Everton manager David Moyes offers his reaction after side went down to a cruel 2-0 defeat at Premier League leaders Arsenal
Everton's Scottish manager David Moyes gives instructions to Everton's Senegalese midfielder #27 Idrissa Gueye during the English Premier League football match between Arsenal and Everton at the Emirates Stadium in London on March 14, 2026. (Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP via Getty Images) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or 'live' services. Online in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No video emulation. Social media in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No use in betting publications, games or single club/league/player publications. /
Everton's Scottish manager David Moyes gives instructions to Everton's Senegalese midfielder #27 Idrissa Gueye during the English Premier League football match between Arsenal and Everton at the Emirates Stadium in London on March 14, 2026. (Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP via Getty Images) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or 'live' services. Online in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No video emulation. Social media in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No use in betting publications, games or single club/league/player publications. /
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David Moyes speaks to Idrissa Gueye during Everton's Premier League defeat at Arsenal(Image: Ben STANSALL / AFP via Getty Images)
David Moyes said he told his players at half-time of Saturday's 2-0 defeat at Premier League leaders that they needed to come away with a result in order to get the wider world to start making Everton ‘headliners’.
The Blues were holding their own at the Emirates when the teams went down the tunnel for the break and had come closest to breaking the deadlock with Dwight McNeil being denied by a stunning Riccardo Calafiori block and then by the inside of the post.
In the end, Everton suffered late heartbreak as the Gunners scored in the 90th and 98th minutes to take all three points. But Moyes was content with a display he believed said a lot about the growth of his players,
On his words at the break, the Blues boss explained: “I said to the players at half-time: ‘This is okay, but if we're really going to get [the press] talking about us and putting us as headliners, then we're going to have to win and we're going to have to find a way of at least coming away from here with something.’ In the end, we weren't able to do that.”
That was partly due to the stubbornness of Arsenal, whose goalkeeper David Raya made good saves from Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Beto.
Moyes said: “The block from Calafiori on Dwight McNeil is unbelievable. And it tells you a little bit about maybe the way Arsenal are. They're fighting for it, they're defending their goal with their lives.
“Probably in the end, I think, Raya made more saves than Jordan Pickford in the game. But the block from Calafiori was amazing.
“And then the one hits the post - the boy shoots and it hits the inside of the post and it comes out when you're saying: ‘This is going in’. So moments like that didn't quite go our way.
“But we came, we gave them a good go, it was just not good enough.”
On what the performance said about his players, Moyes referenced the December match between the sides at Hill Dickinson Stadium when Everton1-0 lost to a penalty - and were wrongly denied a spot kick of their own.
He said: “I thought we did brilliantly against them at the Hill Dickinson, we lost to a penalty kick… and we should have had a penalty kick, it was confirmed as well.
“I'm beginning to see the players do well in lots of the big games, but we've got to find that way of being clean when we finish or just getting the little bit that makes a difference.
“We've won quite a lot of games away from home. There was a period where I was saying: ‘Oh, this could be Everton again here, somewhere late in this game this could happen, but it just went the other way.”