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The Sunderland boss is still waiting for his first Premier League win since taking charge, after going down 3-nil to his old club Everton last night.
But Moyes, who introduced Barkley into the Everton team in August 2011, believes the Liverpool-born playmaker is still improving.
Sunderland manager David Moyes reacts to his side’s 3-0 loss to Everton at the Stadium of Light.
Everton, meanwhile, climbed to third following their third win out of four on 10 points, the same as Chelsea, and two points adrift of Manchester City at the summit of the table.
Speaking about breaking his Premier League goal duck for the season, he added: “It was all about my fitness levels, they weren’t as good as I wanted them to be”.
“We were really poor in the second half, but I thought, in the first half, we showed some good things”.
Koeman went on to back his players to sustain a fight for the European spots this season – provided that they do not repeat Monday’s first-half showing.
In fact, Everton could have won by a more convincing margin, with Lukaku himself admitting he could have scored “five in the end”.
Moyes expects to take a similar approach at Sunderland as he aims to end the club’s perpetual struggle against relegation, although one point from the opening three matches of the Premier League season tells a grimly familiar tale.
“Romelu is a fantastic striker and sometimes it’s hard when you’ve gone a long time not scoring for your club and everyone’s talking about that”.
Lukaku, meanwhile, echoed the sentiments of his manager, lamenting his side’s sub-standard showing in the first half.
The Liverpool Echo wrote this weekend that Everton have to hit Sunderland early in order to get our fans booing the players off the pitch by half time – here’s hoping that the truth is quite the opposite, and that the supporters are behind the team from start to finish.
“I was really angry (at half-time), we had good defending but that wasn’t the problem, the problem was when we had the ball possession in the midfield and up front, we lost too many balls”.
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Lukaku opened his account with a 60th-minute header from Idrissa Gueye’s cross and then doubled his tally in similar fashion eight minutes later with the impressive Yannick Bolasie this time the provider.
