Mikel Arteta insists Everton's lack of summer signings is no excuse for Saturday's home defeat to Blackburn.

He told evertonTV: "We know that we are very short on numbers, but we need to get the best out of the numbers that we've got at the moment.

"We can't ask any more from the lads. We're playing a lot of players out of position at the moment because of the numbers.

"But we can't complain, nobody is going to feel sorry for us because that is the way it is, so we need to get the points and start kicking on."