“I try not to look for excuses. I try to make people accountable for whatever job they do.”

Leighton Baines and Joseph Yobo are likely to ease Moyes’s injury headache by returning to a defence that has shipped 10 goals in their last three games, having recovered from calf and head problems respectively.

And a late decision will be made on the fitness of Louis Saha, who was forced off at half-time at White Hart Lane with a sore calf.

Everton are aiming for a first league victory since their 1-0 triumph at Portsmouth on September 26 and have been without a triumph in any competition since beating BATE Borisov in the UEFA Cup five days later.

And while an increasingly leaky defence has attracted much of the criticism, Moyes believes the blame should also be shouldered further up the field.

“We haven’t defended as well as we’ve done in the past,” he said. “Over the years we’ve been pretty solid and hard to play against, but I also think we’ve missed a lot of chances.

“We missed a few chances against Stoke to have won the game, we had one or two against Wolves and even against Tottenham the other night.

“It is at both ends at the moment. We are getting opportunities and not taking them, and we are not defending well when we’ve had to.

“Everyone goes through spells when they are not playing well or lacking in confidence but I don’t necessarily think that is us.

“We’ve have played okay in some of the games. The first half in Benfica we played well, we played quite well at Bolton with the exception of the opening 15 minutes and, while I wouldn’t say we played well at Tottenham, we were never really out the game. We had a few opportunities.”

Phil Jagielka and Phil Neville are close to resuming non-contact training but both remain some weeks away from a first-team return.