David Moyes reacts to his Everton side's 2-0 defeat at Premier League Arsenal on Saturday

David Moyes insists he’s hoping that he can get to a point where his Everton team can challenge the Premier League’s elite - but he admits that there is still a chasm when it comes to the options available.

With The Friedkin Group seemingly pulling the plug on the Blues’ recruitment finances at the back end of the summer transfer window, Moyes was left with a squad of just 18 outfield players, including solitary options in the striker, left-back and right-back berths. In contrast, having just gone 2-0 u on Saturday, his former player Mikel Arteta, now in charge of Arsenal, was able to make a triple switch at the midway point of the second half, introducing £170million worth of talent from the bench in the shape of Bruno Guimaraes, Kai Havertz and Riccardo Calafiori.

And Moyes said: “Well, it was a huge advantage with the squad they’ve got, and the players have got, undoubtedly, but they’ve earned it because of what they’ve done. They’ve built a squad up and they’ve strengthened year on year.

“They’ve got a really powerful team. But you hope that on the day, you can sometimes get a result out of it.

“We came here last year and played well. I thought we played better last year than we did today.

“But maybe going to goal down early, we just found it quite difficult to get a foothold in the game really.”

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The Glaswegian also acknowledged it was a challenge to face up to the way the Premier League champions are able to interchange their players’ positions.

He said: “The rotation in midfield were really difficult for us. We knew about it, and obviously with the inverted full-backs coming in, whether they were getting low in a number six position or looking at number 10, so we had to deal with that.

“But again, it wasn’t as if we came into it blind, we knew. But I didn’t think we did a particularly good job of it in the first half, I thought we did a better job off it in the second half for periods.

“Sometimes what that means is you have to open up a little bit more and when you open up a little bit more, then they’ve got players at the top end of the pitch that can hurt you.”

Moyes, whose side have now suffered back-to-back defeats after an unbeaten start to the season, added: “I thought we had a better grasp of the game last year than we had today. I thought we had periods today, but I thought last year we were probably coming to this game in a European place and thinking that we wanted to really challenge.

“I want us to try and challenge the top teams. I think we’ve done it, we had over good games against Manchester City last year and Liverpool and Arsenal.

“So it’s not as if we’re getting walked over. But I’d like to make the games a bit a bit closer and us maybe being the team who could come out and top, 1-0 or 2-0, something like that instead of getting done.”

Everton host Newcastle United in the Carabao Cup fourth round on Thursday.