David Moyes planning long-term rebuilding of Sunderland

Sunderland manager David Moyes has said that Everton full-back Seamus Coleman reminds him of Forrest Gump, ahead of the Toffees visit to the Stadium of Light on Monday.

The 53-year-old Scot spent 11 years at Goodison Park and worked patiently to establish the Toffees in the top half of the Premier League table and took them into Europe despite working to relatively modest budgets. That’s how I think about football. “We are not going to be the biggest spenders, just like Everton weren’t, and it’s going to take time – at least three or four transfer windows”. He could run for fun.

“But I know what he can bring and if he’s got his mind correct and he’s physically right- and I’ve worked with him before and he knows me well- it’s a great opportunity for him to show what he can do, and may be for him to realise as well he didn’t have loads of takers out there waiting for him. But boy could he run, could he put folk on the back foot because he was positive”.

Ross Barkley will play for England “many more times”, according to Sunderland manager David Moyes.

Having arrived to Everton at the age of 21, Coleman was sent out on loan by Moyes to the Championship with Blackpool to cut his cloth and the Black Cats boss says now he can see Coleman flourishing as Irish skipper for years to come.

“But he will go on now probably to captain the Ireland team for another 40 or 50 games, I would think”.

“I had to go on the training ground, I had to organise and I had to coach, I had to build it up and I think if you look at the team we had at the start compared to the team when we left, it was a team full of worldwide players, it was a team which was actually competing”.

Moyes is boosted by the return of German midfielder Jan Kirchhoff while he was surprised to learn that record buy Didier Ndong, signed for £13.5m from Lorient, is available when it was initially thought he was still serving a ban.