The Toffees host West Brom at Goodison Park on Wednesday night in the Barclays Premier League before struggling Aston Villa visit on Saturday. Whether or not Leroy Fer will be an Everton player when Villa come to town remains to be seen, after the midfielder's £8.6million deal from FC Twente hit a snag as he underwent his medical yesterday. It is understood during those assessments medical staff identified an issue which raised enough concerns for Everton to go back to Twente in an attempt to renegotiate the deal, something the Dutch club are reluctant to do. In the meantime, Everton continue to hang on to the coattails of the top four and Moyes was disappointed that they only took two points from their last two games against Swansea and Southampton, both of which were goalless draws.
"We've worked hard to be in a strong position in the Premier League," Moyes said.
"We're slightly disappointed that we drew the last two games but it hasn't got us in any worse position.
"We've now got a couple of home games and we have to try to take advantage of it. But West Brom are a tough nut to crack. They're one of the only teams who have beaten us this season and I think Steve Clarke's done a really good job.
"If anybody's turning up thinking this is a foregone conclusion, they're quite a bit off the mark I think.
"We just have to keep ploughing on and picking up the points. January's a long hard month, which it's proved to be. Once we come out of this month we can maybe look to see where we've got to go." Successive goalless draws were a surprise given Everton had scored and conceded in 18 consecutive games prior to the Swansea match. Moyes added:
"You have to try to pick up clean sheets and try to get results from them. As it is, our clean sheets have earned us draws, so that's not great. If you get a clean sheet, you hope that you win 1-0 or 2-0 and get the three points.
"I think our defensive record is still relatively high up in Premier League terms, but you're always trying to improve and I think at the moment we are defensively getting a little bit better. "I'm now very keen to make sure we start scoring some goals at the other end and continue our high percentage of chances that we had in the first half of the season."
Source: team_talk
