The Belgian joined Everton on deadline day for £15million from Standard Liege.
“People will say that Fellaini was a last minute thing and he wasn’t on the radar and a lot of that is correct,” Moyes told Everton TV.
“We were after other people; [Stephane] Mbia, we were after two or three people who we couldn’t get.
“But we weren’t sitting about doing nothing. We were looking to see who our next targets were.”
He continued: “We haven’t got a lot of stature in the team, so our criteria was that we had to get someone who was bigger than what we had.
“We have a lot of smaller people in the team, Artetas, Osmans, Pienaars, so there were lots of good midfielders about but they didn’t meet the criteria.
“Fellaini was one who we knew could do that and we have watched him.
“His games against Liverpool were very good and that probably tipped us over. We realised then that instead of having the potential, he was there.”
