David Moyes remains “absolutely driven” and keen to sign a new contract at Everton despite renewed uncertainty over the club’s long-term future.

Despite a chaotic end to a fraught summer transfer window which left him with 18 fit senior players and just one specialist striker, Moyes has guided Everton to seventh in the Premier League and into the Carabao Cup quarter-finals, where they will face League Two Fleetwood Town next month.

However, talks over his future, with his contract due to expire in the summer, have slowed since the Friedkin Group put the club up for sale last month.

They are hopeful of finding a buyer at their £800m asking price before the end of the season, with preliminary interest from US investors, although nothing is understood to be advanced on the takeover front.

Everton remain in a state of limbo despite an encouraging start to the campaign.

The club’s owners insist it is “business as usual” while the sale process unfolds, and Moyes’ brand of stability has so far helped keep scrutiny away from the hierarchy.

With inexperienced managers struggling elsewhere in the Premier League, Pierre Sage under pressure at Crystal Palace and Matthias Jaissle at Newcastle, Everton are holding steady, prompting some insiders to argue Moyes should be rewarded with a new deal “sooner rather than later”.

“Stability is hugely important to the club given the ownership at the moment,” one insider told The i Paper.

“You can see from the results that the players react to him and he knows the club inside out.

“The sensible thing would be to offer him that extension straight away.”

The extent to which Moyes has been underrated is perhaps illustrated by West Ham’s struggles since his departure, with the London club now on their fourth manager and having suffered relegation.

Moyes’ position appears to have shifted considerably since the summer, when sources suggested there had been occasional tension between the manager and Everton’s transfer committee over the profile of players they should be targeting.

The Toffees boss has long made clear his belief that the club should prioritise players who could “plug in and play” as they pushed for European qualification, a position he outlined as far back as January 2025.

Having largely kept their powder dry last winter, Moyes rejected some suggested targets he felt were not ready for the Premier League, and Everton subsequently struggled in the transfer market.

There was never outright hostility, with sources suggesting Moyes and chief executive Angus Kinnear enjoy a “good relationship”, but there had been a feeling in football circles that the two parties might eventually go their separate ways in 2027.

That changed when the rug was collectively pulled from under everyone’s feet in the final weeks of the season, as the Friedkin Group adopted a more pragmatic approach to recruitment.

Moyes’ handling of the potential sale of Harrison Armstrong was particularly significant, with the manager reminding supporters he was an “Evertonian” like them and reinforcing the importance of stability and a steady hand at the helm.

The i Paper understands the owners are prepared to back Moyes in January, with a loan or permanent move for a striker top of their list following the farcical collapse of the Folarin Balogun deal on deadline day.

However, greater clarity over the manager’s future would help.

The i Paper has been told some figures inside the club believe a short-term contract extension, even for another season, would “make complete sense” while the Friedkin Group assesses its options after publicly putting Everton on the market.

The question is whether Moyes, who was considered for the Scotland job and has been linked with Celtic, would accept such an arrangement.

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He returned to Everton believing there was unfinished business at the club and that ambitious new ownership would help him turn them into contenders for silverware and European qualification again.

Instead, the final season of his contract has seen Everton return to the familiar role of trying to overachieve, with Moyes operating on a tighter budget than most of his immediate rivals.

“He wants to stay beyond the summer but he wants to have a proper go at it,” one source told The i Paper.