Everton boss Dave Moyes won't rush back striker James Vaughan.

Having had an operation to cure a cartilage problem two weeks ago, Moyes has no intention of rushing the youngest goalscorer in Everton's history back to play a couple of games before the end of the season.

"He is quite a tough boy mentally but this hasn't been a bad knee operation," said Moyes. "It's just been a little procedure to cure his cartilage.

"Because of his history, he's going to have a bit longer time to recover. Let's be fair, with only six weeks of the season to go, it would have been quite tight for him to get back anyway.

"But we need to make sure that we look after him correctly. I have always known that will be the case. I said a couple of years ago when he had that first injury, we needed to watch him.

"He missed a lot of his development period and that for me is the only real disappointment as he would have helped us just now.

"His enthusiasm would have played a big part for us. We will miss him and we can't just be relying on Yak. The goals have got to come from other areas, not just the forwards."