DAVID MOYES has claimed he would have guided Everton to the Premier League title – if he had been able to sign a world-class centre-forward during his final few years at Goodison Park.

Moyes will be reunited with his former employers when Everton visit the Stadium of Light tonight, having led the Merseyside club to three successive top-seven finishes in his final three seasons at the club.

In the last of those seasons, Marouane Fellaini was Everton’s leading scorer with 11 goals, and while Romelu Lukaku arrived on loan the following summer, Moyes was never able to sign a top-class striker to lead the line.

That remains a source of frustration, and while the current Sunderland boss is proud of his achievements during his 11-year spell at Goodison, he continues to wonder about what might have been.

“We had a great team at Everton, but we were missing a centre-forward,” said Moyes. “I might be exaggerating, but I think with that we would have been close to winning the Premier League, we were that good. But we couldn’t get the finances to buy a centre-forward in the last couple of years of my time.

“In the last two years, we finished above Liverpool in the league. You look at their spending over the years and that was a big thing, but we just couldn’t break the top four because we didn’t have the finances to buy a centre-forward.

“I have to be fair to Bill Kenwright (the chairman) – he was always trying to give me it and every penny he had, he gave me. I don’t have any complaints.”

Moyes left Everton in the summer of 2013 to join Manchester United, but his spell at Old Trafford was hardly a happy one and he was dismissed before the end of his first season in charge.

He won more than 200 games as Everton boss, and might well still have been in situ at Goodison Park had Manchester United not come calling with an offer he did not feel he could refuse.

“It was a big decision when I was coming to the end of my contract,” he said. “I wanted a bit of time to make my decision because I didn’t want to overstay my welcome.

“I probably would have stayed at Everton. I had offers that year to join some big clubs in England and Europe, but I wouldn’t have taken those jobs.

“It was only as everyone knows in the last three weeks (of the season) when the Man United thing came up. The time was right, and I hadn’t broken a contract at Everton. I’d done my time and I felt it was right for the club to move on.”

Sunderland (probable, 4-2-3-1): Pickford; Manquillo, Kone, Djilobodji, van Aanholt; Kirchhoff, Pienaar; Januzaj, Rodwell, Gooch; Defoe.