Everton Football Club News

• Nickname:Toffees
• Founded:1878
• Manager:David Moyes

• Ground:Goodison Park
• Capacity:42,440

Moyes won't rush Vaughan

26 Mar 2008 - 08:56:59

Click To Enlarge

Everton boss David Moyes has promised not to rush James Vaughan back into first-team action before the end of the season.

Despite still being only 19, Vaughan has endured a series of injuries and earlier this month had an operation to cure a cartilage problem in his left knee.

He missed the first three months of this season after dislocating his shoulder and also sustained a serious knee in September 2005 that threatened to end his career.

Moyes said: "He's quite a tough boy mentally but this hasn't been a bad knee operation. It's just been a little procedure to cure his cartilage.

"Because of his history, he's going to have a bit longer time to recover. Let's be fair, with only six weeks of the season to go, it would have been quite tight for him to get back anyway.

"But we need to make sure that we look after him correctly. I've always known that will be the case. I said a couple of years ago when he had that first injury, we needed to watch him.

"He missed a lot of his development period and that for me is the only real disappointment as he'd have helped us just now. His enthusiasm would have played a big part for us.

"We will miss him and we can't just be relying on Yak. The goals have got to come from other areas, not just the forwards."