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Everton boss David Moyes has been speaking to the media before Monday's Premier League game against Leeds at Hill Dickinson Stadium (kick-off 20:00).
Here are the key lines from his news conference:
- Jack Grealish's stress foot fracture is “a big blow” and Moyes awaits information from a specialist before giving a timescale on his return.
- Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Jarrad Branthwaite and Charly Alcaraz are all back in training.
- Moyes' jokingly shouted "what kept you from getting back?" at Idrissa Gueye and Iliman Ndiaye as the Afcon champions returned to Finch Farm on Friday. He hopes that having winners around the team will help.
- A decision will be made on Harrison Armstrong close to the window deadline: "I want to get him games, I don't want him sitting on the bench. If I thought that was going to be happening all the time I'd probably send him back."
- On Dominic Calvert-Lewin: "We look forward to seeing Dom. We just weren't quite able to make things work, whether it was us to keep him or Dom to stay – one or the other. He's certainly got his fitness back and he's scoring goals."
- Moyes says that "things are moving on" with James Garner's contract, and joked that after his man-of-the-match performance against Villa, Moyes told England manager Thomas Tuchel that Garner is actually Scottish.
- He said that he has found January "really difficult" due to the combination of injuries, Afcon departures and red card suspensions. Moyes noted that they've played Wolves and Burnley at a time when they're doing well, which goes some way to explain why they didn't do better against them as expected.
- Since Everton played Leeds on the opening day of the season, Moyes is "pretty pleased" with the progress made, both in terms of stalwarts stepping up and new players making big contributions: "I'm always thinking 'we're only three or four points away from a really, really good position but you could also look at it the other way and say 'you're only three or four points away from being too close at the bottom end'."
Follow all of Friday’s Premier League news conferences and the rest of the day’s football news
