David Moyes has challenged Louis Saha to provide an immediate return on his new Everton contract this evening by causing a greater distraction to John Terry than the Goodison Park crowd.
The Chelsea captain is scheduled to make his first appearance outside Stamford Bridge since being stripped of the England captaincy, and a hostile reception is guaranteed. Moyes, however, believes Everton's prospects of recovering from their derby defeat against Liverpool rests more with the form of Saha, who has agreed a new two-year deal with the club but has scored only once in his last eight games, than the atmosphere at Goodison.
"John Terry is the captain of Chelsea and I'm sure he's not out there playing for them thinking that he's the captain of England, or about the England captaincy. He will not be thinking of England when he is playing for Chelsea, I am sure of that," said the Everton manager. "But if we can get our centre-forwards right I think we can cause Chelsea problems.
"I'm looking for Louis to contribute more goals. He has great talent and ability. He does thrive on a lot of confidence and needs that confidence and self-belief. We've shown a lot of confidence in him in keeping him here and we want him to get the goals to go with it. Louis is a player who has that level of quality that people are looking for in a striker. But I would argue that in the last few games we have missed quality in the final third that only money can purchase."
Everton will be without the suspended Steven Pienaar against Chelsea and Marouane Fellaini, who is yet to discover the extent of the ankle injury suffered as a result of Sotirios Kyrgiakos's two-footed tackle at Anfield. Attempts to send the influential midfielder to visit a specialist yesterday were postponed when the train he was due to take to London was cancelled.
Moyes explained: "His ankle was swollen terribly by the time we got back to Finch Farm on Saturday. It was the size of an elephant's ankle and it shocked me how bad it looked. I couldn't tell you if he'll be out for three days or much longer, it would be wrong to speculate at this stage, but we opted for the train to London because we didn't want to sit him in a car for the journey."
