David Moyes has backed Thierno Barry’s potential to succeed in the Premier League. The French striker has had a difficult start to life at Everton, scoring just three goals since signing from Villarreal for £27m this summer.
Barry had to wait until the first week of December to find the back of the net for the first time in a royal blue shirt, scoring in the side’s 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest at Hill Dickinson Stadium.
He scored in the return fixture against Sean Dyche’s side while also grabbing a late goal in the 4-2 loss to Brentford at home.
The French U21 international was one of the first signings of a busy summer rebuild for the Blues. While Barry was first identified as a target by former director of football Kevin Thelwell, Moyes confirmed that the move was executed by the new recruitment team led by chief executive Angus Kinnear.
“It came from us. I think we paid £27m, and to be fair, that is not a lot of money for a centre forward. We had to go early on a young centre forward if we were going to get one,” said Moyes.
“We didn’t have £50m-£60m to buy a centre forward and we probably couldn’t have got one at that price because those ones probably wouldn’t have come to the club with us having no European football.
“We had to go early and we went for Thierno, who had scored 14 or 15 goals in his first year in La Liga. If we had waited until the second year and he had done the same, then we probably would have found he wouldn’t have come to us or we couldn’t have got him at the cost he would have been.
“We need him to step up, but he’s in his first year in the Premier League from overseas, so there is a bit of room to give him a wee bit of manoeuvre. Hopefully, it will improve.”
Beto’s struggles in front of goal have exacerbated the lack of goal threat from Barry. The Guinea-Bissau international, who took the Everton number 9 shirt over the summer, scored eight goals in the league last season, but has only scored thrice in all competitions so far this campaign.
Barry has shown signs of improvement and his link-up play, aerial duels, and first touch are better than Beto’s. However, there’s plenty of room to grow physically and Barry also needs to develop a clinical edge inside the box.
He’s certainly raw in many regards and Moyes accepts that Everton wanted to get a promising striker who would improve into the finished article with time.
“We brought him here thinking that because he’s got a physicality, he’s good in the air, he can run plenty, he helps us off the ball and his goals last year certainly looked good enough to say that he’s going to continue that,” he added.
“And being young, a French U21s international who was involved in their Euros last summer, there are a lot of good things about him in terms of potential.
“In this position as a manager, sometimes these are the decisions you have to take. Some of them are a little bit of a gamble and while we’ve not got the big funds, we are probably in a position where that’s what we have to do. We are having to take a bit of a risk with quite a few players.”
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Posted
17/01/2026 at
18:04:14
Lord have Mercy… we took a shot in the dark at someone half-shit.
Why not just play Sherif or keep Ellis Simms or Tom Cannon if we are just going to take £30M risks from France???
Posted
17/01/2026 at
18:41:02
Sounds like a load of bullshit, Davie boy!
How long do you have to wait to see this ”potential”???
You had many already established strikers during your first term and many flopped.
Other teams bring in no-names and they start scoring for fun, like Brentford’s Thiago.
Sadly, there are only a couple of teams who have scored less than Everton this season so far — and our goal drought will likely continue tomorrow at Villa Park.
Posted
17/01/2026 at
19:09:04
Or we could fork out £150M for a pouting, sulking prima donna and he breaks his leg.
Some transfers work, others don’t. Yes, we took a punt on Barry. We also took a punt on Garner, Branthwaite and a winger who’d failed at Sheffield United.
The “glass half-empty” brigade really piss me off.
Posted
17/01/2026 at
19:35:32
Just reading an article about £64M Viktor Gyokeres, late of Coventry City and once touted on this site as someone we should buy… but he decided to go to Portugal.
Signed in the summer by Arsenal and so far 19 matches and 1 goal from open play in the last 15 with a team top of the table. You would have thought he would have had a hatful by now.
Who was the idiot who signed Barry? We should have signed Gyokeres a few years ago, as so many on here clamoured for us to do.
Posted
17/01/2026 at
19:44:23
Garner, Branthwaite and Ndiaye were signed for roles we already had filled, they came to compete for places and earn a spot!
Barry was bought to lead the fucking line in the Premier League, 1 of only 20 spots available in the world. (Assuming teams play 1 up top).
We signed him to fill a massive void, so one would assume we did due diligence? How wrong we were…
Posted
18/01/2026 at
04:45:48
Martin – 3 – you know what ‘really piss[es] me off’, it’s posters like you who make shit up – ‘a winger who’d failed at Sheffield United’.
Some education for you Martin, not least that making things up to try to deceive people is BAD Martin.
This would be Ndiaye who scored 21 goals in 77 games for the Blades (not bad for a ‘failed’ winger eh Martin?). The same Ndiaye who still today is a hallowed name for fans of the Blades. And the same Ndiaye who one of the most respected posters on here with extremely strong ties to living and breathing Blades fans – Peter Mills – reminds us that Ndiaye was the opposite of ‘failure’ at Bramall Lane.
Q. In a similar vein to us, didn’t Wednesday first play at Bramall Lane?
I hope that you learn from this experience Martin.
Posted
18/01/2026 at
04:53:41
They should have completely binned Thelwell’s in-tray when he was sacked. Thelwell first identified Barry. I should have known.
Posted
18/01/2026 at
10:10:20
To be fair, Barry was also talked up by people such as Thierry Henry and has been touted round Europe as an up & coming star.
It seems this line of thinking still stand in the professional ranks. But then we all know better because he’s shit during matches.
Isn’t that the point though – he has potential and we’re all judging him on the here & now? Everton have their hands tied when it comes to signings, especially strikers.
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