Everton’s injury crisis shows no immediate signs of easing, with Phil Jagielka joining Mikel Arteta in being sidelined until the New Year and no end in sight to Victor Anichebe’s absence.

Although Lucas Neill and John Heitinga are available after being ineligible on Thursday, Louis Saha is a doubt for tomorrow’s visit to West Ham United with a calf problem.

Diniyar Bilyaletdinov will also be missing as he begins a three-match suspension following his sending-off against Aston Villa last weekend.

Moyes accepts there is an irony that, having constructed the strongest squad during his time at Goodison, injuries have decimated his available resources to perhaps their weakest point in those seven-and-a-half years.

"We started to get a group together where you can see the consistency in there," he says. "I don’t think we are a yo-yo club like we were five or six years ago. If we don’t finish in the right position this season, there’ll be mitigating circumstances.

"We’ve known we had injuries and would have people who were out for a while. What we didn’t foresee was missing several others on top of that during the season."

Those absences have forced Moyes into some creative selection decisions, and the manager lamented not able to pit a full-strength team against Benfica.

"Games like the one against Benfica are a showcase for Everton and I’m a little bit disappointed I couldn’t showcase better what we are trying to do here," he says.

"I hoped the Benfica game wouldn’t be a game too far, the players were certainly motivated and ready for the game so in a way I was looking forward to it. But in the end we didn’t quite have enough quality in several areas to get the result.

"If we couldn’t track them, or couldn’t keep the ball or were out of position, if we were not clever in attack then they sort of made things look quite simple."

For Moyes and Everton, though, this is nothing new. It was exactly 12 months ago tomorrow that the Goodison outfit, still suffering the lingering after-effects of a traumatic summer, helped further kickstart their season with three goals in the last seven minutes to win 3-1 at Upton Park.

And he says of the current campaign: "In some periods we have been playing, the players have shown some good stuff so I couldn’t turn round and say confidence is not fragile but in the same breathe there was bits of it that were okay.

"I hope what we have done in the past here that we’ll do it again and come through it. We’ve had periods like this before, every year at Everton and can’t remember a season where there’s not been a time when we’ve felt like we’re not on top of it.

"We’ll do what we’ve done in the past seasons and get our head down and get on with it."