderland has got everything except league position. If weâre winning regularly players will fancy coming here. I donât know if people believe that at the moment so I have to be the one to change it.â
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/sep/11/david-moyes-striker-title-everton-sunderland